Chapter 5

The curtains and carpet and such, which had been stained with blood, had been removed and taken away cleanly, the sheets had been changed, and there was no trace of the canopy.

His subordinate took out from a suitcase a suit similar to the one he had worn earlier and placed the clothes on the bed.

Kiril strode out n*ked and, as if it were nothing, put on his clothes, and Elin shot him a look as though he were the most ill-bred man under heaven.

“My lady needs to change, so all of you, please leave.”

“Step outside.”

When he said it to his subordinate, the man bowed his head and withdrew from the room.

Sitting on the bed, Kiril jerked his chin as if he had no intention at all of giving up his place.

“What a shameless brute!”

While they had been in the bathroom, Elin had tried several times to storm inside, but each time the subordinates caught her and dragged her back out.

The fear that the young lady she served might be suffering something terrible in there was enough to make her whole body tremble.

But because Gayeon’s face was unharmed, even though she had come out wearing only a bath towel, Elin was just barely able to hold herself back from lashing out at him.

“Elin, it’s alright.”

As though shielding Elin from his gaze, Gayeon stepped between him and Elin.

The man was idly watching the two of them argue, with several buttons of his shirt left undone.

He was a man impossible to know what he was thinking.

“My lady.”

In truth, even if Gayeon had stepped in front of her, there was no way Elin, who was much taller than she was, had failed to see Kiril.

“I’m alright. I’ll change by myself. Please step out for a moment.”

“I think it would be best if you changed where you’re staying. The young master has caught the scent.”

A faint frown touched Gayeon’s brow.

Elin had said it in a whisper near her ear, so it seemed Kiril had not heard, but seeing the interest stirring in his eyes as he watched her expression, it was obvious he was interested in this conversation.

“Say it louder.”

Her fingertips went cold.

From the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair, at the words ‘young master’ from Elin’s mouth, Gayeon held back the fear from that time as it surged up inside her.

At Kiril’s words telling her to say it louder, she pushed lightly at Elin’s back.

“Help move the injured people to the hospital. I’ll handle things here.”

The resident physician stationed in the mansion was not enough.

Entrusting the matter to Elin so treatment would be delayed no further, Gayeon watched until she left, then stood before Kiril.

“I’ll think about the exile papers, so please go back.”

“If I’d intended to go back obediently, I would have sent the papers politely.”

The blood inside her body went cold.

Perhaps it had been that way from the moment she heard Elin’s words.

She had been about to say something when they barged in, and now too much time had passed.

“So all I have to do is sign these papers?”

Kiril smiled as he looked at her, after she had stubbornly insisted until just a moment ago that she would not do it and had now suddenly turned around.

“For now, yes.”

Gayeon picked up the document envelope lying beside Kiril.

For now, what came first was getting away from this man.

Even if she signed the papers, if she truly set her mind to hiding, he would not be able to find her.

In the end, would it just mean that there would be two people chasing her instead of one?

Still, whether one or two, being hunted was all the same.

Placing the stack of documents, nearly dozens of pages, on the bed, Gayeon sat on the floor and took up the fountain pen tucked into the document envelope, scrawling her signature in haste.

Sitting on the edge of the bed with his legs crossed, Kiril looked down at her and kept his gaze on one of her hands, which was trembling without pause.

“That settles it now, right?”

“As if someone were chasing you.”

When she set the fountain pen down on the bed, his palm came down over the back of Gayeon’s neck.

A cool hand wrapped around her nape.

“Poor thing, you’re trembling.”

When she raised her hand to brush him off, he instead pulled Gayeon toward him.

Just like that, her upper body was dragged forward to the front of the man’s knees.

“Take the papers and go back.”

“And then Ms. Angelica Willis, you disappear without a trace?”

He asked it as though he had peered straight into her mind.

His mouth was smiling, but the eyes visible beneath it were too stern to be deceived from the start.

“You never asked why I’m trying to take a mere heiress with nothing but money to Russia.”

When Gayeon struggled to get free from his grip, Kiril pulled her even closer.

He spread his legs and trapped Gayeon between them.

His trouser front kept brushing against her chest.

But the gaze with which he bent at the waist and looked down at her as if he might devour her flashed with such cunning light that she could not even pay attention to that.

“You’re very familiar with this kind of thing.”

“……That’s right. I am.”

“And you know who I’m looking for.”

Gayeon bit her lip.

Everyone tried to find someone through Gayeon.

The FBI, the CIA, and places too unspeakable to name were all the same.

She had not imagined they would come looking even from Russia, but this situation was certainly familiar to Gayeon.

It felt as though someone had drained every drop of blood from her and set a fire beneath what remained.

Every hour, every minute, every second, her blood scorched and dried inside her.

She even found herself thinking that if she were wounded for real, not a single drop of blood would flow from her body.

“‘If you want to find Lloyd, find Angelica’.”

When the name she did not want to hear came through his lips, Gayeon closed her eyes.

She did not want to see Kiril’s face speaking that name in front of her.

She wanted to run from reality, even if only like this.

“‘He loves his little sister dearly, so if anything happens to her safety, he is certain to appear’.”

The hand that had been wrapped hard around the back of her neck so she could not move gradually tightened around her throat, then slid up to the tip of her chin and brushed her lips with his thumb.

Kiril was looking at Gayeon’s tightly shut eyes, at the ends of her lashes trembling faintly.

They quivered as though stirred by wind, like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings.

“Why are you looking for him?”

When Gayeon asked that, a bitter smile touched her lips.

They all had it wrong.

Everyone believed Lloyd cherished Gayeon desperately.

They went so far as to think of him as a beast who not only cherished but lusted after and burned with desire for a sister not related to him by blood.

A brother and sister not related by blood.

Gayeon had come from Korea to America eleven years ago, around the time she had just entered high school.

At that time, her mother happened to fall in love with Willis, the man who would become her adoptive father, while he was in Korea on business, and she decided to remarry.

Things moved with lightning speed.

Wanting to bring her mother to live with him as soon as possible, he brought Gayeon and her mother to America less than a month after meeting them.

The problem arose there.

Willis, her stepfather, was the head of a defense company and a man who had risen into the ranks of the wealthy elite, and his sole heir was one son.

Not only did he have a son, but in America he was also a married man.

His weak-willed former wife, in drunkenness, drove her car into a lake after his demand for divorce.

The cause of death was ruled s*icide.

Lloyd, the only son he left behind, was an exceedingly gentle man.

Toward Gayeon and her mother, who carried guilt that his mother had died because of them, Lloyd treated them warmly at all times and instead comforted them, saying it was not their fault.