Fortunate to Have You This Lifetime
Chapter 1197: Returned_1

Chapter 1197: Chapter 1197: Returned_1

Compared to Purple Summers, who was alone and forlorn on the river’s surface, a blindly advancing ferry drew even more attention.

Cherry, like a helpless child, sat on the boat hugging her knees, wailing nonstop.

Alexander Summers’s men intercepted the boat.

They came prepared, each holding a magical artifact, surrounding Cherry in a tight circle, yet remaining warily distant.

——All their methods could only trap her, but they couldn’t kill this ghost born of fate.

Cherry was oblivious to the encroaching danger around her. She just kept crying out Nathaniel Summers’s name, over and over again, her eyes bloodshot and her voice hoarse from weeping.

Her cries echoed across the river, met with no response.

No one knew who stepped forward with a knife.

While crying, Cherry kept backing away.

She backed against the cabin’s wall panel, with nowhere to retreat, as the bronze dagger loomed before her, Cherry desperately shook her head in tears.

At that moment, she seemed to have lost all her powers, vulnerable, pitiful, and with no one to turn to.

Yet, no one pitied her.

The bronze dagger pierced her chest. Her body convulsed sharply, and a strange, terrible scream spilled from her throat! It sounded like the cry of a newborn, yet also like the shriek of a nocturnal cat!

From within the surrounding crowd, someone shouted, "Keep that girl alive!"

Eerie black mist spread from the wound, then tightly coiled around the dagger lodged in the girl’s chest!

The person holding the knife was startled and suddenly let go.

Cherry’s eyes snapped open!

"Nathaniel!——"

She looked in one direction, tears flowing like a fountain, and suddenly threw herself toward the railing. Before anyone could react, she plunged into the river!

...

In the bleak cold of winter, Alexander Summers leaned against his car.

With a cigarette pinched between his fingers, he took a deep drag, slowly exhaling the smoke, his brow clouded with shadows.

From afar, Zack Wallace approached with others, his head bowed as he spoke, "We’ve pulled her out, but..."

Zack Wallace glanced cautiously at Alexander Summers, "but... the dagger, it’s gone."

Alexander Summers’s gaze shifted slightly, and he looked over coldly.

Wallace, bracing himself, explained, "At first we were afraid of killing her outright, so the brothers didn’t stab too deeply. It must’ve fallen to the riverbed when she fell, and it’s small, hard to retrieve."

After saying it, he quickly added, fearing Alexander Summers wouldn’t be satisfied, "Actually, it’s better that it sank to the bottom. With that ghost trapped inside, without daylight, there’s no chance for it to cause trouble again!"

"Where is she?" Alexander Summers asked.

"Hunter Dalton took that little girl to the hospital." Zack Wallace’s expression turned troubled, "We didn’t find the lady on the boat, nor Nathaniel..."

"Found them!"

Before Zack Wallace could finish, someone suddenly shouted from a distance!

"They’re found! The lady is there!!!——"

Alexander Summers’s hand jerked abruptly, the cigarette falling to the ground, and his heart seemed to stop suddenly. With a trembling voice, he asked, "Where?"

...

Purple Summers opened her eyes and saw Alexander Summers’s face.

It was as if she had expected it, yet it also seemed like an illusion...

Purple Summers stared quietly at him, for a long while without speaking.

Alexander Summers gently grasped her shoulder, as if he were holding the lightest feather, the most delicate blossom, the most ephemeral mist, fearing that the slightest carelessness would let her slip through his fingers and vanish.

"Purple." He called her softly.

Purple Summers finally realized that what was before her eyes was not a dream.

She hadn’t died.

She had come back.

Back to his side.

"Alexander Summers." Purple Summers looked at him in a daze, calling his name.

Alexander Summers responded softly, "Mhm."

"Alexander Summers." She called him again.

"Mhm, I’m here." Alexander Summers bent down and kissed her, "I’m here, I’m here..."

Painful awareness finally returned to Purple Summers’s body. Her hands, stiff with cold, wrapped around Alexander Summers’s waist. She shut her eyes tight, expecting tears to come, but her eyes were dry, not a single tear fell.

In the warmth of the hospital room, Purple Summers’s frozen thoughts slowly thawed, the image of Nathaniel Summers’s descent into the depths emerging in her mind like an old movie playing at an agonizingly slow speed.

Grief surged within her, and she said hoarsely, "Nathaniel is dead."