The scent of sunlight, accompanied by the faint sound of turning pages, formed an extremely warm memory.

She shook her hands, which were a bit sore from being tied, and spoke softly again:

"My hands are a bit sore from being tied; could you please loosen them?"

Almost as soon as she finished speaking, her wrists were rubbed.

Immediately, the silk was loosened, and she rubbed her swollen wrists.

The next second, she removed the blindfold.

The scene before her made her eyes widen instantly; the room was filled with a dim atmosphere, making it impossible to distinguish day from night.

She didn't know the location, nor the time.

The only thing radiating light was the dim bedside lamp; the light was weak, yet it shrouded everything around in a haze.

And what stunned her even more was the place she was now lying in—a large, snow-white bed placed inside a golden birdcage in the middle of the room.

Julian was wearing a black bathrobe, sitting casually beside her, the collar of the robe wide open, revealing his sturdy chest. His eyes were fixed directly on her, his gaze obscure and unreadable.

She opened her mouth, unable to say a word for a moment.

The room fell into a dead, heavy silence, as if time had frozen at this moment.

After a long time, Julian finally spoke slowly, his voice deep and suppressed:

"If I hadn't found out, were you planning to keep it from me for your entire life, right?"

◇ Chapter 19

This sentence was like a sharp stone abruptly tossed into the mirror-still lake of Clara Vance's heart, which had long since been silent as an abyss. In an instant, a thousand layers of waves surged, shocking her soul to its core.

She turned her head away.

"This matter... should never have involved you from the very beginning. It had nothing to do with you..."

The words were still swirling in the air when she was forcefully pinned onto the bed. Julian Sterling looked down at her from above, his eyes a mix of fury and affection, like two intertwined flames: "Nothing to do with me? That eyeball in your left socket is now growing inside my body—do you really have the audacity to say this has nothing to do with me?"

Clara's lips trembled uncontrollably.

She raised her hand, her fingertips heavy with guilt as they brushed across his handsome brows and eyes:

"This is what I owe you."

Her voice trembled slightly, filled with an indescribable mix of guilt and heartache: "The day of the car chase... you must have been in so much pain."

Heaven knows, the moment she learned he had injured his eye, panic and regret had flooded her like a tide.

If there hadn't been a car chase, none of this would have happened.

She owed him an eye, so she used her own left eye to repay him.

"It was very painful."

He said.

He held her hand, placing it slowly over his own heart, staring at her with burning intensity:

"But that pain was not even one ten-thousandth of the heartache I felt."

Clara kept her head down, like a child who had committed a grave error. Guilt acted like a shackle, preventing her from looking him in the eye.

Even if she had made up for his physical disability with her own eye, what could ever compensate for the heart-wrenching pain he had endured at that time?

Beneath her palm, his young and feverish heart beat with a powerful vitality.

Yet, as if burned, she wanted to pull her hand away.

Her hand was pressed firmly against that spot by him, feeling the impact of his heart, beat by beat.

"Don't you have anything else to say to me?" he asked.

A tear slid from the corner of her eye, hitting the gray bedsheets and instantly blooming into a large stain.

"I'm sorry." She choked, unable to say anything but those three words, "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?" he kissed the tears from her face and asked softly.

"Sorry for letting you suffer so much pain, for letting you encounter so many bad things..."

Before she could finish, her lips were gently pressed by his slender fingers.

"No, that's not what you're wrong about."

In the silent room, his voice was incredibly gentle: "What you were wrong about was that you shouldn't have hidden all of this from me from the start."

Clara shook her head, trembling.

"No, you were never meant to know about this." She pushed him away: "Just pretend I really am dead, pretend you don't know anything, okay?"

Julian clenched his fist instantly: "We've reached this point, and you're still saying things like that to me?!"

Clara bit her lip, tears falling like broken beads: "I'm doing this for your own good; I don't want you to be dragged down by these things."

"For my own good?" Julian gave a bitter laugh, "You think hiding this from me is for my own good? You deprived me of the right to face this with you; that is the cruelest thing."

The room was filled with a suffocating silence, with only the sound of their rapid breathing intertwined.

Clara’s mind was in total chaos.

And Julian, looking at her, was filled with anger and helplessness.

He didn't understand how she could face everything alone and push him so far away.

After a long time, Julian spoke slowly, his voice laced with fatigue: "I won't let you leave just like that. No matter what happens, we have to face it together."

Panic flashed in Clara's eyes: "No... you can't. You can't do this."

She struggled, her voice turning into a sob: "Julian, you have already achieved success and fame, you have such a bright future ahead of you. Don't get involved in these matters... let me go, just pretend you never met me..."

Faced with her struggle, Julian revealed a slightly chilling smile.

He grabbed her ankle and used a golden chain to cuff her to the golden birdcage.

The chain was about eight meters long, enough for her to move freely inside the room, but it restricted her from leaving the basement.

"What are you doing!" She gripped the chain, which rattled as she struggled: "By what right do you lock me here? This is illegal... you..."

Julian laughed.

"Illegal?" He pinched her pointed chin, looking down at her: "Clara Vance, have you forgotten? In the eyes of the law, you are already a dead person."

"As long as I want, I can keep you locked here for the rest of your life." His scorching kiss descended, his voice filled with a hair-raising sense of danger: "Don't even think about going anywhere."

◇ Chapter 20

Clara Vance never expected that the revenge plan she had meticulously prepared would suffer such a humiliating defeat at the very first step.

Julian gently stroked the wisps of hair at her temples, his tone full of helplessness, "Such a clumsy faked death act couldn't even fool me, so how could it have deceived those brutal criminals?"

Clara was speechless, her reluctance and resentment turning into silence.

Julian turned and put on his coat, "You stay here and rest well. I have an appointment to inquire about what happened back then."

"You... have an appointment?" Clara was full of confusion, lifting her eyes to look at him.

"Clara Vance, have you forgotten? The 'me' today is completely different from the one back then."

The current Julian also possessed a complex network and the capital and ability to flip the world upside down.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to find her so quickly at the Jiang City cargo port.

Julian leaned down and left a kiss on her forehead, tender and lingering, "No one will come down to the basement on their own. If you're hungry, pull the bell at the head of the bed; the butler will bring food in."

With that, he turned and walked toward the door.

He hadn't taken many steps when he seemed to feel uneasy and turned back, instructing again, "Don't think about running around. You're a person without an identity now; you can't go anywhere."

This time, he truly left.

Clara curled up at the head of the bed, her mind in chaos. All her plans had fallen through, and her body felt as if its strength had been drained.

She thought back on the meticulous schemes of the past few years and suddenly felt her actions were utterly ridiculous.

If Julian was ultimately going to intervene in this matter, then what had all her efforts over these years really amounted to?

Aside from breaking his heart time and again, what had she actually accomplished? She had achieved nothing at all!

She didn't know how long she lay on the bed before she drifted into a fitful sleep amidst her chaotic thoughts.

When she woke again, there was a faint movement at the basement entrance.