Chapter 7

All the thick winter clothes were taken out.

Watching the servants neatly pack them one by one into the travel bags, Gayeon kept checking the time.

The fact that she had learned Lloyd’s whereabouts meant that he had deliberately revealed himself.

A warning that he was near her, and that she was to live in tension at all times.

“My lady, is this truly the right thing to do?”

Elin asked from beside her with a gloomy face.

Not far away, Kiril was stretching lazily and staring out the window at the dense, dark forest.

“What’s the worst that could happen? I die?”

What kind of face would Lloyd make when he heard that she had gone to Russia?

The people who came into contact with her all believed that Lloyd still cherished his stepsister desperately and loved her with obsessive desire.

They regarded her as though she were Lloyd’s mistress.

No one believed her when she said he loathed her.

Their argument was that if that were true, he would never have left that much property to his younger sister.

Gayeon knew the government believed she was either helping Lloyd or supporting terrorists operating in America.

“Elin, don’t come with me.”

Elin was the one who had raised Lloyd since he was young.

It would be too cruel to involve her in this plan.

There had once been a time when Gayeon suspected Elin might be the one feeding information to Lloyd.

But she could not bring herself to cast away the only person she had left.

“I am a person of the Willis family, my lady. The young master stained the family’s honor. My loyalty is to the Willis family.”

Elin said it firmly, shaking her head.

The Willis family was a long-established and distinguished house.

That had been true even before they entered the defense industry, and it would have remained true afterward as well, if Lloyd had not committed treason.

Now the one carrying on the name of the Willis family was Gayeon, who did not share their blood.

“Even so, Elin, stay here.”

“My lady.”

She had that feeling.

That this time, at last, either she would die, or Lloyd would.

Whichever it was, she did not want Elin to witness it.

Tears welled in Elin’s eyes.

The child she had watched since the day she first came to the Willis family had grown into a woman before she knew it.

She remembered Gayeon from two years ago, withering away like a dried, stunted old tree.

And when Gayeon could no longer endure it and slashed her wrist in a s*icide attempt, it was the young master, Lloyd, who carried her to the hospital.

When he appeared before Elin for the first time after leaving the house, she had shouted at him.

Why in the world had he done such a thing?

When Elin saw Lloyd smiling with an expression she had never once seen on him before, she gave up even the last of her hope.

He was no longer one of the Willis family.

Elin reached out and took hold of Gayeon’s right hand.

Fastening a watch over the deeply carved scar on her wrist, she spoke.

“Please don’t think such thoughts.”

“Elin, I’m gradually going mad. I know that. I can feel it.”

Gayeon said it with an expression of utter resignation.

Of all the things she possessed, there was not a single one she had wanted for herself.

This was not the life she had wished for either.

She had lost the only family she had in the world.

Lloyd had killed her mother.

That was a truth that could not be denied.

“My lady, please……”

“I’m someone who can’t even take revenge with my own hands. How could I possibly catch someone flying over my head?”

That was why she meant to seek the help of that man standing out on the terrace.

“Kiril Belov is a frightening man. Some even say that more people have died in connection with him than those killed by President Belov. He’s a walking bomb, a walking terrorist organization.”

“At least he isn’t trying to kill me. At least he let my people live.”

“He’s a very capricious man. He might do something terrible to you, my lady.”

“Worse than Lloyd?”

At Gayeon’s words, Elin’s face crumpled.

She could not bring herself to say anything more.

“If I can’t kill him myself, then I’ll at least have to borrow someone else’s strength. I don’t care if that someone is the devil.”

If only she could sleep peacefully at night.

That was Gayeon’s one wish.

Terrified that she might die one day, she had cut her wrist, but when she learned that it was Lloyd who had saved her, she crawled across the hospital room floor and laughed as though she had lost her mind.

She did not know what kind of happy life he spoke of, but she swore instead to live unhappily forever.

Even so, Lloyd would come to her like a nightmare when she was going about her ordinary days, or when she was taking her most comfortable rest.

“You’re right, my lady. We can’t go on living like this.”

Gayeon gave the faintest nod.

“Go and come back safely. But make sure you understand this much at least—that he is someone even more frightening than the young master. The power, honor, and wealth we possess are nothing compared to Kiril Belov. They are people who reign as kings in the closed-off country called Russia. To rise to the seat of king in a lawless place like that…… it is impossible even to imagine how much blood they must have shed.”

Power is inherited.

Belov made that possible.

At Elin’s words, Gayeon was made newly aware of exactly whose hand she had joined.

“I only hope that you return here safely, my lady.”

If she managed to survive, Gayeon had no intention of coming back here.

She intended to return to Korea.

The reason she had been unable to go to Korea in the first place was that, if Lloyd followed her even there, she felt as though her life would truly be buried in the depths of ruin.

That was her homeland, the place she did not want to drag anyone else to.

“Okay. I will. Thank you, Elin.”

Hiding those feelings, Gayeon nodded.

As though that alone was enough, Elin smiled with a tearful face.

Perhaps, for her as well, the reason she was holding on to Gayeon was because she could not bear to watch the family she had devoted her whole life to collapse like this.

“Don’t say things like that. It sounds just like a final goodbye.”

Elin said with a shudder.

She could see several carefully stacked bags being carried by Kiril’s subordinates to the car they had arrived in.

The time to leave was drawing near.

“If anything happens, contact me right away. I……”

Gayeon did not listen to Elin’s last words.

After nodding, she deliberately turned away first.

Before she knew it, she could feel the gaze of Kiril, who had already stepped away from the terrace, following along her back.