Jia Li struggled harder to open her eyes and finally the world righted itself. "What…what is…what is wrong with Tang? Who did…what the h.e.l.l did you do to him?" she stuttered, realised, then stuttered some more.
Tang sat, right in front of her, his arms tied painfully together with tape. His feet were bound tightly to one of the dining table chairs which had been pulled here and the mouth was shut too. Bewildered, she looked from Fu to Tang and back. She couldn"t comprehend the situation fully.
"Before you repeat your inane questions, let me help you get comfortable," he said congenially.
It was then that she realised that her hands and feet had been tied up as well. And that she was leaning sideways on the sofa, looking at the surreal tableau.
"You spiked the tea," she accused him, finally realising the slowness of her reaction and the cause of it.
"Ah, now we can talk. I was getting bored here, speaking all by myself. Before you accuse me of being unfair, let me clarify my stance. I helped your dear Xie Tang sit up nicely, like I am aiding you now. I even offered him water to remove the parched feeling from the throat. But what did he do? Tsk Tsk…he tried to head b.u.t.t me and bite me. Not a nice thing to do to someone who is only being kind, right?" he said in a forlorn tone.
Jia Li couldn"t believe her eyes. It was as if she was looking at a completely new person. Same features but different expression…his body language was that of an alert serpent. She looked at Tang"s swelled up eye and bloodied nose. Fu must have punched him in retaliation. But the thing she failed to understand was WHY, why was he doing this?
"Haha…you are so transparent, you know that? I sometimes wished that you weren"t so because it meant that I could read each and every nuance on your face. It didn"t allow me to even fantasize that you were in love with me, ever. Do you know how much that hurt? Your rejection, your indifference, your lies!" he suddenly screamed at her.
Jia Li flinched. But then she locked her gaze with Tang, whose eyes were glacially calm. She drew strength from there and tried to think of ways to extract them out of this situation. Their biggest hope was Wei, who was yet to arrive but was probably a couple of hours away. She didn"t know what had Fu planned for her and Tang but she needed to delay him. Aggravating him was not a great option, so she thought of appealing to his kinder side.
"I may not have loved you but I never cheated or lied in our relation," she began softly.
"And that is the biggest lie ever spoken by you. Maybe you have conditioned your brain to tell you that it is the truth," he accused her.
In the next second, his tone changed and he said languidly, "I don"t think you ever discovered the secret cam in our bathroom, did you?"
At her shocked, disbelieving look, he continued with a smile, "how else do you think I survived those lonely years? And of course, you can guess that it wasn"t the only cam in the house. In fact, you should thank me for making you so popular. You wouldn"t know this but you became the role model for all those women who came in my life after you. I made sure to replay those scenes enough number of times for the women who wanted to get close to me. This is how much I loved you."
Something akin to paralytic horror entered her veins. She couldn"t breathe, couldn"t a.s.similate, couldn"t begin to visualise his words…dare not visualise his words.
"Why…why would you do that?" she asked brokenly.
"So what did you want me to do? Wait till eternity while you carried someone else in your heart? I wasn"t good enough to share your bed or hang around with your friends. All I was to you was – responsibility. You were this statue of martyrdom who needed to tolerate me in your life. Did you think I was blind? Or did you think this was what I wanted from you?" he snarled.
"But you knew…you knew all that there was to know about me. I hadn"t hidden my feelings about Tang from you ever. Then why did you go ahead and marry me?" she shot back.
Fu looked at Tang, who was staring at him with a murderous glint in his eyes now.
He shrugged his shoulders and said, "well, you see that"s where I went wrong, for probably the first time in my life. I overestimated my ability to sway you and underestimated your love for this a******"