Try Begging Novel - Chapter 30

“No… it wasn’t me…”

The sight of the man seated opposite him across the iron table in the torture chamber was unbearable. He cried like a child, his hands and feet, bound to the iron chair with handcuffs, trembling violently.

The interrogation hadn’t even begun. He was merely tied up. A little more intimidation, and he seemed ready to wet himself.

“Aargh!”

All Leon had done was pick up the pliers from the table. How faint-hearted Little Jimmy’s rat was; with just that, he thrashed in the chair, letting out an ear-splitting scream.

Leon’s mouth tasted bitter as he stared at the spy before him.

This was an insult. How little did the rebel leadership think of him to infiltrate such an untrained rookie under his command?

If they were going to send someone, they should send a proper adversary.

It was humiliating to have been played by such a low-level insult. It was a fact that he had been infiltrated by this greenhorn.

But who would have imagined? The Domestic Intelligence Department and the torture chamber. To send such a faint-hearted and utterly incompetent person as a spy into these core military facilities.

He couldn’t even remember his own fake identity. He was clearly an idiot who must have graduated at the bottom of the rebels’ ‘brainwashing school.’

“Hey, do you know something?”

Leon, speaking in terms easy for the imbecile before him to understand, offered him a lesson that would soon be his blood and flesh, though he wouldn’t have much of either left.

“That since the so-called ‘revolutionary government’ came into power, unemployment has skyrocketed, and the country has become even poorer than before.”

Leon leaned back in his chair, tapping the edge of the table with the pliers.

“They preached equality. Is this what your kind envisioned as equality, everyone becoming poor together?”

The man seemed not to be listening to his kind lesson. His deathly pale gaze darted with the pliers.

“Revolution, indeed.”

Leon wore a mocking smile as he stared at the man.

“You’re just a gang of thugs.”

This self-proclaimed revolutionary is utterly pathetic.

‘Fred Smith’ showed no indignation even when Leon insulted the revolutionary army.

“That driver.”

“…”

“You turned deathly pale and agitated. So you knew him.”

“…”

“I wondered why that old rat didn’t spill all the proper information… Now I see, it was your fault, wasn’t it?”

“Th-that’s…”

“Did you believe you would save him? Or were you afraid he would kill you if he talked?”

To be afraid of such a greenhorn. No sooner had he finished speaking than Leon and Campbell exchanged sneers. But the sneer vanished from his face in an instant.

“Four men died in the Govert raid. Two were crippled.”

“…”

“Because of the information you leaked.”

“Oh, no, sir. I, I absolutely didn’t do it. I’m, as the Captain said, just a, a rookie. I’m, I’m too stupid to have done anything.”

The man, who had remained silent when his group and ideology were insulted, suddenly blurted out words. And, whether he was truly as stupid as he claimed, he readily admitted to being a spy with his own mouth.

“The nature of your crime is very serious.”

He was a man who couldn’t think. And a coward who vomited at the sight of blood. A little intimidation would make him spill all the information he knew. Leon decided to use a simple method instead of complex tactics.

“At this rate, you’ll go to a camp and within a day or two…”

Leon trailed off, drawing out his words, and signaled to Campbell, who sat beside him.

“It’s a firing squad offense.”

At Campbell’s firm reply, Leon nodded, and the spy’s face turned even paler.

“I, I didn’t do it…”

The man whimpered like a child, opening and closing his mouth as if he had something to say, then began to beg for his life.

“P-please, s-save me.”

“Well. I’m not a man who knows mercy.”

Despair clouded the man’s face.

“But I know a good deal.”

Despair gave way to hope in an instant.

Leon assessed the man in his mind, who was pleading to do anything, his eyes disturbingly bright.

Is this guy a key figure in the rebels? Does he know where their base is? How much could he fill the gaps in the leadership’s intelligence? It didn’t seem very likely, but there was no harm in trying.

“So, Fred. Oh, is Fred your real name?”

The man nodded promptly. It was amusing how he, a dog sent to bite him, had instantly turned into an obedient one.

“The longer you drag this out, the higher the price on your life will be.”

Meaning, don’t resist, just readily confess what he asked.

