Chapter 1Nine Years of Hate, A Lifetime of Regret

My parents were responsible for the death of his parents.

Because of this hatred, Asher Vance kept me as his lover for nine years.

In those nine years, he told me countless times how much he hated me.

Yet, he would drop a hundred-million-dollar project and fly back to the country just to make me soup when I caught a cold.

I thought our feelings had long surpassed that old hatred.

Until, two months after I gave birth to his child, I overheard a conversation between him and another woman.

"Asher, the baby has stopped breathing. How are you going to explain this to Iris?"

Asher answered without hesitation:

"Explain what? The child of an enemy giving his life for our experiment is his fortune."

"It's just right to let that woman see what it feels like to have her closest kin die tragically before her eyes!"

It turned out he had been waiting bitterly for nine years just to truly take revenge on me.

Holding my child's ashes, I walked to the riverside, distraught, ready to end my own life.

But as my body plummeted rapidly, he turned pale and tried to jump with me.

* * *

"Since you know everything, there's no need for me to hide it from you anymore."

The white laboratory walls carried an impersonal coldness.

Asher looked at me, a flash of pain quickly passing through his eyes, yet his words were heartless.

"He is indeed dead."

"Injected with a large amount of experimental drugs by my own hands."

I stared at him in a daze, my hands trembling uncontrollably.

"Why..."

"That was your child too!"

I moved my lips, realizing my voice was hoarse when I spoke.

Asher looked at me silently for a few seconds, then turned his head away.

"I told you countless times, Iris..."

"Because of hate. I hate your parents, I hate you, and I also hate your child."

Hate...

The familiar word appeared in my ears again. I bit my lip.

In nine years, I don't remember how many times I've heard it.

He hated my parents for doing nothing during his family company's crisis, dumping the entire mess on his parents.

They even took all the funds and fled far away.

Leaving his parents with no way out, choosing to end their lives with a bottle of sleeping pills.

But he always talked about hating me while treating me well without restraint.

He would drive all night to take me to see the sunrise at the beach just because I said I was bored.

He would hold my hand in winter, putting it in his pocket for warmth.

Sometimes, when the mood struck, he would even take the eyebrow pencil from my hand and draw my eyebrows for me, bit by bit.

Then he would look at his clumsy handiwork and laugh embarrassedly.

I thought...

I thought that the hatred he constantly proclaimed would eventually fade with time.

But now, when I questioned him in disbelief, he sneered:

"Iris, because I could see that the better I treated you, the guiltier you would feel."

"It was just acting out a love drama with you."

"What, did you take it seriously?"

My body went limp uncontrollably, my hands subconsciously touching my lower abdomen.

The scar left by the C-section throbbed faintly, mixing with the pain in my heart, pressing down until I couldn't breathe.

With just a few words, he easily destroyed all my inner defenses.

My hands gripping his collar dropped suddenly, feeling cold all over.

I couldn't help but laugh at myself mockingly.

I was really too foolish, foolish enough to believe that between two people with a blood feud, love could grow lush and leafy across that hatred.

But I still remember when I was eighteen, approaching college entrance exams but with both parents dead, living alone in a dilapidated rental room.

I held a fruit knife, gesturing at my wrist.

Thinking about where it would be appropriate to cut, but lacking the courage to really do it.

A bed, a set of table and chairs, some pots and pans occupied almost the entire space of the room.

Asher stood at the door, looking at the room with barely a place to stand, emotions in his eyes changing for a long time.

Finally, he punched the wall behind me angrily and dragged me away by the wrist.

I squatted down in despair, crying uncontrollably.