Chapter 43

Chapter 43

“My head hurts.”

Grace jumped up from her seat and watched the lieutenant heading towards the door. He slammed the tightly shut door open and left it wide open so that the soldiers in the hallway could see what was going on inside the torture chamber.

Grace sighed in relief.

“F*ck me… I need to send her to a prison camp immediately…”

Listening to the lieutenant’s complaint, she prayed to herself.

‘…Yes, please send me.’

Winston only came to see her in the afternoon.

‘Did he report me to the headquarters? Please, report me.’

Grace looked anxiously at the man sitting across from the iron table.

‘…What’s wrong with him?’

He was quiet.

Winston didn’t even say a blatant greeting when he came in. All he did was sit with his arms crossed and stare at Grace with eyes that she couldn’t understand the meaning of. There was no way that that man would waste meaningless time.

…Nonetheless, what did he want by watching her quietly?

Anxiety began to circulate deep in her stomach.

Uncomfortable with his persistent gaze, Grace twisted her body over and over again. Winston only moved for a short time. He only blinked his eyes from time to time and moved his pupils. Still, his gaze was always on her.

She felt as if she was hypnotized as they faced each other in silence.

Yesterday felt like a dream…

If it weren’t for the nail marks on the back of that man’s hand, she would have insisted that it was a nasty nightmare. As she thought so, Grace looked down at her nails. Would it be okay? They may be pulled out with nippers as he retaliated.

She was having a moment of self-mocking.

Grate.

The sound of the chair being pulled broke the silence.

When she lifted her head, Winston was already standing by her. As he reached out his hand, Grace tensed as the hand large enough to cover her face suddenly approached.

“What, uhp…”

She thought he was going to choke her because he grabbed her neck, so she tried to resist, but she lost her words.

Winston lifted Grace’s chin and caught her lips.

She froze, not expecting he would suddenly kiss her. When the improbable man softly pressed their lips together and then pulled his off, she went numb. However, the kisses grew more and more passionate.

He licked her lips roughly and pressed them against his lips, like something that he had repressed burst out.

‘What the hell was this guy doing?’

Then, it finally tore.

“Uhp, huhp…”

Grace’s lower lip.

Because Winston’s ferocious offensive opened up a wound that had not yet healed, the bitter taste of blood began to spread. Immediately, he carefully licked the blood oozing out of her soft flesh.

It was a shy tongue move. It didn’t fit in with Camden’s vampire that Grace knew…

‘Perfect for a boy in Abbington Beach…’

With an ominous sense of dread, Grace opened her eyes. Was he watching her the whole time he kissed her? When their eyes met, the cold eyes between his curved eyes did not smile at all.

“Hello, Daisy. My first love.”

The blue eyes fluttered wildly.

Leon finally solved the mystery of why he was only affected by this woman.

“Even here at Abbington Beach, the coastal cliffs formed by wave erosion are well developed…”

Leon looked at the tutor sitting at the end of the long table with distasteful eyes. What a boring geology class where others were enjoying time swimming in the sea.

“Sir, is it true that you can find evidence that the continents were actually all one supercontinent in the strata of the coastal cliffs?”

A displeased gaze moved to his younger brother, who was sitting opposite him.

“Jerome should have been born first.”

Every time his mother received her two sons’ report cards, his mother mumbled this complaint. It wasn’t that Leon was worse than Jerome, though. There were just different subjects that stood out from each other.

His mother favored Jerome, who excelled in noble studies that suited her taste. In addition to that, she was a person who considered soldiers to be blood-crazed savages. Because of that, Leon, who showed outstanding talents in military-related subjects, would not be highly appreciated.

“I’m so glad that sissy guy isn’t the eldest son.”

For exactly the same reason, his father favored Leon.

So, even if he received his mother’s subtle and outright cold treatment, he never felt much regret.

‘I don’t like her either…’

He was tired. He was tired of her treatment of his father, a great soldier and wealthy man, as a half-noble with no titles. Countess Winston was keen to use every move of the family, even at summer vacation, thoroughly to fulfill her wish.

