Volume One, Chapter 2: My Ex-Girlfriend Got Herself Locked Up for Committing a Crime
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After Attorney Bai hung up on her, she had barely returned to the apartment she was temporarily renting when her phone began ringing from inside her bag.
She answered hurriedly. A familiar, low male voice came through the receiver, as cool and composed as she remembered.
“Miss Yu, this is Zhou Jincheng. I’ll still be handling your case from here on.”
Yu Jin bit her lower lip. She had already paid a retainer to Jingheng Law Firm and had no money left to hire another lawyer.
“All right. Thank you, Attorney Zhou.” Her voice was faint and sounded utterly exhausted.
Perhaps because she knew Zhou Jincheng too well, she felt that he had already begun to suspect something.
His narrow eyes, so skilled at seeing through people, appeared before her—the bewitching allure of almond-shaped eyes mingled with the cool reserve of phoenix eyes, framed beneath rimless glasses. The image would not leave her.
The moment she finished speaking, she hung up. She could sense that the man on the other end still had something to say.
The bathroom was immediately to the right of the entrance. The room was tiny, barely twenty square meters, with a construction site below where dust billowed through the air.
This was already the best place she had been able to rent.
She splashed water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror. Her features were more sharply defined and exquisite than ever, her long lashes curling naturally, while her face was a bloodless, ghastly white tinged with the dull yellow of malnutrition.
Her fair skin had been natural, and her features were beautiful. Even when she had once weighed more than one hundred and sixty pounds, she could hardly have been called ugly.
Yu Jin walked to the table in the living room and took an iPhone from a box of odds and ends. It was an old model with a cartoon case, and one corner of the tempered-glass screen protector was chipped.
After hesitating for a long while, she finally connected it to a charger. The screen lit up, and the only notification that appeared was from her QQ Mail account.
During her five years in prison, not a single living person had sent her a message. Everyone had avoided her as though she carried a plague.
She felt nothing at all—not sadness, nor anything that could be called sorrow. She casually opened the mailbox. Dozens of unread messages appeared, all advertisements and subscription-renewal reminders.
Just as she was about to turn off the phone, a new email caught her eye.
“Invitation to Jiangjiang University’s Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Celebration.”
Yu Jin’s fingers tightened around the phone. The words “Jiangjiang University” pierced her eyes like a knife.
Her father had once been a member of Jiangjiang University’s board of trustees. On the very day she was taken away by the police, he had leapt from the rooftop of the school’s twenty-seventh-floor administration building and died on the spot.
She was no longer Chu Nanqing. Chu Nanqing had died in a women’s prison.
She was Yu Jin, and this anniversary celebration had nothing to do with her.
Her thin, bony fingers slid lightly across the screen, clearing the inbox.
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At that moment, Zhou Jincheng was sitting at his desk when he received a call—one second after Yu Jin had hung up on him.
“You absolutely have to come to the anniversary celebration the day after tomorrow. The university wants you to give a speech as a distinguished alumnus. Consider it doing me a favor.”
The caller was Zhou Jincheng’s university roommate. The two men had always been close.
“I don’t have time. Find someone else.”
Zhou Jincheng’s voice was as cool and stern as ever. A white Bluetooth earpiece rested in his right ear, and from the inside out he radiated the powerful air of an elite from the upper echelons of society.
He was cold-blooded, unsentimental, meticulous, and emotionally steady—born to be a lawyer.
Those had been Chu Nanqing’s father’s exact words. It was also her father who had recommended him for an internship at a prestigious law firm. At the time, Zhou Jincheng had been only eighteen, having just been admitted to Jiangshan University.
That internship opportunity had changed his entire life.
“Don’t be like that. I sent an email to everyone, and the schedule already says you’ll be giving the speech. It’s Sunday, so just treat it as taking a day off.”
Zhou Jincheng had never taken vacations. From seven in the morning until ten at night, he worked without pause. This routine had long since become a way of life, and everyone around him knew it.
“Everyone?”
