Williams was rushed into emergency surgery.
The doctors worked on him for hours, but the verdict was brutal—
his spine was severely damaged.
He might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Suzy stood outside the operating room, expressionless.
No one could guess what she was thinking.
Lu Zeyan arrived and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Jinjin, don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
Suzy shook her head and stepped away from his touch.
Her voice was soft but steady.
“Brother Lu, thank you. But this is between me and him.”
The surgery dragged on for more than ten hours.
When they finally wheeled Williams out of the operating room, he was out of danger.
And when he opened his eyes, the first person he saw was Suzy.
She was sitting quietly by his bedside, watching him with an unreadable expression.
“Jinjin…”
His voice was hoarse, trembling with hope as he reached for her hand.
She didn’t pull away.
A spark of joy flashed through him.
She stayed.
She came back.
Did this mean—?
“Jinjin… you forgive me, right?”
Suzy looked straight into his hopeful eyes and slowly shook her head.
“Williams, I didn’t come to forgive you.”
Her tone was calm, detached—like she was discussing someone else’s life, not her own.
“I only came to tell you that you saved my life. For that, I’m grateful.
From this day on, everything between us is settled.”
Williams’ face went white.
“Settled? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” she stood up, looking down at him from above, her eyes empty—no love, no hatred, only a quiet void—
“we’re done. Completely. Don’t come looking for me again. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
“No! I won’t allow it!”
He tried to sit up, but the pain ripped through him, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
“Suzy, don’t do this to me! I gave my life for you—why can’t you give me one chance?”
“Chance?”
Suzy laughed—soft, bitter, a sound with no warmth or forgiveness.
“Williams, do you know how I lived these past five years?”
“I lost so much blood I almost died on the operating table. My father was gravely ill, and I had to carry everything on my own. I went abroad with nothing—I didn’t know the language, had no money. I worked three jobs a day until I vomited blood.”
“The hardest days… I couldn’t even afford a piece of bread.
And every night, I’d dream of that night—
the blood… the fear… our baby.”
“Sometimes I dream he’s covered in blood, asking me,
‘Mom, why didn’t Dad want me?’”
Her words were quiet.
But each syllable was soaked in pain.
Williams felt his heart being carved open, cut after cut, no mercy.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”
He repeated it like a broken prayer, the only thing he had left.
“Your apology is five years too late.”
For the first time, emotion flickered in Suzy’s eyes—
not love, not hate.
Pity.
“Williams, the Suzy who loved you… died five years ago.
You buried her yourself, on that snowy night.”
“The woman standing here now is Jin.
My world is bright again, and I don’t need you in it.”
She turned around and walked out of the room without looking back.
“No—! Suzy! Come back!”
Williams’ scream tore through the hallway, raw and ragged—
but her footsteps did not pause.
The door closed behind her.
Outside the door was sunlight, warmth, and a new life.
Inside was darkness, endless and permanent.
Williams lay on the hospital bed, staring at the white ceiling as tears slid silently down his temples.
He had exchanged half his life and a broken body
for a single sentence:
“We’re even.”
But how could they ever be even?
The child they lost—the one named *Nian Nian*—
would haunt him in every nightmare.
And Suzy—the woman he once dismissed, once destroyed—
would become the unhealed wound carved into his soul forever.
He had conquered the world,
and lost the only thing that truly mattered.
—
Months later, Williams was discharged.
Just as the doctor warned, he could no longer walk.
The once mighty king of the business world was now confined to a wheelchair.
He handed his company to professional managers
and moved back into the house he once shared with Suzy.
He had it restored exactly as it was before she left.
Every detail.
Every trace of her.
He spent his days sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window she used to love,
waiting.
Imagining.
Sometimes he hallucinated—
turning around, thinking he’d see her walking toward him
with a warm cup of tea.
But every time,
there was only the empty room
and his own lonely shadow.
He heard she returned to Paris.
He heard she was thriving—her brand rising like a star.
He heard Lu Zeyan proposed.
She didn’t say no.
Everything he heard
had nothing to do with him anymore.
—
Another wedding anniversary came around.
Outside, snow fell—
just like that night five years ago.
Williams sat alone in the vast dining room.
Two sets of cutlery.
A full table of dishes he had tried to recreate from memory—
her favorites.
He poured himself a glass of red wine and whispered to the empty seat across from him,
“Jinjin… happy third… no,
happy eighth anniversary.”
He took a sip.
The wine was bitter—
just like his life.
He picked up his phone and dialed the number etched into his bones.
It rang for a long, long time.
Just when he thought no one would answer—
someone picked up.
A man’s gentle voice came through the line.
“Hello, who’s calling?”
It was Lu Zeyan.
Pain stabbed Williams’ heart like a needle.
He didn’t speak.
From the phone, he could faintly hear Suzy’s voice in the background.
“Who is it?”
“Wrong number,” Lu Zeyan answered softly, amusement in his tone.
“Come on, try the soup I made for you.”
The call disconnected.
Williams held the phone, listening to the empty beep.
And slowly…
a smile spread across his face.
A broken, devastating smile.
Then the tears came.
He had lost.
Completely.
Utterly.
Without redemption.
Outside, the snow fell harder—
as if trying to bury the world,
bury the past,
bury him.
And Williams remained trapped
in the prison called “regret,”
a sentence that would last
for the rest of his life.