The Blue Velvet Trap - Chapter 33

Jonathan James Crotsfield opened his eyes in terrible pain. His shoulder felt like it was on fire. His left palm was also burning.

“Are you coming to your senses?”

“What is this.”

“It seems you don’t remember what happened.”

His mind kept getting hazy. As he blinked to try to focus, someone splashed a bucket of cold water on his face. There was a fishy smell. The smell of algae. The smell of sewers. A fishy odor he had never smelled up close before.

River water? The thought suddenly crossed his mind.

“Lieutenant Karen Liere is quite the sharpshooter. To pierce your palm from such a distance. Your Grace, you must be truly proud of the Lieutenant. After all, you’re the one who brought her to the Royal Academy for Gifted Children, and then to the Intelligence Bureau from there. It’s no exaggeration to say you raised her.”

Now he could see clearly in front of him. Crotsfield wanted to deny reality. Was this perhaps a nightmare? It didn’t make sense for this to happen again. He shook his head. It was almost an exact repetition of the situation before the regression. Ivlik Wintermore was looking at him with cold eyes, caressing a metal torture device.

“The bodyguards you brought are already dead.”

Ivlik picked up a rusty saw.

“I only kept you alive.”

“This is…”

“I’m telling you in case you’re curious. It would be too unfair if they cursed you for not coming to save them after following such an incompetent master and dying. Don’t call out for people who are already dead.”

Ivlik stuffed a dirty cloth rolled into a ball into the Duke’s mouth. The chair the Duke was tied to was in the exact spot where the woman he had brought had died. The light bulb above the Duke’s head flickered unsteadily. It was the only light left on in the warehouse.

“Before the regression, Lieutenant Liere finished you off.”

Ivlik placed the saw blade against the Duke’s shin.

“This time, I’m going to finish you.”

“Mmph! Mph! Mph!”

“Back then, as you could probably see, I was a bit… out of my mind. I didn’t enjoy the process at all. After the regression, spending happy times with Cedine and finding stability… Only then did I feel regret. A man who deserves to die.”

“Mmmph!”

“It was a rare chance to send him off with my own hands.”

“Mph! Nnngh!”

“I felt no emotion, completely dried up to the bottom.”

Ivlik didn’t stop sawing even as he spoke. The feeling of bone being cut was welcome. Since Karen had only given him 30 minutes to have fun, he had to make every moment count. Honestly, he wished he could keep him for 30 days instead of 30 minutes.

To play with him that long would require quality meals and treatment. Some days, he’d make his heart flutter with hope by offering a deal to escape, then a few days later, blindfold him and let him breathe fresh air outside. The warmth of sunlight on his face. The air mixed with the smell of baking bread instead of blood.

I must have really gotten out. I can go back now. After respectfully escorting the human elated with hope to the back seat of the car, drive around the grounds, then let him out. Knock him out with a blow to the nape, and that day’s brief happiness ends. When he opens his eyes, he’s back in the dark, terrible torture chamber, and his mind starts to collapse at Ivlik’s question of whether they ever made any deal.

“Still unsatisfying.”

Ivlik set aside the cut shin bone and saw. His original torture devices were at his estate. He couldn’t afford the trouble of going back and forth to his estate just for his own pleasure when every second was precious. So he had picked up only usable tools from those discarded in and around the warehouse.

A rusty saw, pocket knife, fish hook, and so on.

“What should we use next? I’ll give you a choice. Come on, focus and look.”

Ivlik tapped the Duke’s tattered knee. The Duke’s throat was red and swollen from how much he had screamed.

“The knife reminds me of Cedine. While Lieutenant Liere is better with guns, Cedine seems to handle military knives better. Or how about this?”

Ivlik dangled a small hook-like fish hook in front of the Duke’s eyes.

“This also resembles my wife.”

“Uuugh…”

“In that it’s small, sharp, and once you swallow the bait, you’re helplessly caught from then on.”

“Hic, uuugh…”

“How about it, want to swallow it?”

