Chapter 6

“Three months ago, he shot down a domestic flight bound from Moscow to Saint Petersburg.”

The whole world had been thrown into an uproar.

It was a terrorist attack that happened after a Middle Eastern terrorist group singled out Russia, and all passengers on board died.

It was only after hearing Kiril’s words that, as the Russian President declared war, saying all the terrorists would be tracked down, she was finally able to grasp a clue as to why he was here.

“Oh, this matter is separate from my father. A pet of mine that I treasured happened to be on that plane.”

Gayeon, who had closed her eyes, snapped them open at words she had never imagined.

Six years ago, her stepfather died, and everything changed.

She had not shared his blood, but her name had been included in the will as well.

He left 50 percent of the estate to Lloyd, 30 percent to her mother, and the inheritance she was to receive was 20 percent.

Even just a portion of it was an astronomical amount, and she and her mother were constantly splashed across the media as a Cinderella story.

“……What?”

Lloyd gave up every share of the inheritance except the company.

Gayeon remembered the last words her stepbrother, who had always smiled kindly, said to her in an even kinder and gentler voice than before.

When she heard news of her mother’s accident, after she had driven into a lake drunk just like his own mother had, he said this to her, who was sunk in grief.

「When you feel the safest, when you are happiest, oh, Angelica. ‘My angel’.」

「That is when I’ll come find you and tear you to pieces. Your wh*re of a mother is probably spreading her legs for men even in hell. Every mansion and every bit of property is all yours now. So go ahead and run as much as you like.」

And then Lloyd soon stole the company’s enormous slush fund and the classified details of military projects that had been proceeding in utmost secrecy, and vanished like smoke.

What came next was the National Security Department coming after her on charges of treason.

Lloyd had sent the Willis family, who had devoted themselves to the nation, plunging neatly into ruin.

He had sought out a terrorist organization of his own accord.

Because of her connection to Lloyd, Gayeon was wiretapped, monitored, and kept under surveillance countless times, and as though mocking all of that, Lloyd would appear whenever he pleased and torment her.

So when Kiril came, she had thought, of all things, now Russia too?

“I raised it with great care, but the plane crashed while it was on its way to see me.”

The man’s eyes, as he said that, gleamed with murderous intent.

“And the surface-to-air missile that shot it down was the CMR-30, which the U.S. Department of Defense and the Willis family had been secretly researching before it was stolen.”

This man had attacked her over nothing more than a pet.

He did not bother hiding his intent to catch and kill Lloyd.

Somehow, Gayeon found the whole situation absurd.

Looking down impassively at her face, twisted as though she might cry, Kiril finished what he had to say.

“He’s openly provoking me inside my own country. I should answer him. Right now, I feel like putting him on that same kind of plane and shooting it down.”

Gayeon thought that no matter who Lloyd was, he probably had not known Kiril’s pet had been aboard that plane.

She had not the slightest intention of taking Lloyd’s side, but this time she truly thought so.

He was not the sort of person who would launch a surface-to-air missile just to kill a mere dog or cat.

Most likely, the terrorist organization he belonged to had simply targeted any convenient plane in order to provoke Russia.

But the man before her regarded it as a crime aimed at his pet.

“I think you’re a little crazy.”

Lloyd was crazy too, but the man before her seemed even worse.

Every year, once a month.

Or sometimes once every six months.

Whenever she had begun to feel at ease because not even the faintest scrap of news about him had reached her, Lloyd would suddenly come to find Gayeon.

Sometimes she would wake from sleep under the chill of a gaze and find him standing by the head of her bed, smiling gently, and other times she would wake to find the place beside her slashed to pieces.

There was no doubt that someone among the people around her was passing news to Lloyd.

Otherwise, there was no way he could enter her bedroom when she was under every kind of surveillance imaginable.

No matter how many people she dismissed and hired again, it remained the same, and at some point Gayeon had given up.

Three months ago, when she saw him for the last time and told him to just kill her instead, he gently admonished her that the time of her death was not for her to decide.

He soothed her like that, just as he had when he used to play the role of a caring older brother.

“So. Am I no longer your type?”

Bringing back what had been said in the bathroom, he smiled with deep amusement in his eyes.

When she saw that eerie bedroom hacked to pieces.

When she saw her own hair, cut off overnight.

When she trembled in terror watching Lloyd hold a knife to her neck and spend the whole night murmuring nonsense beside her as though reading her a fairy tale.

And above all, when he killed people who had absolutely nothing to do with it merely because they had spoken with her, merely because they had guarded her.

He confessed to Gayeon that he pleasured himself every day while recalling her terror-stricken face.

He even kindly added an explanation, saying that whenever that face of hers began to fade in his memory, he came back to see it again and keep recalling it.

“If you find him……”

“I’m going to kill him. Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”

A Chinese proverb came to mind: poison is cured with poison.

Lloyd was the poison that was slowly killing her.

He was such a dreadful poison that no matter how much money she spent buying people, she could not catch even the end of his trail.

And the man before her looked more poisonous than that poison, and stronger as well.

“No. It’s true that I was trying to leave in the confusion, but I didn’t know our interests would align like this.”

Neither the FBI nor the CIA had been able to catch Lloyd.

The same was true of the mercenaries she had hired.

Then let this man handle it.

Let Lloyd be consumed by his poison and die.

Gayeon’s eyes sparkled.

Kiril looked at her with an unfamiliar expression as color returned to the face that had been frozen stiff.

“Then let’s leave right away. This country doesn’t like me very much.”

He spoke gently as he cupped Gayeon’s cheeks with both hands.

To the man who was telling her that she was nothing but bait, and that he would show her this much courtesy and gentleness as long as she faithfully played the role of bait, she nodded.

“I’ll follow you. Anywhere.”

Only after answering did Gayeon realize what she had just said, and she hurriedly shut her mouth.

It sounded almost like eloping for love.