Try Begging Novel - Chapter 3

Throughout the cleaning of the annex office, a persistent gaze raked over Sally’s body. It felt like a cheap nylon brush scrubbing every inch of her.
The gaze, at times, felt ticklish, then suddenly stung. She involuntarily shivered.
“Captain, if I’m disturbing you, perhaps I can clean later?”
She turned around and asked politely. Winston had already shifted his gaze to the documents on his desk.
The tip of the cigar clenched between his fingers was chewed. He held a golden lighter in his other hand, as if he had forgotten to light it.
“No, continue. I’ll do my work, and you do yours.”
He uttered the lines from the script in Sally’s head, his eyes cast down at the documents. Unable to leave anyway, she turned her back again and wielded the mop. The chewed cigar tip kept lingering in her mind.
‘What was he imagining chewing while looking at me?’
Suddenly, the tips of her breasts, hidden beneath her thin bra, stung with a sharp ache.
A filthy pig of the monarchy.
She wanted to leave immediately but couldn’t. An important mission remained. The only comfort was the two soldiers standing like statues at the door.
She stood on a low chair and slowly wiped the bookshelf. Her calves, now closer to his eye level, kept itching.
‘Should I just crouch behind the sofa and clean a non-existent carpet stain?’
As she pondered, someone knocked on the door. With Winston’s permission, the door opened, and Lieutenant Campbell walked in and saluted.
“Captain, the convoy to Governe is scheduled for 3 o’clock.”
At the news that the convoy to the prison was coming, Sally breathed a sigh of relief. Uncle hadn’t betrayed them. Identifying double agents in advance was also part of Sally’s mission.
“Hmm… there’s still time. We shouldn’t let our guest get bored, should we?”
Bloodthirsty demon. May you fall to the hell you deserve.
Sally cursed inwardly at the mention of another interrogation.
“Yes, I’ll prepare immediately.”
As Campbell left, Sally approached Winston’s desk. Her excuse was to empty the ashtray, but that damned bastard still hadn’t lit his cigar.
He lifted only his gaze, his head still bent over the documents. Sally smiled brightly and picked up the tray with the empty soda bottle. As she calmly walked towards the door, carrying the bucket of cleaning supplies and the tray, her chest stung once more.

The screams leaking from the torture chamber door ceased.
Soon, Fred emerged, his face ashen. He was clenching his teeth, trying to suppress his nausea. He took the prisoner’s uniform from Sally’s hand and went inside.
Sally removed the cotton balls from her ears and put them in her pocket. The letter inside her pocket rustled.
The moment the door reopened, she conspicuously held the bucket full of cleaning supplies in both hands. A group of soldiers poured out, bowing to Sally.
In the middle of them was her uncle, looking more haggard than at lunchtime. Dressed in a prisoner’s uniform, he was being dragged like livestock, his limp hands and feet shackled.
Sally, reading the fear in his trembling eyes, sent him a resolute gaze, devoid of any smile.
‘The rescue team will surely come.’
She immediately averted her gaze as she saw the hem of a gray coat. Winston, emerging from the torture chamber, exuded the aura of a man leaving a brothel or a cabaret.
His face was refreshed, as if he had satisfied a pent-up desire.
“Well then, I’ll be counting on you again today.”
He lightly patted Sally’s shoulder and disappeared down the corridor. She immediately began cleaning the torture chamber.
The mattress had to be changed every time a ‘guest’ left. She carried the mattress, soiled with blood and filth, out into the corridor, then struggled to pull a new one from the storage room and place it on the bed.
Managing the torture chamber was the most arduous and repulsive task in the mansion. Everyone shunned it, but it also offered a high weekly wage.
For this reason, Ethel, a middle-aged maid with a gambler husband, had been in charge for several years.
When Sally first infiltrated the mansion as a maid, she was assigned to attend to Mrs. Winston. Dress shopping, ladies’ tea parties, and Mrs. Winston’s whims and gossip—it was truly a job with no intelligence value for a spy.
