“…Ah.”

The hand gripping my ankle turned out to be the woman’s elbow, floating limply on the surface of the water.

By sheer coincidence, my foot had been caught in the inward bend of her arm.

My heart was pounding so hard that I had assumed, without looking, that she was holding me.

Through the dark, algae-like strands of her drifting hair, I saw her face.

The moment my eyes met her unfocused pupils, I knew for certain – she was dead.

The sensation of her skin wrapped around my ankle – The woman’s skin, wrapped around my ankle, was chillingly cold and clammy.

The distorted, stiff expression frozen on her face hinted at the pain she must have endured before she died.

Swallowing a sob, I pulled my trapped foot free.

In my panic to escape, I slipped and fell, slamming my knee hard into the floor-but there was no time to hesitate or scream in pain.

I jumped to my feet and ran from the bathroom.

The woman’s last moments, dying in agony from a drug overdose forced on her by those men, reminded me of Eun-sae, how she had died clawing at herself after drinking herbicide.

I couldn’t bear to stay in that place any longer.

I felt like I was about to lose my mind.

But even as I took a few steps across the bedroom, my legs kept giving out.

I stumbled, bumped into things, rolled – by the time I finally made it out of the room, I couldn’t even tell if I was walking or crawling.

The moment I stepped into the hallway, all my strength left me.

I had no energy left to gather.

Barely able to stay upright, I leaned against the wall for support.

Even lifting my head felt too difficult, so I kept my eyes on the floor, dragging my feet forward one step at a time.

The only thing on my mind was this:

I had to get as far away from here as possible.

Without being seen by those men.

I had to find a safe place.

“…wandering around looking for a deal.”

Suddenly a hand grabbed my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks.

“Aaaagh!”

I screamed instinctively.

I had managed to stop myself once by accident – but not a second time.

There were too many cruel and horrible things in that mansion.

It was like a nightmare with my eyes wide open.

It had been like that ever since I entered this place.

That’s why none of it felt real – not even the presence of Lee Seol-won who suddenly stood right in front of me.

Nor the way his gaze slowly swept from the top of my head to the tips of my toes.

Only then did I become aware of my own condition.

Droplets of water were dripping from the ends of my hair, soaking the back of my neck.

I hadn’t even had a moment to wring out my soaked clothes before a small puddle had formed where I was standing.

Lee Seol-won’s brow furrowed slightly.

“Why do you look like that?”

His tone made it sound as if what I had just gone through had nothing to do with him.

I shook with anger.

Did he really ask that as if he didn’t know?

Who did he think had put me in this hell?

I had just seen someone die – right in front of me – in a place filled with people who didn’t even consider others human if they were beneath them.

Her body is still there, lying in the bathtub in the guest room.

I had clawed my way out from under that body, holding my breath the whole time, fighting just to survive.

As the haze in my mind slowly cleared, something else began to rise—
a burning anger, steadily taking root.

—”Why me? Where’s your fiancée?”

—”Because this role suits you better than it ever would Heo Yeonseo.”

A place like this doesn’t suit Heo Yeonseo, but it suits Eun-sae better?

That could only mean one thing—
He knew exactly what kind of things went on here, and deliberately chose who to bring.

Of course.

There are scenes here that you wouldn’t want your fiancée to see.

He probably wanted to keep up appearances in society.

But why Eun-sae?

What part of this den of criminals was ever good for her?

Why did she have to go through this?

What did she ever do that was so wrong?

If she was guilty of anything, it was that she loved a man who didn’t deserve to be loved.

And for that she was erased from this world.

They say that love isn’t a crime, but some kinds of love become poison.

I used to think that the phrase “seeing red with rage” was just a figure of speech.

But now I know it’s not.

It’s just that I had never been angry enough to understand it.

Only now did I realize how sheltered my life had been, how much of it had been spent within the confines of a “sensible” world.

Someone once said this:

When you hear the stories on the news, they sound outrageous and unbelievable – but that’s why they make the news: because they’re rare.

For me, the news always felt distant.

Sure, sometimes I’d get angry or upset, maybe stomp my feet in frustration – but I never once imagined that such things could happen in my world.