“First, I’d like to settle an old score with Little Jimmy, man to man. Where can I find him?”

The man’s eyes flickered imperceptibly.

“…I d-don’t know that.”

At that moment, Leon’s indifferent expression changed.

He knows the location of the base. He had thought he was a small fry, but he turned out to be a big fish with crucial information.

“I don’t have much patience.”

Leon tapped the table again with the tip of the pliers. This man had vomited at the sight of him pulling out the driver’s fingernails, so this alone would work.

“P-please, anything else…”

Anything else, huh? There were many other things. For now, he would postpone Jimmy’s information until last and start with something smaller. What should he extract first?

Leon cast a questioning glance at Campbell.

“Little Riddle was in Winsford recently, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right.”

But the spy merely blinked stupidly upon hearing the name Little Riddle. Come to think of it, this was a nickname the military had given her, so the man might not know it.

“Jonathan Riddle Jr.’s sister. The last Riddle rat.”

The blood drained from the man’s face again. It was obvious from the way he lowered his head and avoided eye contact.

He knows.

Leon made no attempt to hide his triumphant smile.

“I have a lot to say to Riddle, as much as to Jimmy. I want to ask why she was scurrying around my land like a rat.”

At that moment, the man’s chest heaved even more dramatically. Seeing him twist his body, bound to the chair, and show even more discomfort, Leon’s lips curved into a long, twisted smile.

This man knows what mission that woman was on here.

He had thought sending a rookie was an insult, but it was a favor. It was like sending a file cabinet full of crucial leadership information, unlocked, in its entirety.

Did Jimmy Blanchard Jr. want to quit being the rebel leader? Perhaps he wanted to become a rural farmer, just like Jonathan Riddle Jr., abandoning all his parents’ expectations.

“If you hand over Riddle, I’ll spare your life. Lying that you don’t know won’t work.”

“I… absolutely can’t…”

“The deal is off.”

With a crash, the chair Leon had been sitting on toppled backward. The moment he sprang to his feet, the man flinched.

Leon roughly tossed the pliers onto the table, almost throwing them, and took off his officer’s jacket. As Campbell immediately rose to receive the jacket and hang it on the wall, he unbuttoned his cuffs and neatly rolled up his sleeves.

The rookie, who had watched him closely, couldn’t possibly be unaware that this was what he did when he personally engaged in torture. The man, sensing his fate, shook his head and wailed.

“P-please…”

“Alright, then. Now I’ll personally give you the training your Commander-in-Chief didn’t.”

When he picked up the pliers he had thrown on the table, the man curled his hands, hiding his fingernails, and struggled.

“Training to become numb to pain. When the day comes that you’re riddled with dozens of bullets, you’ll thank me.”

“Please! I didn’t do anything!”

The man still stubbornly uttered useless words.

“Someone else leaked the information…”

Then he suddenly stopped speaking, dropped his head, and his shoulders heaved.

“Then who did it? The ghost of the annex?”

A short, bitter laugh escaped Leon’s twisted lips.

“Do you remember that driver you smuggled out? I tied him to the chair you’re sitting on now and pulled out his fingernails one by one.”

As Leon painted the scene of what was about to happen to him, the spy trembled grotesquely, his face completely drained of color. When he even started to gag, Leon frowned.

“Ugh, h-huh, h-huh…”

“You remember, then. That’s right. You vomited in that corner that day. The maid had a hard time cleaning it up. I’m warning you, don’t vomit this time. I don’t want to clean up your filth until the very last day.”

He lightly tapped the pliers in one hand like a whip, circling the edge of the table towards the man. With each slow step he took, the man thrashed and twisted in his chair.

Useless.

“Aaaargh!”

With just one step left, the man began to scream. He would probably reveal Riddle’s location even before the pliers touched his first fingernail.

“No! I didn’t do it! I didn’t!”

“Grab him.”

Just as expected. As soon as the soldiers behind him grabbed his hands and pressed them down, the man opened his mouth.

“Sally! Sally Bristol!”

The moment a name that shouldn’t have been uttered burst out with a scream, the hand tapping the pliers stopped abruptly.

“…What?”

From that day forward, Leon Winston became a pathetic bastard, aroused by a maid—no, a spy.