Chapter 13 - Chapter 13: The Echo of Betrayal

​The basement was not a cold, damp cellar, but a luxurious, soundproofed vault of velvet and gold—yet to Ning, it felt like a gilded coffin. Xuan sat on the edge of the silk-covered bed, his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking with the weight of a jealousy that had finally broken his spirit. "Why him, Ning? Why did it have to be the one man who could claim a debt I can't pay?" his voice was a hollow rasp, echoing against the soundproofed walls. Ning crawled toward him, her knees bruised from the rough handling earlier, her eyes red and swollen from hours of extreme crying. "There is no debt of the heart, Xuan! My life belongs to you, not to the person who pulled my mother from a car!" she sobbed, reaching out to touch his trembling hands. But as her fingers brushed his skin, Xuan flinched as if burned. He looked at her, his eyes wild and bloodshot. "Don't touch me with the hands that held his flowers!" he roared, the misunderstanding reaching a peak of pure insanity. In his mind, every second she spent in the Wei household during her recovery was a second she spent falling for the rival. He saw phantom images of them together, laughing, sharing secrets, planning this very moment of his downfall. He grabbed a heavy crystal carafe from the nightstand and hurled it at the wall, the glass exploding into a thousand shimmering shards. "I saw the way he looked at you at the gala! I saw the way you didn't pull away immediately!" Ning's heart shattered along with the glass. "I was frozen in shock, Xuan! I didn't know he would be there!" she screamed back, her own anger finally sparking through her misery. "You claim to love me, but you don't trust me! Your love is a leash, and it's choking the life out of both of us!" Xuan stood up, his height looming over her, his shadow swallowing her small frame. "It's not a leash, it's a shield!" he countered, his face contorted in a mask of possessive agony. "The world is trying to steal you, and you're standing there letting them unlock the door!" He paced the small room, his breathing heavy and erratic. He felt like a man drowning in a sea of his own making. He loved her so much that the thought of her breathing the same air as Wei Chen made him want to rip his own lungs out. He turned back to her, his expression suddenly shifting from rage to a terrifying, desperate calmness. He knelt before her, gripping her waist so tightly it left marks. "If you love me, tell me you hate them. Tell me you want them dead. Tell me you'll never say their name again." Ning looked at the man she worshipped and felt a chill run down her spine. The misunderstanding had reached a level where truth no longer mattered; only his version of reality existed. "I hate what they're doing to us," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "But I can't hate my parents for being deceived." Xuan's grip tightened, his eyes darkening. "Then you've chosen them over me," he whispered, a single tear of pure jealousy falling onto her hand.