Try Begging - Chapter 148.2
Having received the answer he wanted, Leon immediately turned and walked away. Was it just his imagination? The annex, seen for the first time in a while, now felt eerily like a mausoleum. He had never associated it with such a feeling before.
He passed through the iron gate, now unguarded, and opened the front door. The creak of the door and the sound of his footsteps on the stairs seemed emptier than they had a month ago.
As he headed for the third floor, his mind raced.
He needed to search the woman’s belongings again. A new setting might reveal something he had missed. But before that, he intended to wash away the fatigue and unpleasantness of the trip. Habitually, he opened the door to his room and inhaled sharply.
“Leon, are you happy?”
The woman’s sly question, asked as she last left the room, now echoed in his mind like a hallucination.
He gritted his teeth.
Now, he was seeing visions. The woman appeared with a hand on her belly, smiling softly, just like that morning. Behind that tender smile, she must have been mocking me.
He wasn’t so far gone as to reach out and try to grab the vision.
Leon walked past it and entered the bedroom.
The first things that caught his eye were the items the woman had left behind. Neatly placed at the foot of where she slept were her slippers, a half-knitted wool hat, a ring box, a crystal dish of chocolates, and a penthouse catalog.
“D*mn it…”
After auditory and visual hallucinations, now it was his sense of smell.
The familiar scent of the woman mingled with the citrus notes of the perfume he had bought her, flooded his senses.
Suddenly, his chest felt tight, as if something had lodged in his throat.
He fled to the bathroom, desperate to escape the traces of her that seemed to ambush him everywhere. Ignoring her lingering presence, he stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower.
As the water pounded down like torrential rain, his heartbeat thundered in his ears, almost drowning out the noise. Leon fought the urge to look back, convinced she would be there, shamelessly enjoying a bubble bath in his tub.
He had foolishly hoped, the moment he opened the door, that she might be there. No, he had that thought even as he opened the door to the annex. Surely, she must be somewhere within its walls.
To Leon, the annex had become synonymous with her presence.
Without her, it was as though the place had ceased to exist.
He battled the urge to search the entire annex, from the torture room in the basement to the maid’s quarters in the attic.
Did he really need to confirm what he already knew?
He was torturing himself.
Madman. Idiot. Even if he wasn’t delusional enough to believe in his hallucinations, he was losing his mind.
As he stepped out of the shower, trying to laugh it off, he caught sight of her in the mirror. She was glaring at him, lost in thought, as she had been while drying his wet hair. She snatched the towel from his hand.
No, he never had a towel in his hand.
Crash.
Large and small shards of the mirror tumbled into the white sink, followed by red drops that stained the fragments. Gripping the edge of the sink, he stared at the scattered blood and glass, breathing heavily.
No matter how deeply he inhaled, he couldn’t steady his breath.
He was truly losing his mind. And before he completely went mad, he had to face reality.
He was wrong.
From the start, he must admit that he was completely wrong. Whenever it came to Grace Riddle, things never went according to his plan, not because she was cunning but because he was arrogant.
First, that foolish maid could never be a spy.
Second, he thought he could tame her.
Third, he believed that their child would be the leash that kept her bound to him.
Fourth, he was certain that a woman abandoned by her comrades would return to him.
Fifth, he convinced himself that if he could remove the remnants of hatred that this d*mned world had deposited between them, he could set their twisted relationship right.
And sixth, seventh, an endless arrogance leading to countless misjudgments.
Blinded by his own desires, he deluded himself into thinking he knew her well. So, if he let go of his desires, would he finally be able to see her for who she really was?
…No, that wouldn’t happen.
Even if he abandoned all other desires, he would never be able to let go of his desire for her.
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