Ye Chen's gaze drifted into the dazzling night scene outside the window. His refined and elegant face, cast in shifting light and shadow, appeared all the more desolate and sorrowful under the veil of darkness.
"Chen… what's wrong?" Yun Ruoxi, ever the understanding woman, let the bitterness and jealousy flash through her heart just briefly. In front of Ye Chen, she was always gentle and considerate.
"I saw the old man today." Ye Chen's voice was low, yet laced with icy hatred.
Gently, Yun Ruoxi wrapped her arms around him from behind. She could guess—after all these years, every time he met with the old man, his emotions would spiral out of control.
"It's okay. It'll be alright." Her soft voice, like a maternal caress, swept over Ye Chen's heart, slowly easing the tension in his body.
All Yun Ruoxi knew was that Ye Chen was an illegitimate child. His mother, a dancer, had raised him alone for ten years before he returned to the Ye family at the age of ten.
The old man had intended to take Ye Chen's mother as his third wife. But just three days after their return to the Ye household…
The eldest son of the Ye family, Ye Yukun, was found stabbed to death in the old man's bed, his clothes in disarray. The prime suspect? Ye Chen's mother.
As she was being taken away by the police, she suddenly broke free from the officers and dashed toward a truck, dying instantly upon impact.
The truth behind Ye Yukun's murder died with Ye Chen's mother. It became a cold case, eventually buried and forgotten.
Of course, Ye Chen never told her any of this.
Back then, the scandal shook the entire upper class—a woman serving both father and son, illicit love, taboo relationships… rumors ran rampant.
The old man used his influence to suppress the scandal, and within just ten days, he married his current wife.
Only then did the storm begin to subside. But for Ye Chen, it was a living nightmare—he'd been at the scene of the murder and witnessed his mother's arrest and her fatal dash into the truck.
Because of it, Ye Chen didn't speak a word for three years.
He developed severe psychological disorders.
Yun Ruoxi had been with him for years, yet never once had she heard him mention anyone from the Ye family—or his mother. In Ye Chen's world, it had always been just him.
Forever alone.