Try Begging - Chapter 156.1
“….”
Time passed.
Leon finally noticed his burnt fingers on the stub of his cigar, snapping back to reality as he stared at the blank last page of the diary.
“This… did she see it?”
As Joe nodded, he covered his forehead with one hand and closed his eyes.
“D*mn it…”
He had sent her to her brother to confirm the truth about her origins and involvement in the honeytrap, only for her to uncover even more horrific truths. It was a wonder she hadn’t ended her life right there at such a terrifying truth.
Back in Chesterfield, he regretted not aborting the mission and bringing her along. He had known that her brainwashing was broken, yet he was blinded by his own desire to keep her in his world alone. He had failed to see the extreme torment she was experiencing at that moment.
Leon groaned at the shock she must have endured. He had wondered about her life during their time in her lodging.
‘…What kind of life did you live?’
And now, finally, that question was fully answered.
…Contempt, neglect, discrimination, and lies.
Grace Ridlle had lived in the midst of sheer malice.
And like a fish in water unaware of its surroundings, she had grown up oblivious to the evil encircling her. When she finally realized what she saw in her homeland wasn’t heaven but hell.
Those despicable demons… They had raised a child in the village with the vile intention of exploiting the enemy lineage and methodically brainwashing her.
It was as if it was a strategy to have dogs eat dogs and pigs eat pigs.
Perhaps from the beginning, they had raised her for such a purpose, hence why the rebel leaders had instructed her to seduce him. For them, the spectacle of the daughter of the woman who seduced and killed the father using her body to do the same to his son must have been quite a thrilling drama.
Leon couldn’t shake off the humiliation of having been used in their perverse games.
“Didn’t you know?”
He asked in a questioning voice as he studied Joe’s perplexed expression.
“I only found out a few years ago. As soon as I did, I washed my hands of it.”
Leon stopped Joe as he tried to take back the diary, pausing as he flipped through the pages and landed on a mention of Abington Beach.
[ Truthfully, I wish she would just disappear. That some kind-hearted family vacationing in Abington Beach would take her away. ]
It meant that the woman hadn’t been brought in with the intent to involve her in the mission that had tortured and killed Leon’s father. Angela Riddle couldn’t have anticipated him reading this diary and writing a falsehood in advance, so this was undeniably the truth.
[ Grace has changed. Blindly. ]
Leon pointed to these phrases and asked Joe.
“What happened after she returned from Abington Beach that changed her so blindly?”
Joe took a moment to recall, then answered,
“She was very ill with a fever. She’d deliriously say things sometimes…”
“Deliriously say things?”
“Uh… she would say, ‘Don’t abandon me, I’ll kill…’.”
“….”
“I don’t know who she wanted to say she’d kill.”
“….”
Joe added more, but Leon didn’t hear of it. He wasn’t there.
He was in the basement of his annex, at his manor on the other side of the kingdom. He remembered the night he had taken a leave from pressuring Geoffrey Sinclair to sign a false confession.
It was an ordinary night. After an intense affair, he tended to the exhausted woman and covered her with a blanket. He didn’t return to his own bedroom; instead, he sat in the dark, sipping whiskey and listening to the woman’s breathing as she slept.
“Huh…”
The woman began to sob.
Leon couldn’t believe his ears. The woman, once playful at the top of his head, was now crying. She never cried, no matter what he did back then.
Was she aware that he had left, crying because she was alone?
“I’m going to kill… don’t abandon me…”
It was her talking in her sleep.
What kind of sleep talk was this? Was she having a nightmare? He had simply laughed it off, thinking it was just a strange sleep habit. But now, it was clear that it wasn’t a nightmare—it was her reality.
“What exactly did those b*stards force… on that young girl?”
Under Leon’s questioning, Joe shook his head.
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