I believed, without question, that it couldn’t.

I never imagined that the secret, illicit pleasures of the so-called “gold spoons” would become Eun-sae’s unspoken torment, or that I’d be dragged into the same abyss.

It was all because of this man.

Because of him, my sister and I could never return to the normal, happy life we once had.

And yet there he stood, alone, with that calm, refined face – so shameless that it drove me crazy.

At that moment, I lost all sense of reason.

By the time I came to my senses, my hand flew to his cheek with all the strength I had.

But my attempt failed.

My hand didn’t even touch his face.

Lee Seol-won easily grabbed my wrist and stopped me in the middle of my swing.

It didn’t even seem like he used much force, but I couldn’t move at all.

I looked up at him and bit my lip hard.

‘Loving a piece of trash like you …… was the mistake Eun-sae made. It was the biggest mistake of her life.’

I couldn’t control myself anymore – not my thoughts, not my emotions.

My hand shook with rage.

But even when I hurled insults right in his face, he didn’t flinch – not even once.

“I asked you what happened.”

Still pretending not to understand, Lee Seol-won coolly pressed me for an explanation, as if none of this concerned him.

This attitude – so calm and detached – only made him seem more disgusting to me.

“You should know better than anyone! You’re the one who brought me here!”

There was no way that Lee Seol-won was innocent.

He wasn’t just a bystander with no connection to this party.

—”Shut up. Don’t jinx it. We have Lee Jae-gwang here. It’s his birthday party, he’ll take care of everything.”

The men had clearly said that it was Lee Jae-kwang’s birthday party.

Even in the midst of my terror, drowning in the fear of what I’d just witnessed, that name stuck in my mind.

Because it was familiar.

When you search for Lee Seol-won, you inevitably come across the names of his relatives.

Lee Jae-kwang.

He was Lee Seol-won’s older cousin.

More specifically, Lee Jae-kwang was the second son of Lee Byung-eun, the chairman of SW Company, and also the younger brother of the CEO of SW Entertainment.

In other words, Lee Seol-won had taken me to his cousin’s illegal drug party disguised as a birthday party.

So in the end, they were all part of the same circle.

No matter how innocent his face looked, no matter how perfectly composed his demeanor remained, at his core he was no different from the other men.

I could never trust him. Not ever.

“Where is my bag? Give it to me. I’m leaving right now.”

I didn’t want to breathe another lungful of the foul air of this place.

It felt like my body was being poisoned by the second.

If Lee Seol-won had been holding my bag, I would have grabbed it out of his hands and run out of the mansion.

“And where do you think you’re going, looking like that?”

I knew only too well what I looked like – soaked to the bone like a drowned rat.

But in a situation where my safety was at stake, appearances didn’t matter one bit.

“My clothes are in the trunk. Where’s the car?”

I just needed to change, grab my bag, and get out of here.

After witnessing people taking drugs as if they were drinking water and using others as s*x toys, staying any longer would’ve been no different than willingly putting my head in a lion’s mouth.

But Lee Seol-won crushed that hope with a single sentence.

“Driver Yoon has already left for the night.”

“What?”

“What, should I have asked him to sleep in the car all night?”

“That’s…”

I was so stunned that I couldn’t speak for a moment.

If he had already sent the driver and the car back, how exactly were we supposed to leave this place?

Was he seriously suggesting that we stay here until morning?

If he had already sent the driver and the car back, when exactly were we supposed to leave this place?

Did he really expect us to stay here until tomorrow?

I glared at Lee Seol-won.

If this was the kind of meeting that required an overnight stay, shouldn’t he have told me before? Asked for my permission?

Drag someone to a so-called party without warning and then send the driver away – what exactly was I supposed to do?

When Eun-sae was taken to places like this, did she just smile blankly and say, “It’s okay,” without complaining?

I never planned on spending the night away from home.

At most, I had assumed it would be like a cocktail party – a few hours of polite mingling, then home when the mood settled.

I mean, really – who could have imagined that I’d end up traveling all the way to the outskirts of Gyeonggi Province, wearing an uncomfortable party dress, only to be stuck here overnight?

Could it be that I would be stuck here for more than one night?