My Wicked Uncle - Chapter 1

My mother refused the brooch Gu Qingyuan bought her, so he tossed it to me instead.

“An advance payment from your future dad,” he said. “It was expensive, you know.”

I wanted neither his gifts nor his goodwill. I gave his shin a light kick. “My dad’s dead. If you want to die too, then maybe I’ll acknowledge you as my father.”

He did not get angry. Laughing, he hooked an arm around my neck, and Gu Qingyuan’s grown-man cologne drifted beneath my nose. He had just turned thirty, but there was nothing remotely dignified about him.

He blew lightly against my ear. “Rude little mutt.”

“Even if I’m not your dad, I’m still your uncle. Is that any way to speak to an elder?”

That was precisely what made him so disgusting: he was my uncle.

Gu Qingyuan’s parents had died when he was young. Our families had been close, so my grandparents took him in. My mother was eleven years older than him, and he grew up calling her Sis.

They were raised together. Later, my mother and father fell in love. By the time I was old enough to run around, a teenage Gu Qingyuan had already started pursuing her.

Trying to wreck my parents’ marriage was bad enough. The moment my father died, Gu Qingyuan became even more brazen, strolling into our home as though he belonged there. He had been clinging to us for years.

“A toad lusting after swan meat,” I called him.

Smiling, he slipped one knuckle between my lips and pressed it against my sharp canine. When he pulled his finger out, a tooth mark dented the pad. He waved it in front of me.

“Little toad.”

Childish. Childish to the point of idiocy.

Our apartment had only two bedrooms, and Mom came home late. Gu Qingyuan insisted on waiting so he could make her a midnight snack. Once the food was ready, he rambled on until he could claim it was too late and he was too tired to leave.

Then he came to squeeze into my bed again.

He had commandeered it so often over the years that several sets of his pajamas lived in my closet. He was a restless sleeper, forever rolling over or throwing a leg across my stomach.

One night, I surfaced groggily from sleep feeling as if an octopus had wrapped itself around me. Warm breath tickled my neck. I was about to shove him off when he mumbled, half asleep, “Sis Weiwei…”

That was my mother’s name.

Something hard pressed against my thigh. I snapped fully awake, disgust curdling in my stomach—but before I could react, he leaned closer and his lips landed on mine.

Blood shot straight to my head. Trembling with fury, I kicked him out of bed.

He hit the floor with a thud and let out a low, breathy grunt. Still not angry, he sat there looking bewildered. “What’s wrong? Nightmare?”

“Yeah,” I said through clenched teeth. “Dreamed a dog bit me.”

Shameless as ever, he tried to climb back into bed, still barely awake. He reached for me. “Rub your ears—there, there. Bad dreams, fly away.”

I slapped his hand aside. “Don’t touch me. Get out!”

His hand froze in midair. After several seconds, he slowly withdrew the knee he had planted on the mattress. He seemed a little upset now.

He stripped off his pajama top and flung it straight into my face in retaliation.

“Tiny brat, huge temper,” he murmured.

By the time the shirt slid from my face, he was gone. I sucked in a furious breath and caught his obnoxiously strong cologne still clinging to the fabric.

I punched the pajamas twice to vent my anger.

Fuck. That perfumed asshole.