Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu-Chapter 1200: The crack

Zhong Sihan glared at Han Tian. "Why is your granddaughter speaking so much nonsense today!"

"The truth is nonsense to you?" Han Tian raised a brow. "Sihan, understand this. I also don’t know what really transpired between you and Yuhang, but probably it’s half-truth and half-lies, but whatever it is, you cannot continue being an ass anymore. And when I say ass, the kind of ass who is unnecessarily making things difficult."

"It’s none of your business."

"It has become everyone’s business now. Certainly your nephew’s."

He looked at Zhong Anrui, hands behind his back. "I suggest you come clean, Mrs. Zhong. There is simply too much unnecessary hatred going on for years now. Just let it all come to a close now."

Zhong Heng faced her. "Mom, you don’t have to feel pressured or threatened! I will deal with whatever evidence they have. They are all speaking nonsense!"

Zhong Anrui clenched her fists hard. She threw a bleak stare at Shui and then toward Zhong Sihan. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"I’m sorry, Heng. I didn’t have a choice."

His eyes widened.

"Zhong Sihan was messing up with our lives. Clearly, he had no intention of letting you get involved in the business and it would be like...Yuhang all over again," she trembled, her eyes tearing up. "I just couldn’t help it. There was no letter. I just wanted Zhong Sihan gone...Because I am a weak and pathetic woman."

"Mom, what are you talking about? Why are you humiliating yourself like this?"

Zhong Sihan said, "Of course the wife of a weak and pathetic man would be a weak and pathetic woman herself. There is no rocket science there. So spare us all the trouble and end this shit show. I am already pissed off."

Zhong Anrui stared at him. "...This is exactly why I wanted you gone."

Shui and Lin blinked, confused.

"Even after all these years, you are trying to save my reputation here. I sent you to prison, yet you are being so noble."

"Noble? And me? Are you high?" he grimaced.

Zhong Anrui said nothing for a long time. She held a faraway gaze as if formulating the years worth of unsaid thoughts and emotions into words. She then slowly faced her son with tired eyes.

"Yuhang was a good man, Heng. A little naive in some aspects, but he was a good man nevertheless. But he slowly changed the more he began to get influenced because of the wrong people. Naturally, the two brothers clashed and it all started to go downhill. Yuhang...stopped being Yuhang. There was this craze in his mind to outlast Sihan, become better than him and prove to him that he wasn’t any less. I didn’t want that. I really didn’t want that. He was fine the way he was, but business changed him."

Her lips parted with a tremble. "And so did...my feelings for him. I tried to be a supportive wife, but our relationship just wasn’t going anywhere. He only focused on what he lacked. He never listened to me no matter how many times I said that there was nothing wrong with him. He wasn’t a bad businessman. I would also blame Sihan here for showing a lack of patience and compassion here. He is partly responsible for him losing his way if he didn’t make things always so..competitive."

Zhong Sihan stayed quiet.

She exhaled a breath. "At some point, I began to feel that we were drifting apart. I hated seeing a weak Yuhang, a desperate Yuhang always looking for validation. It made me look weak and desperate too. So...when I saw his brother, a complete opposite of him, who didn’t give a hell’s worth of damn how anybody thought about him, a confident man who ruled everything with an iron fist, I..."

Her shoulders quivered as she hesitated to say the words that would ruin everything for her family.

"I couldn’t help but...get drawn to him."

The entire Zhong family watched her falling tears, stunned.

Drawn to Zhong Sihan - That meant only one thing and only one kind of emotion, which they couldn’t wrap their heads around.

"It didn’t mean that I stopped loving Yuhang. It’s just..." Tears plopped down her cheeks and soon, a wry smile formed on her lips. "I’m sorry. I don’t think there is any other way to describe it. I was a married woman and I was starting to..feel something for my brother-in-law."

Zhong Heng felt blank. He stood absolutely still.

By then, Zhong Anrui’s own expression had withered out. "I know it was wrong and I am not trying to say otherwise. I felt what I felt a-and...what I did, what I did."

"...Did?" Her son had his heart in his throat. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to handle the entire truth.

"I seduced her and she fell for it," Zhong Sihan said expressionlessly.

Everybody’s attention suddenly snapped toward him.

"She had become so weak and vulnerable, I almost felt pitiful for her. But nothing happened between us. We never slept together."

Zhong Heng lunged at him with a force of all his pent-up anger, but Zhong Anrui pulled him back, panicked. If not for her, a punch would have landed on his face but not that Lin would have allowed it to happen.

"Heng, come back!"

She forced some distance between them and glared at Zhong Sihan. "You have already taken one blame and spent ten years in prison. I don’t want you to play the good Samaritan anymore."

His gaze darkened. "Fine then! Go jump down the cliff all you want. What’s it to me?"

She ignored his harsh voice and looked at her son, trembling a little. "It wasn’t him, but me. I...had made a move on him one day."

A long, bleak silence stretched.

"What Sihan said was true. Nothing of that sort happened between us. I wasn’t thinking about that either. It just happened and he had rejected my advances himself. I am glad that he did because it was then I realized what kind of a loathsome woman I had become. I was betraying my husband and this is not what he deserved..." her voice quivered.

"But those tiny sprouts of my feelings couldn’t stay hidden in the dark for long because Yuhang learned it one day. I still don’t know how but I think..he felt it. He felt something had changed. He had asked me, ’Do you love me, Anrui?’"

Her wet eyelashes trembled. "I said yes. And the next day, he killed himself."

After another long moment of silence, she said, "I didn’t understand for a long time then. But overtime I realized it. My ’yes’ wasn’t an instantaneous answer to his question. I had paused. I had stopped to think, just for a second. I didn’t want to lie, but I couldn’t tell the truth. Yuhang...read that crack in my answer. And then he knew for sure."