"Z-Zheng Tianyi...?"

He didn’t respond. Because of that, she thought this was another hallucination of hers. Her vision was blurred and she couldn’t hold up her weight. She rested her body on the wall beside the door and watched him enter the apartment, his eyes scanning the layout. She couldn’t read his body language. She never could.

Zheng Tianyi’s nose crinkled at the heavy stench of liquor in this place. It reeked of her smell. He hated it. The way her floral scent tickled his nose. If only she wasn’t so pathetic, maybe he would’ve considered her. But tonight, he brought himself here. Voluntarily. He needed her to stay by his side. His father forbade him from discarding her. Besides, she still held the position as his Vice President and he needed her to do all of his dirty work.

She had handed in her resignation letter this afternoon. He was here to make sure she shredded the document. He was not going to let her leave. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. She was his possession whether she liked it or not. He might have despised her to the core, but he couldn’t deny how helpful she was to the company. With Zhao Moyao standing behind her, she was invincible and the deals she made were always superb.

Zheng Tianyi loosened his tie and turned to her. "How badly do you want to stay by my side?" He spat out the words like it was venom on his tongue.

Her lips parted. She didn’t understand his question and the alcohol in her system was making it harder for her to think logically. "I-I don’t understand...?"

Zheng Tianyi took off his suit jacket and stormed towards her, flinging the piece of clothing to his side. He stalked towards her and fear got the best of her. She began to take meek steps backward until she found herself cornered against the wall.

"Ow!" She yelped when he roughly gripped her chin, squeezing it, his eyes blazing.

"What did you tell my Mengxi?" He snarled, tightening his fingers around her tiny chin. She was attempting to push him away. Her eyes were burning and stinging from the pain that spurted from his rough touch.

"I-I didn’t—"

PAK!

Her face flew to the side, her eyes widening in shock. Her trembling hands reached to touch her burning cheek. Hot, burning tears clouding her vision, tumbling down from her eyes.

"Did you call her a mistress? Did you tell her she was just a play-thing?!" His voice was like a violent storm tearing her apart. She didn’t realize she was shaking until he grabbed her shoulders. His booming loud voice reminded her of her father who used to use the same tone when she missed a beat on the piano.

"Do you want to become a woman that desperately?" His words were humiliating and even so, the little moth was drawn to him, eager to burn in his flames.

Zhao Lifei didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t know what he was going to do to her. She pressed her hands against her chest and opened her mouth, "Yes."

Zheng Tianyi let out a dark, cruel chuckle. She felt something crawl up her spine, whether it was her nerves or his hand, she didn’t know.

Fine. He’ll give her exactly what she wanted and then humiliate her in the end. Xia Mengxi had cried to him today. She would pay for that.

historical

He placed a hand on her shoulder and begin to slip off the thin straps, her eyes widening in horror. She placed a hand on top of his, preventing him from doing anything more. "W-what are you doing?" She didn’t know what he was doing to her. She didn’t like it one bit.

"Do you want me to marry you?" He smirked. Even if she was going to move on from this, at the least, she would leave with the memory that her first time was going to be vicious and humiliating.

"Yes, of course—"

"Then take off your clothes."

Zhao Lifei’s face morphed into confusion, understanding, and then horror. "This is not proper."

"What? We’re merely skipping the wedding part and moving onto the consumption." He grabbed strands of her hair and she thought he was going to gently stroke it, the same way he did to Xia Mengxi’s hair. So imagine her surprise when his lips curled in disgust as he dropped his fingers then wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He treated her like she was dirty.

"Well? Do you want to remain by my side or not?"

Zhao Lifei’s heart raced. She thought about the possibility of his words. If...if I embraced him tonight, will he think of me a little more? Will he love me a bit more? Will he look my way a little bit kinder?

"Fine. I see you have made your decision." Zheng Tianyi placed a hand on the doorknob.

Fear wrapped around her and pried her mouth open, "No! Please don’t go...S-stay." She stumbled over her feet while she hugged him tightly, sealing her fate forever.

- - - - -

Torture. That was what it felt like. He humped and dumped, then left her on the bed, naked and disheveled, covered in substances she didn’t know about. He had the audacity to toss her his wallet, treating her as a woman he got off the streets.

Zhao Lifei couldn’t get out of bed the next day and she had to change her dirty sheets herself. When she requested a day off from Zheng Corporation, he threatened to fire her. And she was forced to go, hobbling her way up the office and nearly falling on her face every time she tried to walk. She could feel everyone’s mocking eyes on her, almost as if they knew what had happened to her.

"You’re late." Zheng Tianyi seethed when he strolled into her tiny, cramped office and slammed a pile of documents onto her desk. "Do you know how much that cost me? Imagine my surprise when the damn Vice President wasn’t at the mock-stockholder meeting! Do you know how embarrassing that is?!"

He raised his hand as if he was going to slap her, but in the less second, placed it down. Maybe it was because he saw how vulnerable she was last night. Or maybe it was because she looked like she was on the verge of death tonight. He breathed in through his nose and pinched the spot in between his brows.

"Just get started on the files." He stormed out of her office before she could ask about his promise.

Zhao Lifei glanced down at her shaking right hand. She placed her other hand over it in hopes of calming the tremor down. She couldn’t. Her eyes dropped to the floor and she let out a choked laughter. H-he was changing... Maybe he was going to keep his words all along.

Little did she know, ten weeks later, she would get the biggest surprise of her life.

- - - - -

Late at night, when everyone except the janitor had left, the sound of the clicks of a keyboard echoed down the quiet, dark corridor. Amongst the closed laptops, empty cubicles, and desolate floor was a sole woman who slaved away at the computer screen.

A pen was tucked behind her messy and oily hair that was pulled into a loose bun. She was too busy draining her energy in the office to even care about herself. The self-neglect was very evident in her appearance, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was benefiting Zheng Corporation in any way that she could. Whether it was spending extra hours at the office every night or averaging three hours of sleep a day, using alcohol as her only salvation. Because of the immense stress she was under, she began to drink more than usual. When that didn’t work, she would mix it with her coffee and at least three shots of espresso.

Lately, her stomach had been cramping and hurting a bit as well as her back, but she brushed it off as constipation and the lack of nutrition in her diet. She was surviving off of liquor and caffeine with an occasional bite of her smoked salmon bagel from this morning.

A soft knock sounded at her door. She briefly glanced up from the screen and then went back to her computer. "What is it?" She answered, yawning and stretching a bit. She glanced at the clock and saw it was twelve in the morning. She winced when the stretching caused stabbing pains in her stomach. She breathed in and out, but suddenly, she felt dizzy.

The local janitor poked his head in. "Ah, Ms. Vice President, you’re still here? My team and I have finished cleaning. I will be closing down the office now. It’s getting very late and you always seem to be the last one here with us. Won’t you head home now?"

His words sounded far away to her ears. She was losing vision and his face blurred to her eyes. She tried to stand up and say something. She blinked and the next thing she knew, she was on the floor, black dots tainting her vision.

"Ms. Vice President?!" The janitor had the fright of his life when he saw the woman collapsed onto the floor, her eyes fluttering before she was passed out cold. He rushed to her and tried to shake her awake, but it was to no avail. Then he saw something. Blood.