Chapter 19 Retribution

In the hospital, Sun Jiaojiao finally woke up.

She lay in bed, looking at a tree outside the window, or rather, at a bird's nest in the tree.

The mother bird was feeding two chicks in the nest. One of them was noticeably slower, listless, and always lost out to the other chick. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the healthy bird chirped loudly. The mother bird fed more food to the healthy chick, and over time, the healthy bird became healthier, while the weaker bird would be eliminated by nature.

Sun Jiaojiao had noticed the bird's nest ever since she moved into this ward. The weak bird was now on the verge of death. She knew this was the world of survival of the fittest, but couldn't the weak survive?

She touched her flat belly. If this child were born, it was likely to inherit Gong Dalong's illness, just like his daughter.

But even if it was a flawed child, she wanted to give birth to it.

However, the world didn't give her the chance, nor did it give Gong Dalong's flawed child a chance.

Thinking of the thin, small girl lying on the bed with a large pool of blood underneath, Sun Jiaojiao couldn't forgive herself.

If she hadn't killed Gong Dalong, he would have at most been punished by law for embezzling public funds. The child wouldn't have committed suicide because of cyberbullying. If she had known earlier that her child hadn't been killed by Gong Dalong, she wouldn't have acted so cruelly.

But there were no ifs in this world, only results. She did these things, and two lives were lost because of her. Ever since she found out that Gong Dalong had been wrongly killed by her, she had been living in fear and depression every day. Originally, she was clinging to a thread of hope, thinking that she couldn't let this matter be exposed no matter what, after all, she still had decades of life ahead of her and couldn't let it be ruined by a dead man.

But after learning that Gong Dalong's daughter had been cyberbullied to suicide because of Gong Dalong's affair, she felt that she had nowhere to escape, nowhere to hide.

She could forgive herself for killing Gong Dalong, but she couldn't forgive Gong Dalong's daughter for dying because of her.

When Zhang Lin and his assistant came in, they saw Sun Jiaojiao curled up in bed, her hands covering her belly, silently shedding tears as she looked out the window.

She didn't cry out loud, nor did she wipe away her tears, like a robot, letting the tears and snot drip all over her face and body.

Xiao Xia handed her a tissue. Sun Jiaojiao seemed to have shed her last tear. She took the tissue and wiped all the tear stains from her face. Before Zhang Lin and the others could speak, she began to speak in a hoarse voice, "These past few days, I've always dreamed of my child's father coming to the hospital to see me. He kept advising me not to keep this child, saying that this child would only bring me pain."

Zhang Lin thought that the child's father Sun Jiaojiao was talking about was her husband. He signaled Xiao Xia to start recording.

Sun Jiaojiao was immersed in her memories, her eyes only on the bird's nest in front of the window, "But, I finally got pregnant at my age, how could I listen to him? So we had a quarrel, a big quarrel. In the end, we separated. All good things must come to an end, right?"

Zhang Lin didn't want to listen to Sun Jiaojiao's nonsense. He stared at Sun Jiaojiao, "When you were on the ship, Gong Dalong lived with you all the time. What exactly happened between you, and how exactly did he die?"

Sun Jiaojiao recalled how Gong Dalong kicked and punched her belly in order to prevent her from giving birth to the child. Her expression instantly turned gloomy, "He lived with me because he was the father of my child."

These words caught Zhang Lin and Xiao Xia off guard. Zhang Lin suppressed his surprise and confirmed again, "Are you saying that you and Gong Dalong had an improper relationship?"

"Yes." Sun Jiaojiao admitted directly, "My husband can't have children, so I wanted Gong Dalong to be a surrogate father. He said he couldn't breathe at home and wanted to find some comfort with me, so we got together."

Zhang Lin looked at the recording equipment in Xiao Xia's hand, made sure it was on, and then continued to ask, "So that's why you and Gong Dalong monopolized half of the resources on the ship at that time. Did the others on the ship know about your relationship with Gong Dalong?"

Before, Zhang Lin thought that Sun Jiaojiao didn't leave the room because Gong Dalong's leg was injured, so she simply locked him in the room with her. He didn't expect that the two of them had a relationship.

It's no wonder that Zhang Lin didn't think of the two of them in this way. After all, compared with Lili and Jia Wenjun, who were rumored to have affairs with Gong Dalong, Sun Jiaojiao's appearance was somewhat different.

But when he thought that Gong Dalong had even slept with Hu Si's wife, Hao Jiening, on the bed, Zhang Lin could only sigh that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Sun Jiaojiao didn't care at all, "Hmph, I don't care if they know."

"Did anyone on the ship know that you were pregnant?"

Sun Jiaojiao's face became even gloomier, "Yes, it was Gong Dalong. I thought he would be happy, but I didn't expect him to want my child's life."

Zhang Lin frowned, "Did you only tell him about the pregnancy on the ship?"

"Yes, who would have thought that he would have hemophilia." Sun Jiaojiao's nails dug into her flesh.

Feeling the pain from her hand, she released her strength, her voice hoarse, "I tried so hard, but I didn't expect fate to be so cruel."

Zhang Lin stared at her, "You just said that Gong Dalong wanted the life of the child in your belly. Did he do anything to you?"

Sun Jiaojiao touched her belly and told him how Gong Dalong kicked and beat her.

"When he was locked in the room with you, his leg was already injured and he couldn't get up. How did he have the strength to attack you?"

Sun Jiaojiao sneered, "His injury wasn't fatal. In order to kill the child, he had plenty of strength."

This was the sentence that Zhang Lin was waiting for. His eyes narrowed, "In that case, he didn't die from excessive blood loss from the thigh wound. How exactly did he die?"

Sun Jiaojiao knew that the police must have found some evidence and had doubts about Gong Dalong's cause of death before they came to interrogate her.

After learning that Gong Dalong's daughter was dead, she never intended to hide anything again.

"He wanted my child's life, so I could only take his life."

Hearing Sun Jiaojiao's personal admission, Zhang Lin controlled his emotions and asked again, "In other words, you killed Gong Dalong?"

"Yes."

"How did you kill Gong Dalong?" Zhang Lin continued to ask.

"His wound never healed, and I knew when I bandaged him that the wound was not as deep as I thought. In order to make him die on the ship, I put iron rust residue on his bandage when the antibiotics were used up."

When Sun Jiaojiao said these things, she was expressionless throughout, as if she was talking about something that had nothing to do with her.

After she finished talking about everything on the ship, she seemed to have unloaded a heavy burden. She paid the price for what she had done. From now on, she would no longer wake up in the middle of the night, and she would no longer have to worry about being found out about the truth after she accidentally said something wrong. She breathed a sigh of relief and stretched out her hands towards the handcuffs.