CHAPTER 92: CHAPTER 92; SOMETHING WAS OFF

Reaching out, Shen Xiao gently adjusted the thin strap of her nightdress that had slipped from her shoulder to keep her warm but his fingers immediately paused.

There, just below the curve of her collarbone, was a scabbed-over cut, thin, deliberate, and already healing.

His brows furrowed.

Carefully, he pushed the silk fabric a little lower, revealing her shoulder and the upper edge of her arm and he could see more marks.

They were not fresh.

And not from today.

And not from the guards.

A quiet tension coiled in his chest as he slowly pulled the covers down further and unfastened the first few buttons of her nightdress. His hand stilled when he saw them.

There were dozens of faint cuts that were healing and leaving behind a light, thin scar.

His gaze narrowed further.

As he gently lowered the strap, more came into view, angry, narrow welts trailing along her upper arm and across her ribs. They were older, faded just enough to suggest they had been there for a week or so.

A chill ran down his spine.

He hadn’t touched her since she went to the hospital.

Hadn’t seen her bare skin in those following days.

He swallowed hard while his mind raced..

He never imagined...

A flicker of something sharp pierced his chest. His fingers hovered above one of the scars.

They weren’t accidental.

They weren’t from bumping into furniture or clawing herself in distress. They were too methodical and too cruel like she needed to feel the pain.

Had she done this to herself?

He recoiled from the thought. His eyes remained fixed on the lines marring her pale skin, each one a question mark he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

Why hadn’t he seen it?

Why hadn’t anyone told him?

His breath hitched. She had been walking around like this, quiet and obedient. Not a single complaint.

No wonder her hands trembled when he came near her. No wonder she could react like that whenever he touched her.

No wonder she flinched at his voice, even when he spoke gently.

He looked down at her now, her face peaceful in sleep, lips parted slightly, hair fanned out across the pillow.

And yet... her body bore signs of something brutal. Something he didn’t understand.

His hand clenched tightly into the sheets.

"What the hell happened to you, Yueyao? Who hurt you? Or was it yourself?"

He didn’t know what scared him more, what might have caused those wounds... or the fact that she never said a word.

Not to him.

Not to anyone.

— — — — —

The hallway leading to Shen Xiao’s study room was soundless, the marble tiles cool beneath Bai Zhi’s bare feet.

She moved quietly, her white silk robe trailing behind her like mist, as she passed by the guards, she offered them a polite, familiar nod.

They didn’t question her presence, after all, she often came to Shen Xiao’s study room. It had never raised suspicion before.

Once inside, she gently shut the door behind her with a muted click.

The room was exactly as she remembered, lined wall to wall with tall shelves holding meticulous rows of files and leather-bound books. The warm scent of polished mahogany lingered faintly in the air.

Her eyes landed on the large desk at the center of the study room.

Several folders were spread out across its surface, others were open, and others were closed. She stepped closer, fingers brushing over the topmost file before lifting it.

It was Yueyao’s medical record. It has all the details concerning her admission and health check-ups she had undergone over the past few years.

She flipped through the pages, charts, prescriptions, and handwritten notes left by the doctors. Nothing looked out of place or gave a serious condition, or suggested she had a serious condition. No hidden clues or anything to look at other than someone’s normal routine check-up.

She didn’t know why he was looking into that! Psychologically, you can’t determine a crazy person through their medical reports, maybe depression had caused it. She didn’t think he was doubting something.

She closed the file and returned it back to the desk and then her gaze moved to the laptop, left idly open but asleep.

She bent over and tapped the trackpad a few times, and the screen flickered to life. Without hesitation, she typed in the password that she had known for so many years as it had never changed. Of course, she did know because it was the first day they had begun dating.

The desktop appeared, several folders open in the background.

She clicked through a few of them...

And they were just corrupted files. Couldn’t open up or give any details

Her brows knit together.

Corrupted?

She opened more folders, some hastily renamed with random strings of characters, dates, partial initials, even fragmented code that didn’t seem to follow any logic.

There was nothing concrete and nothing revealing about them..

But her gut twisted with unease.

She wondered why these files were corrupted and which files they were.

Shen Xiao was precise, obsessively meticulous. He didn’t leave things undone, let alone corrupted information, what was he checking?

Why would his system be filled with incomplete logs, documents that ended mid-sentence, and data trails that led nowhere?

Something was off.

Something wasn’t aligning.

And then a deeper uneasiness settled in her chest.

She had orchestrated the entire kidnapping scene and she hadn’t expected she would be back alive. She was careful, always moving through proxies. The men she hired were ghosts, untraceable. But lately...

She hadn’t been able to contact them.

The calls went unanswered, and the numbers seemed to have been disconnected. It was as if they had vanished completely from the face of Earth.

But it couldn’t have been Shen Xiao’s work.

Could it? No! He could have questioned her, was someone assisting her behind the scenes to clean all the trails?

She turned sharply toward the phone lying on the desk.

Grabbing it quickly, she unlocked it, it....