So, after building a reputation as a hardworking girl among the employees, she feigned financial hardship due to her ailing mother.
Sure enough, Mrs. Belmore, the head maid, quickly assigned her to the annex. A hardworking maid was rare, but a maid in financial straits was dangerous. Mrs. Winston’s dressing room was full of expensive items, after all.
Thus, she and Ethel amicably shared responsibility for the torture chamber, but Ethel began to suspect Sally’s frequent lingering around the area.
“If you’re trying to curry favor with the Captain that way, stop it. Do you know how many girls have been chased away for loitering around the Captain?”
Fortunately, Ethel was completely unaware of Sally’s true intentions, but it interfered with her mission. So, Sally used her wits to get rid of her.
“My distant relative became rich overnight from that, you see. I was so envious. When he occasionally visits our hometown, he gives my mother a generous sum for her hospital bills, and I wonder where that old miser went. He’s absolutely dazzling from head to toe…”
Ethel, burdened by endless debt due to her gambler husband, her eyes widened when she heard about the New World gold mines.
It wasn’t entirely made up; Sally’s aunt’s family had indeed become rich overnight from gold mining development in the New World. Now, they lived lavishly in a skyscraper in a major city across the ocean.
Her aunt occasionally sent Sally letters, asking her to come live with them, but she always refused.
They trampled on the weak and climbed higher and higher. They accumulated wealth stained with blood, dressed splendidly, and ate sumptuously. In the class created by money, they seemed no different from the monarchy’s pigs.
The world Sally’s deceased parents, and by extension, her comrades whom she considered family, dreamed of was not like that.
“That ideal will grow from the blood of the revolutionaries and bear fruit.”
Sally repeated the slogan she had often chanted since childhood.
Literally, the blood of the revolutionaries was caked between the black stone floor tiles. As she scraped it with a brush, the letter in her pocket rustled.
“I wish Sally were my daughter.”
Mrs. Appleby often lamented to Sally, who waited for five o’clock every afternoon.
“My daughter only sends letters on Easter and Christmas.”
Whenever the mail coach arrived at the Winston mansion, Sally would unfailingly rush out and hand over a letter. Everyone thought it was a letter to her mother in the hospital. Only she and Peter, the mailman, knew that a secret code for her comrades was hidden within the kind and ordinary words.
Today’s letter contained a hidden message that her uncle would be transferred to the Governe prison.
The convoy had already left. She felt she should call the branch immediately, but the mansion’s phone might be tapped. Peter would make the call as soon as he returned to the city.
It was a five-hour drive from here to Governe prison. There was enough time for the rescue team near Governe to plan and prepare a rescue operation. Her uncle would probably be back in the arms of his comrades before even reaching Governe city.
Sally emerged from the torture chamber, which reeked of disinfectant and bleach. Further down the corridor, around the corner, was the laundry chute that extended to the top floor of the annex.
She opened the chute and filled the basket with blood-soaked laundry. Just as she was about to carry the full basket to the main building’s laundry room.
“Miss Bristol.”
At the sudden voice from above, Sally dropped the basket. The wicker basket clattered to the floor.
“…Captain?”
When had he arrived? She hadn’t heard a single footstep.
A hot breath touched the exposed nape of her neck as she turned her head. Goosebumps prickled her arms.
His nose burrowed beneath her sparse stray hairs, tracing her earlobe. As Winston inhaled, burying his nose in her skin, her legs trembled. She wanted to escape, but she was trapped between cold walls and a hot wall of flesh and blood.
“Sally, you smell good.”
All that emanated from her was the smell of blood and disinfectant.
He took another step closer. Trapped between the wall of the chute and Winston’s chest, Sally’s heart pounded convulsively.
‘Dangerous. This is dangerous.’
She pushed against the wall with both hands, and a hard object poked her between the buttocks. She easily recognized it was not a pistol. The heat, unhindered by layers of fabric, wantonly warmed Sally’s tender skin.