(Note from Yaya: Transitional chapter—here’s more about Cecilia’s background~)

Clang—

The iron door swung open. Charles Chase leaned back against a rusted chair, his refined, aristocratic air standing out starkly against the bare, utilitarian prison walls.

His handsome face was calm and indifferent. At the sound of the door, his cool eyes lifted to watch as Ye Jing emerged from inside.

The sight of the woman made him frown involuntarily. In all honesty, Ye Jing no longer looked normal—not ugly, exactly, but her face was all hollowed in, abnormally thin and sickly pale.

Someone behind her reminded them that they only had twenty minutes, then went to wait at the wall.

With a passive, almost servile expression, Ye Jing sat down on the chair and sneaked a glance at Charles Chase, uncertain why such a strikingly good-looking man would want to see her.

She’d been here for nearly twenty years. In only a month, she’d be released—though fate, as always, liked to twist the knife. Maybe even one more month was too much to hope for.

With thin, trembling hands, she picked up the phone and peered through the glass at the man on the other side.

Charles Chase got straight to the point. "You had a daughter with Gao Kangshi, didn’t you?"

...

Ye Jing’s eyes went wide with shock as she stared at Charles Chase, her lips trembling. Her voice came out dry and hoarse: "Who… who are you? How do you know?"

"Someone called the Chase family asking for Gao Kangshi’s daughter. Gao Kangshi is my biological father," Charles Chase recited in a matter-of-fact tone. Thanks to his mother, he held no hatred for Gao Kangshi; after all, he was simply a worthless man—not worth the effort of despising.

"Gao Kangshi… Chen family? Are you his son from the Chase family in Beijing?"

Charles Chase nodded.

Ye Jing was momentarily stunned. Sick and fearing she might not make it out, she’d recently called the only neighbor she still remembered. If they could help her find her daughter, she just wanted one glimpse—to know she was safe and happy.

"He’s a bastard," Ye Jing’s mild features twisted with a faint flash of hatred.

"My daughter, my daughter… I left her at the gate of Sunshine Orphanage when she was only two. She was adorable—fair and soft. I watched as a woman carried her inside."

Thinking of her little girl, the hate in Ye Jing’s eyes melted away into a gentle, wistful smile.

She spoke clearly, steadily. Charles Chase had looked into her background: once a teacher in her hometown, she and Gao Kangshi had fallen in love. Later, Gao Kangshi moved to Beijing to try his luck, joined the Chase family… and promptly abandoned her.

Much later, after Gao Kangshi was kicked out of the Chase family, he returned to Shaoyang Town and found Ye Jing still unmarried. He spent all her savings, drank, gambled, leeched off her, and abused her both physically and verbally.

Ye Jing ended up here because, after she had a daughter, Gao Kangshi tried to use the child to get money. Ye Jing couldn’t bear it, so one night while he slept, she killed him.

She fled to Beijing, hid out for a few days, left her daughter at the orphanage door, and then turned herself in.

"Do you want to find her?"

Ye Jing nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I do. I just want to know if she’s happy, if she ever found a good family. I left her at that orphanage door with a heavy heart."

Choking up, she wiped her eyes with her sleeve and continued, "But I couldn’t let my little one live on the run with me. I couldn’t give her a decent life. All I wanted was for her to find a good family, someone who’d love her, feed her, keep her warm…"

Charles Chase frowned. "I can help you find her. If you’d like, I can even take care of her. After all, she’d technically be my sister."

Ye Jing stared at him in disbelief. "But… but she’s Gao Kangshi’s daughter."

Of course she’d heard about the dirty, unforgivable things Gao Kangshi had done while in the Chase family. But this young man in front of her seemed cultured and capable.

"I know. My mother doesn’t care. She told me that you and she both just had the misfortune to meet a rotten man. You didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did your daughter. The only one to blame is him."

Ye Jing could only cry, unable to say a word. It wasn’t as if this man had any reason to lie to her after all these years; she had nothing worth deceiving him for.

"Thank you. Thank you."

"But you’ll need to give me more details. I’ll be able to track her down more easily that way," Charles Chase prompted, frowning. He wasn’t used to situations like this. If anything, Ye Jing seemed far more pitiable—the way a mother’s love could make her stand up for her child, even when she’d endured so much herself.

Maybe a little foolish, but deeply moving all the same.

Suppressing her emotions, Ye Jing swallowed, then explained as clearly as she could:

"That day I wrapped my daughter in a little flower-print blanket. I gave her just a bit of sleeping medicine, so she was peacefully asleep. I hid behind a tree and watched as, around nine in the morning, someone carried her inside."

The memory seemed to take the wind out of her, and Ye Jing caught her breath, exhausted.

"I slipped a note into her little blanket," she added softly. "It was the name I’d chosen for her."

‘Through the long night, the bells and drums sound at dawn; across the brightening sky, a new day will come.’

"She took my last name. I called her Cecilia Ye (迟迟)."

(Ah, don’t worry, this is a bonus chapter! The regular update will still be posted tomorrow, haha!)