As he spoke, Xiao Cheng’s pained face curved into a smile.
But with every word he uttered, blood trickled from the corner of his lips, chilling Meng Jingwei to the bone.
“Shut up, don’t speak, please stop talking!”
Guilt, remorse, self-blame, surprise – a myriad of emotions overwhelmed her, pushing Meng Jingwei to the brink of collapse.
She snapped, then continued to open another bullet casing, utterly unaware that her voice trembled, that she was teetering on the edge of a breakdown.
Meng Jingwei’s left arm was injured. As she gripped the bullet with force, more blood flowed from her wound.
But Meng Jingwei couldn’t care less. She simply didn’t want Xiao Cheng to die.
Even more, she didn’t want to see him die because of her.
“No, I want to say…”
Xiao Cheng’s handsome face, touched by the frailty of his injuries, softened the sharpness of the scar on his cheek, lending him an air of tender strength. He struggled to lift his left hand, wanting to affectionately caress Meng Jingwei’s face. But due to his severe injuries, he couldn’t raise it, unable to reach her.
Finally, his hand fell limply to the ground.
He chuckled, his lips appearing even paler. “I wanted to touch your face…”
That single gesture struck deep into the softest part of Meng Jingwei’s heart. Tears welled up uncontrollably, blurring her vision.
“I told you to stop moving, to stop! Can’t you hear me!”
She yelled, hysterically, her voice trembling uncontrollably.
At that moment, footsteps approached from behind.
Meng Jingwei clearly heard the sound but didn’t turn around.
Soon, several people stood beside her. Antina was also helped to her feet and walked over.
Xiao Cheng looked at Antina, his gaze fixed on her gunshot wound, watching the blood soak through her vest and the pained pallor on her face, beads of sweat dripping.
He weakly said, “You… are you injured?”
Antina looked at Xiao Cheng, her eyes widening, a flood of emotions surging within them.
Finally, enduring the pain in her injured right hand, she tremblingly drew a gun and pointed it at Meng Jingwei’s forehead. She said, “Do you believe I will… kill her right now!”
“I believe.”
Xiao Cheng nodded slightly, as if using his last ounce of strength. “That day on… the balcony in the bedroom, what I… I said about ‘death’ was… unless I die!”
Antina froze abruptly. The scene from that day on the bedroom balcony of the Antina Castle in Country C flashed through her mind, recalling her conversation with him.
She had asked, “What will it take for you to forget her?”
He had replied, “Perhaps only by dying will my thoughts of her cease.”
And that ‘death,’ Antina had mistakenly believed, referred to Meng Jingwei’s death, only then would he forget her.
But she never imagined that the ‘death’ Xiao Cheng spoke of was his own.
This truth shattered Antina’s dream. Her body went weak, and the gun in her hand fell powerlessly to the ground. The mercenaries beside her steadied her.
Her gaze was vacant for a moment. She looked at Meng Jingwei, who was still engrossed in extracting the bullet casing, and then at the severely wounded Xiao Cheng, whose breathing was shallow. She let out a self-mocking laugh.
“Miss, do you want to kill her?”
A mercenary asked her in English.
As Antina hesitated, Xiao Cheng weakly shook his head, and finally, mustering his strength, said, “Wait for me… Wait until I recover, I… I will marry you.”
Xiao Cheng’s words were clearly a negotiation with Antina.
He was using ‘marriage’ to exchange for Meng Jingwei’s life.
If she had felt absolute disappointment towards him just moments ago, then now… Antina felt a piercing, bone-deep despair, a grief that tore her asunder.
“Heh, hahahaha…”
Antina laughed, a hollow, self-deprecating laugh.