Chapter 4

I led my men, rushing to the memorial hall as fast as possible.

The door to the hall was ajar, and I saw the scene inside at a glance.

Clutching the cold jade amulet, I stood quietly outside the door, listening to Julian’s sobbing accusations from within.

“Sister Seraphina, why aren’t you avenging me?! Killing that maniac would be nothing but lifting a finger for you! Why aren't you doing it?!”

“Kill him! Go kill him now!”

Seraphina let him pound her chest, like a statue devoid of pain, until his voice grew hoarse from crying.

“Sister Seraphina, that was our baby, the one we waited three whole years for.”

Three years?

My heart was heavily struck by that number.

That was the period when, to put her mind at ease, I voluntarily underwent “body conditioning” treatment, temporarily losing my fertility.

Seraphina knelt beside Julian’s bed, tightly holding his trembling hand, tenderly kissing his forehead.

“Julian, we’ll have a baby. We definitely will, again.”

The soft light fell upon them, a scene that mirrored exactly how she used to comfort me after Leo’s death, when I was tormented by nightmares night after night.

“Tomorrow is Leo’s memorial day. I'll take you to the eternal flame again to pray. It will definitely work.”

“Clatter—”

The jade amulet in my hand dropped to the floor.

Three years ago, Seraphina was cornered by Elias Sterling’s forces.

To save her…

I entrusted our newborn Leo, barely a month old, to his nanny, then led the bodyguards she’d left me, carving a path of blood for her.

She survived.

My Leo, however, died that very night.

Holding his cold, lifeless body.

I felt like my entire world had crumbled.

To soothe me, Seraphina didn’t hesitate to kneel through every church and monastery in the region's outskirts.

She eventually lit an eternal flame for Leo in this memorial hall.

She said that if the eternal flame burned for a thousand days and nights, our Leo could reincarnate and return to us.

But my destiny supposedly clashed with Leo’s, requiring me to take a fertility-suppressing medicine to accumulate spiritual blessings for him.

I didn’t believe in ghosts or gods, but I believed in her.

That bitter herbal concoction, I drank it for three years straight, ignoring every rumor and piece of gossip.

But it turned out, it was all a lie.

She just… didn’t want another child of mine.

The sharp sound startled the two inside.

The moment Seraphina turned her head, a fruit knife from the table grazed my cheek, embedding itself deeply into the door panel behind me.

She rushed towards me, grabbing my shoulders, her voice laced with an almost imperceptible tremble.

“Asher, are you alright? Are you hurt?”

I didn’t answer her.

I raised my hand, pulled out the knife, and plunged it back into her brow bone.

The tip of the knife was less than an inch from her eye.

There, a faint scar remained.

It was from when she was eighteen, fighting a wolfhound starved for three days in Elias Sterling’s underground fight club, all to get medicine for me.

She was almost blind in one eye then, but when she returned with the medicine, she smiled more brightly than anyone.

Because I was saved. I wouldn't die.

I was a sobbing mess then, lunging at Elias Sterling and biting him with all my might, only to be kicked away, sent sprawling across the floor.

Scarlet blood streamed down Seraphina’s brow bone, blurring the expression in her eyes.

Yet her hand instinctively remained at my back, protecting me from being scratched by a protruding nail on the door.

I couldn't stop my eyes from reddening, but the hand holding the knife was steady as a rock.

“Seraphina Thorne, you should know, Leo is my only bottom line.”

I could care less about anything else in this world, but that child…

The moment I chose to save Seraphina, I had already given him up.

What a well-behaved child he was, his small face pale with fear when I handed him over from my arms, yet he didn't cry a single sound.

Seraphina didn’t move, nor did she explain.

She let me use the knife’s tip to reopen the old scar on her brow bone, new injury covering the old, leaving no trace of how it once looked.

Julian, however, shrieked and rushed forward, violently shoving me aside, then picked up the fallen knife, aiming to stab me in the heart.

I kicked him away, picked up the jade amulet, and pressed my gun to his forehead.

The young man, who moments ago was as fierce as a cub, immediately shrieked and latched onto Seraphina’s waist.

“Sister Seraphina, save me! This lunatic is trying to kill me!”

Seraphina, who had been unresponsive, finally frowned, her face darkening as she looked at me.

“Asher Vance, I thought you had caused enough trouble.”

“You don't want a divorce, yet you expect me to watch you kill him. Seraphina Thorne, is your husband really that easy to bully?”

I smiled, cocking the gun with one hand.

“My wife, canoodling with another man in my son’s memorial hall. A single stab, and it’s over? That’s not how things work in this city.”

Before I could pull the trigger, the entire memorial hall was instantly surrounded by Seraphina’s men.

Dark muzzles of guns were aimed directly at me.

I remembered, the last time she’d assembled such a large force was three years ago, against her arch-nemesis, Elias Sterling.

Nearly a hundred men encircling us made my dozen bodyguards seem so outnumbered.

Seraphina casually wiped the blood from her face, her blood-stained hand pressing against the muzzle of my gun.

Her gaze fell on the jade amulet tightly clutched in my hand, her voice cold and hard as iron.

“If you don't like it, I won't let him come here again.”

“Asher Vance, know when to stop.”

I stared at her intently, then at the trembling young man behind her, and smiled as I pulled the trigger.

“Click.”

An empty click.

My gun was out of bullets.

Seraphina’s brow twitched. She seemed to sigh in relief, taking a step towards me.