Chapter 4

I was thirty-five now.

At twenty, I met Maeve.

Back then, she was just a poor college girl from a remote mountain village. When I first saw her, her face was covered in scratches and bruises, but she stood her ground against her leech-like parents, shouting at them for their favoritism toward sons over daughters.

When they demanded she drop out of school and go home to get married, she fought back with everything she had.

But no matter how hard she argued, her rotten relatives still tried to forcibly drag her away. Some of them let their hands wander over her slim, curvy figure, making crude jokes as they did.

Maeve looked around at the onlookers with desperate eyes. Some of them showed signs of pity, but seeing how vicious her parents were, they all kept their distance.

I saw the fire still burning in her desperate gaze, and I couldn't bear to let such a strong-willed girl become a victim of ignorance.

So I stepped in and rescued her.

I gave her parents ten thousand dollars and told them to go back to their hometown and never come back.

Before they left, Maeve tugged at my sleeve and said softly, "I'll pay you back."

Looking at the wounds on her face, my cold, hardened heart gave a faint stir.

My parents had passed away when I was very young, and my relatives had all been after the fortune they'd left behind. Ever since I was a child, I'd been deceived and kidnapped more times than I could count.

After my old butler gave his life protecting me, I realized that no one in this world would ever be unconditionally good to me again. The only person I could trust was myself.

So I sealed my heart away.

I'd done plenty of good deeds over the years. Every time, after taking my money, people would say thank you—and that was it.

But Maeve was different. She solemnly wrote me an IOU and told me she would pay it back.

I thought it was just empty words.

Then I received a transfer from her—a few hundred dollars. I couldn't help myself—I went to see where she was working.

Maeve worked at a bar. She wore an ill-fitting uniform and cheap, clumsy makeup, carefully weaving through the crowd. When she spotted me, her tired eyes instantly lit up.

She pulled a few crumpled hundred-dollar bills from her pocket and stuffed them into mine.

Smiling, she said, "Those are tips from today's customers. I was just about to deposit them and send them to you!"

I held those wrinkled bills in my hand and looked at the sparkle in her eyes.

I asked her, "What if you had been kidnapped by those guys that day?"

Her expression dimmed for a moment, but she still smiled and said, "I would have kept trying to escape. If I couldn't get out today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after. One day, I would have escaped that hell."

I asked again, "What if you never got out?"

She was silent for a long time. Then she answered, "Then I would have taken them all down with me."

I was deeply drawn to this stubborn, unyielding girl. She was like a wild weed, thriving defiantly in barren soil.

Later, Maeve and I got together.

When she learned about my past, she held my hand with great tenderness and said, "You have a family now."

On the tenth anniversary of our being together—the year I turned thirty—Maeve paid me back the last of the money. Then she got down on one knee and proposed to me.

I laughed and asked her, "I'm already thirty. I'm getting old. You still want to marry me?"

Maeve threw her arms around me tightly and said, "I don't care. Even if you were seventy or eighty, I'd still want you!"