Try Begging - Chapter 159.1
Tonight, his bedroom looked unoccupied once again.
Bathed in the dim moonlight, her slippers lay meticulously placed at the foot of the bed as if arranged for her return.
Leon closed his eyes tightly and shut the door he had barely opened. As he turned his back, he found himself heading towards the torture chamber. The place here didn’t have its owner as well. It would be almost humorous.
Seated at the large table, he stared at the empty bed. His face showed no trace of a smile.
Owner, indeed.
This torture chamber was his, and yet to call Grace Riddell its owner? She was just a prisoner here.
Prisoner.
Now that he knew the whole truth, he asked himself again. That woman, was she truly a prisoner deserving of her crimes?
Back then.
From that perspective, she was clearly a prisoner—a rebel who had infiltrated a military facility and an officer’s residence with malicious intent. The severity of her crimes was irrelevant then. He had been eager to find any excuse to confine her here, blinded by carnal desires and a vengeful heart.
But he finally saw with clear eyes.
The woman who had silently endured betrayal by her own allies, who vomited in humiliation on the cold floor of the torture chamber, unsupported and alone.
The lonely woman who saved those who betrayed her yet received salvation from no one.
The wronged woman who was unduly punished was burdened even with crimes she didn’t commit.
“D*mn it….”
His own blind faith had clung to a wrongful belief.
[ The strategy of a dog eating a dog and a pig hunting a pig grows more repulsive the more I consider it. ]
She wasn’t the privilege of the revolutionary army.
“It was persuasion, not coercion.”
She hadn’t intended to infiltrate his mansion.
“Grace did not participate in that night at Abington Beach.”
She had been unaware of the impending tragedy that night.
Three voices intertwined in his head, refuting Leon’s misguided beliefs one by one.
‘…I know. I know that.’
Though he had subconsciously realized it, he had denied it. Now that he was belatedly aware, he could not avert his hollow gaze from the empty bed. After the tragedy at Abington Beach, she became a different person, as did he.
He had believed that only he bore the unhealing scars of that event, but that was just his arrogance.
“I’m truly sorry. For saying those terrible things, for making you like me and then cowardly running away, for tormenting you. I really…”
Her tearful face haunted him. Unconsciously, his fingers trembled as they reached toward the apparition.
“I liked you.”
And she was serious.
He should have wiped away her tears then, and he should have accepted her apology. Would it have turned her ‘liked’ into ‘love’? Back then, he was so engulfed in his own pain that he failed to feel hers. Now, belatedly, the pain he perceived haunted him like a ghost.
“I didn’t know you were Winston. I didn’t know they were trying to kill your father.”
“Back then, I lied about nothing but my name.”
“You might want to believe that, but I had no part in your father’s death.”
Yes, she spoke only the truth, and he said such things…
“The woman I liked was the pure and honest Daisy, not the deceitful Grace Riddell. Understand?”
She didn’t want to lie to him.
“You being silent makes you an accomplice, too.”
No, not at all. She had her reasons to keep silent.
“If you truly felt sorry, you shouldn’t have come here! At least you shouldn’t have brazenly infiltrated under me!”
That wasn’t her intention.
She didn’t want to come here. He had believed she lied and mocked him, but she never wanted to deceive or scorn him of her own will. In the end, she, too, was a victim, no different from him.
A victim foolishly burdened with it all alone.
Regardless of the circumstances, she was a criminal who infiltrated under him. She was indeed a member of the rebels, and it’s true she committed countless heinous crimes. Thus, the world might call her a criminal. But to Leon Winston, Grace Riddle was now nothing more than a scapegoat.
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