Try Begging Novel - Chapter 97

“You must sign this by today.”

Lieutenant Collins’s words, spoken the moment Leon sat down at his desk in the Domestic Intelligence Office, were exasperating.

“Your attitude in requesting a signature from your superior is problematic.”

“But Colonel instructed it…”

The lieutenant stood stiffly, not bowing his head, and used the Colonel as an excuse.

While Leon had been neglecting the department lately, avoiding the quagmire of Sinclair, Lieutenant Collins had stepped up and handled the tasks he should have done. That is, things like Sinclair’s torture and the fabrication of false confessions – suicidal acts, in other words.

That clueless idiot, showered with praise by the Colonel, was strutting around as if he were the head of the Domestic Intelligence Office.

It was time to restore discipline.

Leon crushed his half-smoked cigar into the ashtray. With his rough strength, the cigar crumbled, spilling its contents and emitting a foul odor. He even spat on it, then gestured with his eyes.

“Empty it. And the trash can too.”

The lieutenant’s face, which had been gleaming with arrogance, crumpled at being ordered to do menial tasks fit for a private or a cleaner.

“If you still don’t understand after this, it won’t end so lightly next time.”

In the military, rank was law. To disregard that law, one needed wealth and power exceeding at least the Winston family.

The lieutenant, who possessed nothing superior to Leon, finally bowed his head and left with the ashtray and trash can.

Leon roughly snatched a single sheet of paper from the top shelf of the document cabinet and placed it before him. It was Jeffrey Sinclair’s confession, which he had delayed signing until now.

Chapter 97 (continued)
He opened his pen case and took out his fountain pen. The moment he pulled off the cap, a familiar voice asked him, “So, are you just going to stand by and do nothing?”

As the dispirited teal eyes began to flicker before him, Leon gritted his teeth.

‘Do they think I’m a god?’

Click. The fountain pen’s cap closed. He left his seat again. The confession, left behind, still had a blank space for the head of the Domestic Intelligence Office’s signature.

Grace leaned against the desk drawer, looking up at the man seated in the chair.

Leon Winston. He had finally returned to his usual cruel, cold, and despicable self.

She couldn’t describe how anxious she had been for the past week. She didn’t know why she felt uneasy when he wasn’t his usual self.

Worry?

Madness.

No, she was merely uncomfortable.

Winston had practically lived in the torture chamber all last week.

He even slept there. That single bed was too cramped for his large frame alone, let alone for two people. She hated having to cuddle and spoon him.

So, after he fell asleep, she secretly slipped out to find a place to sleep and spotted the bathtub. Lying in the hard, cold bathtub wrapped in a blanket, she felt pathetic. She had just managed to fall asleep after lamenting her situation when—

Splash.

Cold water poured onto her face. After the stream stopped, she opened her eyes to see Winston standing there, holding the faucet.

“Ah, sorry. Didn’t know you were here.”

It was a brazen lie.

Anyway, the past week had been exhausting because of him. So much so that she wondered if ‘A Week with Leon Winston’ was a newly developed torture method.

When she asked if he wasn’t working, he replied that he had taken leave. In her year working as a maid here, she had never seen him take personal leave, except for summer vacations or important family events, so she wondered if she had misheard.

Winston had confined himself to the torture chamber and done only two things:

Alcohol and sex.

It seemed suspicious, so she asked what was going on, but then she had to spend three hours gasping beneath him. Only then did her intuition tell her: it was because of the Sinclair matter.

‘Does that man have a conscience?’

Grace suddenly recalled a question he had asked while drunk:

“Grace Riddle, have you ever imagined a life without you?”

She was just about to recall the un-Leon-like words that followed when a large hand suddenly reached under the desk. In his palm rested a dark red cherry topped with white cream.

What kind of treatment was this?

Grace narrowed her eyes, glaring at the cherry.

If he was going to treat her like a dog, he should at least give it to her in a dog bowl. On days when he took her for “walks” in the office, he would feed her meals by hand, piece by piece.

When the man extended his hand again, Grace reluctantly lowered her head. She took the cherry in her mouth, but his hand did not withdraw. Instead, he reached out and smeared the cream from his palm onto Grace’s lips.

It meant she was to lick his palm clean. Crunch. She clenched her teeth, and the cherry, caught between her molars, burst, spilling its tart juice.

Grace looked up, glaring, and slowly licked his palm, where the lines were clearly visible. Her tongue, drenched in cherry juice, left a dark red trail.

It looked like a bloodstain. She felt a sense of satisfaction, as if she had bitten the man and made him bleed. Though it was all an illusion.

Ptui.

Leon furrowed his brow. The woman spat the cherry pit into his hand. Just when he thought she was being obedient, she was trying to get the upper hand again.

“Sour. I like my cherries sweet.”

Yes, it was always like this. If only she were as easy as her father.

“Eat what you’re given.”

The cherry pit was tossed onto a plate with a dull clatter.

“Picky for a dog.”

Even though he spoke so gruffly, the cherries on the table tomorrow would surely be sweet. Grace already knew.