His hand paused over the keyboard. His long, sharply jointed fingers tapped lightly against the keys, while a dark, silent current stirred in his eyes, as though he were considering something.
“Yes. The university changed its software. Now it can send everything with one click—it’s much more convenient.”
“Hello? Are you still there? Can you hear me?”
Zhou Jincheng sat with his back perfectly straight. With one hand, he opened the drawer beside his desk and took out a man’s gold ring, its entire circumference set with tiny diamonds.
He closed his eyes, crossed his long legs, and leaned naturally against the back of his chair, his fingers repeatedly rubbing the gold ring.
When he opened his eyes again, their dark, narrow depths seemed even colder. Beneath the lamplight, his deep-set, sharply sculpted features were flawless.
“I’ll be there on time.”
If the woman who had come to the firm today was Chu Nanqing, then she would certainly be there as well.
The day of the anniversary celebration.
Luxury cars filled the area outside Jiangjiang University. Most of those attending had made a name for themselves in their respective fields.
It was an outdoor celebration, with vivid green lawns beneath a clear blue sky and colorful scraps of paper scattered across the ground after all the fireworks had been set off.
“Thank you to all our distinguished alumni for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend. We now come to the final segment of today’s celebration. Please welcome our renowned alumnus and outstanding graduate, a distinguished graduate of Harvard Law School and the founder of Jingheng Law Firm, Attorney Zhou Jincheng, to the stage. Let us give him a warm round of applause.”
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After the host finished speaking, Zhou Jincheng remained seated below the stage, showing no sign of getting up.
He wore a deep-black suit, with jeweled cuff links as its only touch of brightness. His trousers fell in clean, weighty lines, their fabric fitted yet crisp.
Broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, standing six feet three inches tall with striking proportions, he was almost sunk into the single armchair.
His long legs were crossed, one hand resting on the armrest. Beneath his rimless glasses, his eyes were cool and indifferent.
“It’s your turn.” Seeing that his mind was elsewhere, the friend beside him nudged his arm with an elbow.
Zhou Jincheng withdrew his gaze from a man and woman in the distance. He rose from his seat and strode toward the stage, one long step after another.
Not far from the seating area, Yu Jin held a microphone while the photographer accompanying her on assignment stood in front of her with a camera balanced on his shoulder.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Zhou Jincheng’s back as he stepped onto the stage. He had always stood out brilliantly in any crowd—tall and powerful, his muscles stretching beneath the immaculate dark suit.
“The face of a statesman, the physique of a warrior.” Back then, that line on the university forum had referred exclusively to Zhou Jincheng, the law department’s most handsome student.
The cool, handsome young man in her memory merged perfectly with the mature man now delivering his speech. He had barely changed—not even the few loose strands of hair falling over his forehead.
He seemed to glance at her. She hurriedly looked away. When she lowered her head, the bangs tucked behind her ear slipped loose and fell across the side of her face.
“Sis Yu, that take wasn’t quite right. Let’s do it again.”
“All right.”
After the celebration ended, groups of men and women in suits gathered together, wine glasses swaying in their hands. At times they leaned close to whisper; at others they covered their mouths and snickered.
With the photographer following behind her, Yu Jin moved through the crowd, microphone in hand, smiling as she interviewed them.
Zhou Jincheng stood with several others.
“Do you still remember Chu Nanqing? The female student who was arrested for embezzling disaster-relief supplies? I heard she’s getting out of prison soon.”
“What female student? How could people like us be classmates with someone as utterly conscience-less as her? So many people died in that fire. Isn’t she afraid vengeful ghosts will haunt her when she gets out? Ha-ha-ha.”
The woman gave a scornful laugh. Beneath her heavy eye makeup, her face was filled with disgust and contempt.
“I heard that this Chu Nanqing was Attorney Zhou’s ex-girlfriend. Attorney Zhou, you couldn’t really have dated a female criminal, could you?”
The man’s tone was mocking. He took a sip of champagne, clearly delighted to watch the spectacle unfold.
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