My whirlwind marriage partner is a wealthy CEO

Chapter 292 Is Your Own Father the Executioner of Poison?

Amidst the busy tone of the dial tone, Zhu Ziqing stared intently at the photo of her father and daughter on her phone's wallpaper.

The kind smile on Zhu Shigou's face in the photo now seems like a mask of hypocrisy.

The night wind whipped up flyers that slapped at her feet as Zhu Ziqing wandered mechanically through the streets. Her reflection in the shop windows was like an empty shell; all her senses were crumbling—could the person who said, "Dad will always protect you," really be the executioner who poisoned her?

She touched the C-section scar on her abdomen, and a memory suddenly flashed back to Tan Haoyu, his eyes red as he stroked the scar. But the fragments of identity—Tan Haoyu calling her "wife," and Xiao Qingqing calling her "mom"—couldn't be pieced together to form a complete picture of herself.

The neon lights of Xinghe Shangcheng were blinding. Zhu Ziqing stared at the stone tablet at the entrance of the community, but her feet involuntarily moved towards the supermarket on her right.

"Young lady! It's been so long since you've come to buy chestnuts!" The woman at the roasted chestnut stall waved her spatula. "Big sale today, three jin for ten yuan!"

Zhu Ziqing turned around abruptly, the aroma of roasted chestnuts mingling with her confusion: "You... know me?"

"Of course I recognize it!" The woman grinned, revealing her gold teeth. "You and your husband come here often, and he always picks out the plumpest ones for you! Oh, you two are such good friends..."

Before she could finish speaking, hurried footsteps sounded behind her. The moment Zhu Ziqing turned around, Tan Haoyu's tall figure loomed in the night, his suit collar askew, sweat beading on his forehead: "Why didn't you answer the phone? Do you know how long I've been looking for you!"

The older woman laughed upon seeing this: "See? I told you so, this is truly..."

Zhu Ziqing stood frozen in place.

"Zhu Ziqing! Your husband's here! Why aren't you moving?" The loud voice of the woman roasting chestnuts made the sparrows flutter and fly away.

Zhu Ziqing's fingers tightened suddenly as she gripped the diagnosis report, the edge of the paper cutting into her palm, but she felt no pain.

As she turned, Tan Haoyu's figure broke through the twilight. The night wind lifted the hem of his black suit, his tie hung askew around his neck, and his usually composed phoenix eyes were now bloodshot, their depths churning with turbulent emotions.

"How did you find this place?" Zhu Ziqing took a half step back, her back bumping against the supermarket freezer. The cold air crept up her spine, but not as much as the chill in her heart. She stared at the phone faintly visible in Tan Haoyu's suit pocket, suddenly recalling the news stories about domineering CEOs installing GPS trackers on their mistresses. "Could it be that he installed a tracking device on me?"

Tan Haoyu's Adam's apple bobbed twice, but before he could speak, Zhu Ziqing had already looked up at the night sky. The streetlights shattered into spots of light in her pupils, much like the fragmented world she was in at that moment. "I'm like a lost soul, not even knowing who I am," she murmured to herself, her nails unconsciously digging into the metal edge of the freezer. "If even my own father could poison me, is there anyone left in this world I can trust?"

Zhu Shigou's smiling face exploded in her mind. The medicine he handed her late at night, the gentle words "for your own good," now all turned into poisoned needles. Zhu Ziqing suddenly remembered her twelfth birthday, when her father took her to the amusement park and said, "Dad will always be your armor," and a metallic taste rose in her throat.

"It turns out the sharpest knives are handed to us by our own family." She looked down at the words "drug addiction" on the diagnosis report and suddenly laughed. The laughter startled Tan Haoyu, who took a half step forward, but froze when he met her eyes—those eyes were filled with ice and burning with the fire of despair.

Tan Haoyu stared at Zhu Ziqing's pale knuckles, at the tears welling up in her eyes, and felt as if a tank had run over his heart. The seven hours he waited outside the operating room three years ago couldn't compare to the suffocation he felt now. He reached out to embrace her trembling shoulders, but stopped mid-air—those shoulders, already shaky under the weight of the truth.

"Ziqing..." His voice was hoarse, unlike his own. The next second, Zhu Ziqing obediently fell into his arms, but remained as stiff as a plaster statue. Tan Haoyu could clearly feel her ribs trembling slightly in his palm, like a dying butterfly.

"Can I trust you?" Zhu Ziqing's voice was muffled inside his suit jacket, trailing off in broken notes. Tan Haoyu looked down and smelled the lemon scent mixed with disinfectant in her hair—the scent of her favorite shampoo from three years ago.

“Okay.” His throat tightened, and he pressed his chin against the top of her head, only to be met with a cold laugh.

"Even the person who gave me life could feed me poison, how can you expect me to trust him?" Zhu Ziqing suddenly looked up, her eyes red-rimmed. "What does he take me for? A guinea pig? A puppet?" She gripped his clothes tightly, her knuckles turning blue from the force. "What right do you people have to arbitrarily alter my life!"

Tan Haoyu's embrace tightened abruptly, only to be violently shoved away by Zhu Ziqing. She staggered backward, knocking over a roadside trash can with a jarring metallic clang. "Tell me!" she screamed, the medical report billowing into the night sky in the wind, "Who the hell am I?"

A metallic taste rose in Tan Haoyu's throat. The "husband's signature" on the surgical consent form three years ago, the wedding photo on Xiao Qingqing's bedside table—all now felt like the sharpest knives. "You are..." He began, but swallowed all his words when he met the madness in her eyes.

"Can't answer?" Zhu Ziqing wiped her face and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. The movement was exactly like how she organized design drawings three years ago, but the gentleness of that time was gone.

Tan Haoyu suddenly stepped forward and pulled her tightly into his arms. Despite her kicks and scratches, his suit crumpled to shreds, his voice remained terrifyingly calm: "If you can't remember the past, start over. I want you, not those damned memories!"

Zhu Ziqing's fist landed on his chest, but the force gradually weakened. Her fingernails scratched five bloody marks on his shirt, but Tan Haoyu held on even tighter, as if clinging to the last piece of driftwood.

Only when she finally collapsed did Tan Haoyu dare to lower his head. He saw her eyes closed, tears still clinging to her eyelashes, her pale lips slightly parted, like a lily wilted by a storm. He gently wiped away the tears from her cheeks and placed a kiss on the top of her head—this time, he would never let go.

A cold wind ruffled the stray hairs on Zhu Ziqing's forehead, and her voice, buried against Tan Haoyu's chest, sounded like crumpled paper: "You knew all along... that my dad was the one who made me addicted to drugs, didn't you?"

Tan Haoyu's Adam's apple bobbed heavily as his military boots crunched over the gravel on the ground: "Yes, sir."

Zhu Ziqing suddenly looked up, her eyes bloodshot: "Why didn't you tell me? Did you want to see me make a fool of myself? Or did you think I was stupid enough to deserve being deceived?"

"Look here." Tan Haoyu suddenly grabbed the back of her neck and pressed her face against his chest. The pounding of his heart under his suit made her eardrums ache. "My heartbeat, from the operating room door three years ago until now, every beat has been filled with fear—fear that you will be torn apart if you know the truth."

Moonlight climbed onto Zhu Ziqing's trembling eyelashes. She stared at the diamond fragments on Tan Haoyu's tie clip, the same style as the wedding ring she had personally chosen three years ago: "I am... the wife you only found a box of ashes when you came back from your business trip?"