The Duke’s sagging cheeks trembled. Ivlik smiled brightly.

“You like that?”

“Uuu, huuuh…!”

“Just thinking about how much pain Cedine must have been in when she was shot… makes me want to keep you alive forever. I want to test not only your limits but my own. Crotsfield, you son of a b*tch. The men you sent had terrible marksmanship. They only shot at Cedine’s stomach instead of her head or heart, hitting her seven times.”

Just thinking about it makes his heart feel twisted. Ivlik’s eyes reddened.

“Seven shots in that small body.”

“Huuh!”

“But who are you to regress along with us?”

The Duke’s shoulders shook violently. His face, glistening with sweat, was contorted like a madman, as if something was so funny. Ivlik looked at the Duke as if looking at an insect, then removed the cloth bundle from his mouth. A voice, cracked and hoarse in the short interval, came from him.

“Damn you, Wintermore… When I heard you married Cedine instead of Karen in this life, I had a hunch. Then I saw you on your wedding day. Haha, hahahaha… You were beside yourself with happiness. That wasn’t acting. Ahahaha, it couldn’t have been acting. On the other hand, the cold murderous intent in your eyes when you looked at me made me certain.”

The Duke spoke as if grinding his teeth.

“Wintermore, you regressed with your memories intact, just like me.”

“……”

“You liked Cedine in your past life too, didn’t you? From the beginning, it was Cedine, not Karen? Hahaha, that’s how it was. That’s how it was. Damn bastard…”

The Duke spat out with a cursing heart.

“If I had known that, I wouldn’t have let go of that Cedine b*tch so easily in my past life. I would have torn her to pieces right in front of you…”

“My precious Cedine.”

Ivlik stuffed the cloth bundle back into the Duke’s mouth. The Duke, unable to finish what he wanted to say, trembled with rage.

“From the moment I first saw her, she was so dazzling. Even after the special tutoring ended, I was too scared to go near her for nearly a year. Even though I knew exactly where she lived, which school she attended, who she was close to. She was too beautiful, too exciting. Too frightening.”

Ivlik sighed.

“Since it’s come to this, what can we do, Crotsfield? The only thing left is to kill you as painfully as possible and for us to live out the rest of our lives happily.”

“Uuugh!”

“At this point, I suddenly wonder how the people of the ducal family will think of you when your filthy deeds are revealed after your death.”

“…Uuh! Hic!”

“Well, that’s their problem to deal with.”

The initial plan was this: Kill Duke Crotsfield first, then think about the rest. However, with Karen’s unexpected joining, the outcome differed greatly from the initial plan discussed with Cedine. Ivlik was quite pleased with the changed ending.

By the way, a fact they learned during the torture was that Crotsfield firmly believed this regression was a chance for revenge given to him by heaven.

‘Even though he’s free to delude himself, isn’t that going a bit too far?’

About 30 minutes later, Ivlik confirmed that Crotsfield had breathed his last. It was an insipid death considering how long he had endured. It’s time to go see the ladies waiting for him outside the warehouse. For his wife’s sake, Ivlik covered the corpse, which had no intact parts left, with a cloth.

“This regression wasn’t for you. In fact, it wasn’t even for me. I think it was to give back the life that Cedine, who had to die lonely without knowing anything, should have rightfully enjoyed…”

The dead man had no response.

Ivlik prayed that this time, Crotsfield’s soul would fall to the very bottom of hell and suffer eternally. And somehow, he felt certain that it would.

* * *

Cedine felt a bit dazed in front of the fourteen corpses. They had killed them, but the problem was what to do next. How to dispose of the bodies? The absence of Duke Crotsfield would surely be on the lips of his close associates from the morning. They had to either plausibly stage the scene or completely erase the bodies from this world before daybreak.

Karen said the easiest excuse would be the betrayal of subordinates. Just say that factions trying to protect the Duke and those betraying him shot at each other and died, and the Duke got caught in the crossfire.

“But I don’t like that.”

Karen glared at the dead Duke with cold eyes.