My Wicked Uncle - Chapter 3

Gu Qingyuan’s sprawling one-level apartment was absurdly huge. I rarely visited, and whenever I did, I had to complain.

“Your home is this big, yet you keep squeezing into ours.”

He ignored the accusation and tried to make me stay. He buzzed around like a busy bee, finding fresh clothes and a clean towel for me, changing the sheets, adjusting the humidifier, lighting a diffuser. Sleeping here apparently required ten times as many steps as sleeping at home.

Even after I had tucked myself beneath the covers, he was still planning cheerfully.

“Hey, want a bath? I’ll have someone scrub the tub tomorrow. What do you want for breakfast?”

I could not understand how he had endured years of being cold-shouldered at our home without getting tired of it.

“Isn’t this a hassle?”

He leaned against the doorframe and smiled. “No. The place finally feels lived in. It’s usually too quiet.”

Moonlight caught the side of his face. Behind him, the vast living room stood empty. I stared at his face, thoughts hopelessly tangled. For one brief moment, I had the strange impression that Gu Qingyuan might not be so hateful after all.

He turned to leave. Before I knew it, I had called him back.

He looked at me with such focus, so visibly hoping I would say something more, that I pressed my lips together and thought.

“We’re good now.”

He froze, then broke into a smile. When he bent over my bed, his scent made my thighs tense without conscious thought. One fingertip brushed the tip of my nose.

“Good night, brat.”

Mom was always telling me my uncle was a lonely, pitiful man and that I should stop treating him with such hostility. At last, I thought I understood a little.

The moment my opinion of Gu Qingyuan improved, however, he staged another grand confession to my mother.

There was no end to gossip in an old apartment complex. Downstairs, the elderly residents clicked their tongues.

“Calls himself her brother, yet he’s sending roses.”

“He was always visiting even when Lin Caiwei’s husband was alive. Bet they were already fooling around.”

“Disgraceful.”

My temper flared. Leaning over the second-floor railing, I called down, “People who spread gossip die young. Didn’t you know?”

Their faces changed. “Is that any way to speak to your elders?”

“I speak the way you do.”

When I returned home, the roses had not been cleared away. Mom sat at the table, eyes red as she wiped my father’s framed photograph.

My heart clenched. My mother was so strong, yet even she could cry from humiliation.

“If your dad were still here,” she whispered, “maybe people wouldn’t say such awful things.”

The fault was not that Dad was gone. The fault was Gu Qingyuan, that fucking idiot.

Furious, I stormed to his apartment. He arrived drunk, supported intimately by a beautiful woman. My clenched fists shook.

I pulled him away from her, dragged him inside, and threw him onto the bed. He looked miserable, his whole body flushed and feverishly hot. I seized his tie, tempted to strangle him with it.

“Gu Qingyuan, this is my final warning. If you fucking dare—”

His lips smothered the rest.

“Hurry,” he mumbled, unfocused. “Let me do it…”

I froze. My blazing rage plunged into ice.

“Do what?” My jaw locked; my voice came out low and tight.

He pawed clumsily at my clothes. “Give it to me…”

“What the fuck are you trying to do?”

I slapped him hard enough to stop his hands. Gripping his throat, I cursed him to his face.

“You pretend to be devoted while making a wreck of my mother’s life, and then you want to sleep with someone else. You think you deserve every good thing in the world?”

“You animal. What right do you have to pursue my mother?”

The slap sobered me almost as much as it did him. I was ten years younger, and I had hit him far too hard. Gu Qingyuan went still, a little clarity returning to his unfocused eyes.

For the first time, the man who was always smiling became angry. His chest heaved beneath my palm, heat burning through his shirt.

“No right? Have I treated you badly? Have I treated your mother badly?”

“Neither of us needs kindness from a filthy bastard like you. Understand?”

His eyes burned red. The hand gripping my arm stood out with veins.

I had finally pushed the eternally smiling Gu Qingyuan too far.

“Filthy? Am I in bed with anyone right now? No.”

“I’m going to keep pursuing her.”

“Ungrateful little beast. I’ve wasted all these years being good to you.”

“Wait until I become your father—then we’ll see who gets to shout at whom.”