But inside, his thoughts were a tide surging restlessly.
Shen Xiao… the Shens will have to face what he was planning for them.
His jaw tightened imperceptibly, a flicker of steel crossing his eyes. He had not intervened out of pity, nor from any hollow sense of duty. No! he stepped forward because she was the woman he had guarded in silence for decades, the only one he would shield with his very life.
But beneath that ruthlessness lay something darker, older.
For over two decades, Jin Shuren had carried her image in the private vault of his heart. Long before Shen Xiao ever touched her hand, long before vows had been exchanged, he had seen her once, just once, and something inside him had rooted there, unyielding.
He had told himself it was madness, obsession. Yet no other woman had ever dislodged her shadow. He had watched from a distance, watched her laugh, watched her marry, watched her wither under the weight of a household that never deserved her.
And he had waited.
