"Vincent Ashford, we were husband and wife... doesn’t that count for something? For the sake of all these years together, I’m begging you, please, please let me go, okay? Please—ah!"
Wave after wave slammed against the yacht.
The woman strung up behind it had everything below her neck soaked in seawater.
Her skin had turned pale and wrinkled from being submerged so long. One look was enough to tell she’d been left in the sea for quite a while.
Another wave crashed over, swallowing her head whole and cutting off every word of her desperate pleading.
When the water finally pulled back, she clawed upward with all the strength she had left.
She grabbed the man’s leg where he stood on the yacht, like it was the only lifeline left in this world. Her whole body shook, tears and snot all over her face as she cried, "I know I was wrong. Vincent, I really know I was wrong. I shouldn’t have schemed against you. I shouldn’t have tampered with your car..."
"Vincent, please, just spare me this once, okay? I’ll divorce you. I’ll file for divorce right now..."
"I’m begging you, please let me go, please..."
She was crying so hard she looked pitiful, fragile, almost heartbreaking.
The man standing above her let out a quiet sigh.
His features were naturally gentle, and that sigh made him look almost godlike, as if he truly felt mercy for all living things.
The woman thought she’d been saved. Joy nearly rushed to her face through all that fear.
But the very next second, she saw him pull out a military knife.
The sharp blade spun lazily between his fingers, almost like he was toying with something harmless.
The man lifted his deep peach-blossom eyes and looked at the woman in front of him, his gaze casual, detached, like none of this mattered.
The woman seemed to realize what was about to happen. Her whole body trembled harder, and even the hands clutching his leg began to loosen in fear.
She kept shaking her head, over and over, mumbling the same words like a broken record—
"No..."
"I’m begging you, Vincent, don’t..."
“No—aaah!!!”
The scream ripped through the air, sharp enough to make ears ring.
Vincent Ashford curled his lips in a faint smile and clicked his tongue, then casually wiped the blood splashed near the corner of his eye, his face full of cold disgust.
“And this is supposed to be something?”
Compared to all the humiliation and pain she had forced on him, what he was doing now wasn’t even one ten-thousandth of it.
Still, he wasn’t in the mood to keep playing with her any longer.
Too many people wanted him dead.
One Winnie Hartwell alone wasn’t worth wasting more of his time on.
Vincent rose to his feet. In those stunning peach-blossom eyes, a bloodthirsty chill slowly surfaced.
He lifted the tip of his shoe—
And just like that, the woman who used to be arrogant and vicious, who had insulted him, hit him, and trampled all over his pride whenever she pleased, was kicked straight into the sea with ridiculous ease.
The seawater swallowed Winnie whole and dragged her under.
In this world, there was now one less person trying to kill him...
...
“Ahhh, the evil supporting girl is finally gone! So, Ningning, tell me, wasn’t that insanely satisfying?!”
“Vincent Ashford seriously deserves his spot as this month’s hottest male supporting character on Tomato! He’s absolutely unhinged! I’m obsessed!”
By the time Winnie Hartwell came back with a fresh cup of coffee, her best friend was still flailing around excitedly on the video call.
Winnie tugged at the corners of her stiff mouth like a walking corpse. “Crazy? Is he crazier than me? I’m already so far gone I’m about ready to storm over to that bald idiot boss’s house and take his head off myself!”
Knowing how exhausted Winnie was, her friend joined her in cursing out the boss for a few minutes, then immediately went back to aggressively recommending the novel to her—
Crying Little Blossom, Gently Coaxed by the Capital’s Crown Prince was a super popular sweet-romance novel on Tomato lately.
The setup was basic, honestly. A cold, untouchable rich heir from the capital circle, a soft and fragile "little white flower" heroine, a one-night stand, then the heroine running off while pregnant. Years later, they meet again, and from there it’s all the usual messy drama—breakups, makeups, tears, misunderstandings, the whole soap-opera package—all because of that kid.
The main plot itself wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. Most of it was made up of overused tropes people had already seen a million times. The real hook, the thing that had readers genuinely obsessed, was the novel’s villainous supporting male lead—Vincent Ashford.
Vincent Ashford was the textbook definition of beautiful, powerful, and miserable. Since childhood, he’d been stomped on from all sides. After endless suffering, he finally managed to return to the Ashford family and acknowledge his roots. He probably thought life would calm down after that.
Yeah... no. Bro’s suffering arc was nowhere near over.
And just how brutal it got? Honestly, a few words couldn’t do it justice.
To sum it up: his biological mother didn’t care about him, his father couldn’t have loved him less, and even his wife was constantly plotting against him, basically wishing he’d hurry up and die. Even the one person who had once been his light—the heroine—abandoned him when things got critical and chose the male lead instead.
By the later part of the story, Vincent had become the kind of character everyone inside the novel wanted gone. Like, in their eyes, him staying alive one second longer was already a threat to society.
And the reason readers kept following the book so closely was simple—they wanted to see Vincent get his revenge, and they wanted to know how his story would end.
In the newest chapter, the brainless, vicious female side character who had tormented the villain for two whole years—aka the villain’s horrible wife—finally died.
Winnie Hartwell’s best friend was a full-on Vincent Ashford fangirl, the absolutely unhinged kind. The second she got to the scene where the female side character got written off, she immediately video-called Winnie and started screaming on camera.
After shrieking her lungs out, she still remembered to add, "Winnie, seriously, you should read this when you have time. That evil side character has your exact same name. Be careful or you’ll end up transmigrating into the book one day."
Winnie, who was currently in a passionate committed relationship with her job, kept hammering away at her keyboard with both hands and replied without looking up, "Yeah, yeah, sure, I’ll read it, okay? And if I really do transmigrate someday, I’ll personally go check just how insane your villain husband actually is."
That was what she said, but she didn’t take her friend’s warning seriously at all.
Transmigrating into a book?
The odds of that were lower than winning the lottery.
She was someone who had been buying scratch cards for ten years and had never won a single thing. How could someone with luck that trash possibly transmigrate into a novel? Seriously, what a joke.
And yet... maybe the heavens saw how she’d spent all those years buying scratch cards without ever hitting anything and took pity on her miserable self for once.
So instead of giving her a tiny win, fate decided to go big.
That night, after finishing overtime and dragging herself home, Winnie shut her eyes and passed out the second she hit the bed.
She was sleeping deeply, nice and dead to the world, when all of a sudden, a hoarse, icy voice sliced into her ear—
"What... exactly are you trying to do?"