Leon was still too young to talk about marriage. Nevertheless, his mother had already shoved him into a suffocating nagging, telling him that he had to look good for a good marriage.

“Leon, at the very least, since we’ve set up a meeting with the Duchy ladies, why don’t you talk about boring things like hunting and cricket?”

“Then next time, I’ll talk about military law.”

“Oh, my gosh! Why the hell are you even resembling your father with that crooked personality? The two father and son are very determined to kill me.”

Jerome talked about dinosaur fossils in front of the ladies, so why was he the only one getting into trouble? Leon was always dissatisfied as she disliked and treated him as a chess piece that would make her dream come true.

Once he complained, his father burst out laughing and patted him on the shoulder.

“Leon, listen. All humans are just chess pieces to others. What matters is whether you’re a pawn or a queen.”

Those words were of great comfort to Leon. It was enough for him to treat his mother as a chess piece.

“You should try to be at least a knight.”

Obviously, Leon was more than a knight to his mother. Still, for him, his mother couldn’t even become a pawn because she was of no use.

After all, the only person who was meaningful to Leon was his respected father.

The low engine noise was mixed with the tutor’s meaningless words who criticized the theory of continental drift as nonsense. Leon looked out the window over Jerome’s shoulder. At the edge of the terraced garden, a row of black sedans were heading this way.

Soon after class, the party would begin.

‘The most boring party in the world.’

A few days ago, his mother had been arguing that a certain count and some distant relatives of the royal family were coming to the villa with daughters the same age as Leon. It was quite tiring to watch the girls exchange their jealousy and contempt for each other in prettier packaging.

Besides, there was another girl he wanted to see.

Leon put his hand into the pocket of his trousers. He thought about what had happened a few days ago, fiddling with the chocolate that had melted in the hot weather.

The first time he saw the girl was the day he came to this villa. While taking a walk on the beach attached to the south side of the villa, he ran into a girl picking up seashells. She was two or three years younger than him, and she seemed to be Jerome’s age.

Perhaps, she forgot to put on her swimsuit, her light blue skirt was soaked in seawater and wrapped around the girl’s skinny legs like seaweed. There were no adults by her side.

“Hey, kid! This is the villa’s private beach, outsiders are not allowed!”

When the servant chased her away, the girl pouted her lips and ran away.

Dark skin on brown hair. She was cute, but it was a common appearance and would soon be forgotten if only he hadn’t met her every day…

As he was riding out of the villa in the carriage, the girl was standing on the road. As he was taking a walk along the wall, the girl stood outside the iron bars of the front door. He even made eye contact with the girl sitting on a tree outside the wall.

At first, he thought it was a coincidence. However, no one happened to hang around in front of someone else’s house every day.

‘A thief…?’

Could such a little girl be a thief?

It was annoying. Until the girl’s face won’t leave his mind all day long. So two days ago, he asked impatiently.

“What are you doing?”

The girl, who had been sitting on an orange tree outside the wall, glancing inside like a meerkat, was startled by his sudden appearance and slipped off the tree.

“Kyak!”

Leon ran under the tree. It was a reflex action, even though he knew she would not be seriously injured because the tree was not that tall.

‘Ugh…’

As soon as he received the girl safely, he hurriedly lowered her like a man holding a fire. The girl’s face, as she pulled down her upside-down skirt, was as red as Leon’s.

“…Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

It wasn’t until the moment the girl accepted his apology in a tiny voice that Leon realized something was wrong.

“Wait. Why am I apologizing? Shouldn’t you be the one who apologizes? You peeped into someone else’s villa?”

“Why can’t I look at it?”

“Don’t you know that peeping into someone’s house is rude and bad? Isn’t that what thieves do? Are you looking at it because you’re a thief?”

The girl didn’t show any signs of embarrassment or anger when he drove her as a thief. In fact, her face looked like she did not listen to Leon’s words. Seeing her glaring at him with her distinctive turquoise eyes, Leon twisted his body.

“I didn’t mean to steal. I was spying.”

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