Chapter 3

That night, while I was restoring the 《Nanhua Classic》, I found a few sheets of yellowed deckle-edged paper tucked into a hidden layer of the spine.

I eased them out with tweezers, brushed off the dust, and my grandfather's bold handwriting slowly came clear.

It was his diary from back then.

“The Henson family's young boy was locked in a warehouse at the end of the lane today. Penny heard him crying, climbed in through the window to bring him food, and even gave him the half of the bamboo-grain ink stick her father left behind, as a keepsake. The child was so frightened he didn't even say thank you.”

“The Fox girl next door found out and claimed she was the one who saved him. When the Hensons came to thank her, she didn't deny it. Such a wicked thing. A child that young, and already so full of schemes.”

“Penny's heart is wide open. She turned around and forgot all about it. No matter. The Henson waters run deep, and it's just as well she stays out of them.”

My heart was shaking violently.

So the little boy from my childhood memory, the one trapped in that dark warehouse, crying so hard he trembled, was Anthony Henson.

So the person I climbed through a window to feed and pull out as a child was him, of all people.

How laughable.

For over a decade he'd held up an impostor thief as his savior, and treated the person who actually saved him as a gold-digger clawing after money and power.

I gripped the torn diary pages and went straight to Henson Group headquarters.

The receptionist tried to stop me from going in. I leaned against the front desk and said flatly, “Tell Anthony Henson I have something to say about the person who saved his life.”

“If he won't see me, I'll stand in the lobby downstairs and shout it, so the whole company can hear the story of how their Mr. Henson repaid a debt.”

Not two minutes later, the receptionist, face gone pale, let me go up.

In the president's office, Isabel Fox was nestled against Anthony's side, pointing at some document and cooing about something.

The moment she saw me come in, she straightened up and glared at me, on guard. “What are you doing here again? Tony doesn't want to see you!”

I ignored her and slapped the torn diary pages down on the desk in front of Anthony. “See for yourself.”

Anthony picked up the pages, ran his eyes over them twice, and his face darkened in an instant.

He flung the paper back onto the desk, fury churning in his black eyes. “Penelope, you'd forge your own grandfather's belongings just to smear Isabel? Are you really that vicious?”

I laughed out of sheer anger. “Anthony Henson, if you're blind, go see an eye doctor.”

“You can't tell whether that's my grandfather's handwriting?”

“The age of the paper, the oxidation of the ink. Any appraiser you like can verify it.”

He gave a cold snort. “Who knows what cheap trick you used to fake it.”

“I know what kind of person Isabel is far better than you do.”

“If it weren't for her back then, I'd have died in that warehouse long ago.”

“You forge shoddy evidence like this to win me back and it doesn't make you sick?”

I looked at the disgust in his eyes, and then it all struck me as unbearably absurd. “Anthony Henson, you think far too much of yourself.”

“I came here only because I didn't want you playing the fool, gratefully bowing to someone who's deceived you for over ten years.”

He roared in a rage, “Shut up!”

“Penelope, let me make this perfectly clear to you. Even without Isabel, I never loved you. Not once.”

“I only married you because it was my grandfather's dying wish. Don't flatter yourself, you gold-digger!”

The words drove into my heart like a sharp blade.

Three years of marriage, and it wasn't as if I'd never felt something.

The light I left on when he worked late into the night, the porridge I simmered when his stomach hurt, the seal I carved by hand for his birthday. In his eyes, all of it had only been my way of clinging for status.

I looked at the cold disgust in his eyes, and suddenly it all felt utterly pointless.

I bent down, picked the torn pages off the floor, folded them carefully, and slipped them into my pocket. “Anthony Henson, go on and live happily with your savior.”

“Whether you live or die from now on has nothing to do with me. Sooner or later you'll learn what the truth really is.”

“And when that day comes, I'd like to see how you clean up the mess.”

With that, I turned and walked out, without looking back.

The moment the door closed, I heard Isabel's coaxing coo. “Tony, don't be angry, she's just jealous of me……”

I didn't listen to the rest. I strode out of the office building.

The late-autumn wind cut against my face, and it stung a little.

I raised a hand to my cheek and only then realized that somewhere along the way, I'd started to cry.

No matter.

From this day on, Anthony Henson and I were even.