Leon pressed his palm against the woman’s cheek, rubbing it, as she pouted dramatically, playing the fox.

“Ugh… disgusting…”

The woman, her face stained with cherry juice, rubbed her cheek with her sleeve. As her pouting lips turned into annoyed ones, he smiled.

Lunchtime was over, so his time with the woman was also finished. Leon pushed the empty plate aside and picked up a thick bundle of documents.

It was a collection of all documents related to the Jeffrey Sinclair case. This included evidence that the case was fabricated.

Leon placed the morning’s newspaper article on top.

[Jeffrey Sinclair Imprisoned in Govern Penitentiary]

As if part of a strategy to ruin the Sinclair family’s reputation, a large photograph of Jeffrey Sinclair in a prisoner’s uniform and handcuffs was plastered across the front page of the newspaper.

There was no trace of the refined gentleman. He looked like a rough, haggard criminal to anyone who saw him.

If this went wrong, Leon could end up looking like that too.

As he gazed at the tired eyes in the black-and-white photograph, he suddenly recalled the Colonel’s desperate gaze as he tried to prevent him from taking his son away.

Leon let out a short sigh.

In the end, he didn’t sign and took a week of sick leave. During that time, Lieutenant Collins, acting head of the Domestic Intelligence Office, signed the false confession.

Leon Winston’s signature was ultimately not on the confession. It was a reckless act, defying the demands of the Grand Duke and the King.

In truth, it was the best and worst choice Leon Winston, who judged everything in terms of profit and loss except for the woman under his desk, could make.

It was the best in that his future self could avoid trouble, but the worst in that his current self would face oppression. The pressure would not cease until the monarchy fell.

Leon laughed self-deprecatingly.

A royalist who wished for the fall of the monarchy. What had happened to him?

“I can’t understand the Captain’s recent behavior.”

Leon suddenly recalled what the Colonel had said on his first day back at work after a week.

“It’s like he’s a different person.”

Indeed. How had he changed?

He cast his gaze under the desk. The woman, who had been idly flipping through the confidential documents he had given her to read, leaning against the drawer wall, looked at him with bewildered eyes.

No matter how much he thought about it, there was no other reason than this woman.

Yet, he couldn’t kill her and return to his old self. If killing her was the only way, he didn’t want to go back.

He still didn’t think he had a conscience. He, who ambiguously stood somewhere between hero and villain in this matter, was merely a selfish human being.

Like a man who only calculated his own profit and loss, Leon was busy calculating in his head even now, holding a dangerous secret that could bring down the kingdom.

His gaze kept drifting towards the woman as he weighed countless paths and their destinations. Among the myriad paths, the most irrational, arduous, and “un-Leon-Winston-like” narrow path kept flickering before his eyes. At the end of that difficult path, which bypassed revenge and all duties, stood only this woman.

That alone was tempting enough.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it was impossible before her brainwashing was broken.

He neatly stacked and organized the documents into a large brown envelope. He decided to put it on hold for now and was locking it in the bottom drawer of his desk when—

Someone knocked on the door from outside. The woman instinctively hid deeper under the desk.

“Enter.”

He thought it was the maid who had come to clear lunch, but it wasn’t.

“Leon.”

What brought Mrs. Elizabeth Winston, who detested the annex surrounded by hideous barbed wire, here?

“I am on duty.”

He pulled out one of the files stacked on his desk and opened it, as his mother sat in the opposite chair and began to complain.

“If you’re at the mansion, can’t you at least eat with us? Why are you always so busy? You act as if you do everything in the world by yourself.”

“I am doing almost everything for the family by myself.”

Grace huddled, clutching a cushion, holding her breath.

‘Mrs. Winston, it’s been a while.’

After repeated failures, she no longer saw anyone entering the office as an opportunity to escape. Unless the annex door was wide open before her eyes and someone pushed her to flee, she couldn’t muster the courage.

She had even almost died the day the inspector came.

“You don’t think I can kill you, do you? You’re right, I can’t kill you. Not with a sane mind. But what happens when you’re taken from me? A person who loses their mind might do anything. Be careful.”

To make matters worse, she had been harshly tormented all night. It had been a long time since her limbs were tied to the wall, and the marks of ropes and chains hadn’t faded from her body for days.

It was the moment the unspoken truce, maintained under an implicit agreement with that man, was broken.

Grace had somehow adapted to this false peace. Now, he no longer interrogated her. As long as she let him use her body as he wished and sacrificed her freedom of movement, he was satisfied. On truly good days, he would even grant one of Grace’s requests.

But what if she was discovered here and sent to headquarters or a detention center?

She would suffer the same things she had endured from Winston to achieve this contradictory peace, but from other men. Perhaps, even after enduring that, a peace like this might never come.

She had unconsciously given up hope that someone would rescue her during transport. All she had acquired in the meantime was resignation.

“Leon, what I mean is, you should show some sincerity in preparing for your engagement.”

Engagement? Had he finally decided to get engaged?

Grace’s thoughts were interrupted when a sound she had never heard from him came from Mrs. Winston’s lips.