Chapter 19: Paper in Her Stomach

The person Qin Mo was talking about was none other than Xia Mingyue.

"What gives you the right to butt into my business with my wife?" Li Jingshen snapped.

"Wife?" Qin Mo couldn't help but burst into laughter, his anger mixing with amusement. "Man, if we weren't in a hospital, I'd pin you to the ground and give you the beating you deserve!"

Li Jingshen, you gotta ask yourself, did you ever really treat Zhichu like your wife? Where the hell were you when she was bleeding internally? And when she was all alone in the hospital, where were you then?"

Qin Mo jabbed a finger at Li Jingshen's chest, listing his wrongdoings one by one. "You were out wining and dining with your mistress, scheming against the Shen family, and getting Zhichu's dad thrown in jail!"

As he spoke, Qin Mo's eyes welled up with tears. He despised Li Jingshen, but he also hated himself. If only he'd been there for Zhichu, maybe her stomach issues wouldn't have turned into cancer.

Qin Mo's breath was shaky, and he couldn't hold back the lump in his throat any longer.

"I regret not stopping her from marrying you. If she hadn't, she wouldn't be in this mess," he choked out.

Qin Mo thought of Zhichu in the ICU, her stomach ravaged by cancer, and remembered how happy she was four years ago when she excitedly told him she was getting married.

She never could have imagined it would end like this.

Qin Mo shook his head. "Li Jingshen, you're nothing but a monster!"

Li Jingshen stood there, silent. He wanted to retort, but the words wouldn't come. It felt like a punch to the gut, and he was winded.

He looked past Qin Mo, his gaze fixed on the operating room door behind him. He needed to see Zhichu.

He'd never yearned to see someone so much in his life.

"Li Jingshen, do you love Shen Zhichu?" Qin Mo asked.

Love? That word felt heavy. If he loved her, he should have cherished her, not locked her in a room for days without food, not left her to face the media alone, not made her kneel in the rain to wash away her pride.

The word "love" was a joke. He shouldn't love Shen Zhichu. What was she to him? Just a possession, something he used.

Qin Mo scoffed, tears in his eyes. He had promised Zhichu he'd keep her condition a secret, but Li Jingshen needed to see the truth.

"Follow me. I need to show you something," Qin Mo said as he turned and entered the operating room.

Li Jingshen hesitated for a moment before following. Inside, nurses were cleaning and disinfecting.

The moment he entered, the strong smell of disinfectant mixed with the metallic scent of blood hit him.

He didn't know where to look, feeling like an intruder in a space that wasn't his, completely out of place.

Li Jingshen was usually cool as a cucumber, but this was the first time in 26 years he felt genuine fear of the unknown.

Qin Mo scanned the room and finally found a plastic basin on a shelf that hadn't been cleaned yet. Inside were the remnants washed out from Zhichu's stomach – blood-red paper pulp.

He held it up to Li Jingshen's face, forcing him to look. "This was washed out of Zhichu's stomach. It's what she's been eating recently. Know what this is? Toilet paper! Undigested toilet paper!"