Seoryeong threw him onto the sofa and picked up the stick rolling on the floor.

“...From now on, answer what I ask.”

The instant she let out her real voice from where she’d been hiding it, he jerked his head up. Between his parted lips, his tongue twitched, red-hot, and the part of his face not wrapped in bandages crumpled helplessly.

Ugh...! Wooshin grabbed for the sofa leather and clapped one hand over an ear like a man whose eardrum had been blown by gunfire.

“Wait—don’t say—anything....”

He kept shaking his head, licking his lips like a man tormented by thirst. Seoryeong pretended not to notice his trousers growing wet again and raised the stick.

When she pressed the tip of the cane into his hard chest, she felt the heart pounding loudly underneath. She tightened her chilled grip.

It felt like she was finally ready to hear his excuses. The long, rabid fury had ebbed, and once her head cooled, she finally had the room to look into someone else’s life.

Like that day at the prow when she’d planned to put Kim Hyun in order and run to Lee Wooshin. She took a step to put something else in order.

“Tell me exactly what assignment you were given.”

“......”

“And for what reason you went so far as to marry me. I want to hear all of it now.”

Bent forward, his body shivered in fine tremors. She hadn’t laid a finger of violence on him, yet he drooled like a man under torture. His red tongue swept over his lower lip and slipped back in.

“Didn’t they teach you to tie a person up first, if you’re going to interrogate them?”

“...What—”

“Being treated like a prisoner is fine. Truth is, I fucking wanted that. But look around—curtain cords everywhere, robe sash tossed there, even a tie. Why aren’t you using any of it?”

“......”

“You used to do just fine with chains—why—”

“Shut up and answer what I’m asking!”

Seoryeong pressed a thumb hard to her temple, then burst out. She jabbed that marble-cut body as hard as she could, and Wooshin grimaced, forcing out the breath that had risen to his chin. She prodded him here and there as if holding a knife, and by accident grazed the nipple that jutted up; he smacked his own cheek—slap!—then clutched his knees like he’d snap them. The smell of wetness grew stronger, fuller, by the gulp.

At length he covered the bandages with interlaced fingers and began muttering rapidly in Russian. It sounded like curses, or perhaps a prayer to be faithful to his wife.

“To protect you.”

His taut abdomen rose and fell fast.

“To quietly cut down every force that tried to get close to you, to guard you from your father.”

“......!”

“That was my assignment. To keep the father and the daughter from ever meeting.”

His voice was ragged, but he confessed docilely, without even a flicker of resistance. With each line, Wooshin grabbed the stick that was stuck in him like an arrow, inch by inch, and tugged her closer.

“To keep you from being taken by Russia.”

“......”

“To be your safety.”

“......”

“To be your family.”

“Stop. That’s enough.”

“To love you. To be your everything because of that.”

“Enough—!”

Reflexively, Seoryeong swung the stick and cracked his shoulder. Ugh...! He groaned and shook again. She glared viciously at the obscene ridge rearing up in his trousers.

But Rigaï was the one who blew up Winter Castle. A savior to her and her siblings—yet to Yuri Solzhenitsyn, the criminal who wiped out a family in one stroke. And yet....

“You’re a Solzhenitsyn.”

She shifted her grip on the stick and this time aimed for his throat. Wooshin was Solzhenitsyn’s grandson, and she was Rigaï’s daughter. As things were originally, marriage was unthinkable; they should have been busy hating each other.

“You told me yourself before the Blast Corporation job—that client blew up that mansion.”

“......”

“And knowing that, you still married me?”

“Yes.”

The answer came without a beat of hesitation, and Seoryeong paused. She didn’t know whether to call it outrageous or say it felt like a coup de grâce.

One thing was clear: he wasn’t in his right mind either. Her resentful gaze cut sharp across him. But by now every last ember for shouting had burned out.

Half a year had been enough time for her to cradle and pity her wounded self. All she wanted now was to finally fill the blank she’d been too blinded by emotion to complete, and that alone was the only unresolved question mark between them.

Erase just that, and then... the scab would come off clean. She tightened and loosened her sore throat.

“Exactly what were you protecting me from?”

“Russia.”

“......!”

“And every force that tried to use you again.”

His jaw, carved like with a chisel, clenched firm. How much did Lee Wooshin know? Seoryeong lowered her head, childhood flashing past like a deathbed montage.

Would he know that I lived like a mouse in Winter Castle, and wore an iron mask that squeezed my skull? That the headaches gouged at my brain like hollows, and that I nearly died day in, day out to the trainees?

“...Must have been quite a trial to have to protect Rigaï’s daughter.”

At that, Wooshin gave a short laugh. His nape shone with cold sweat.

“The trial was how pretty you were.”

His brow was savagely twisted with lust. The lips that always seemed so rigid parted bit by bit.

“How a twenty-four-year-old still smelling of milk could be so damn pretty. After I married Han Seoryeong, I learned for the first time that life could be peaceful. Kim Hyun is a man you made, a man you completed.”

His front wasn’t just surging; it looked ready to burst. She could feel the boiling heat from here, but Wooshin never laid a hand on the thing pounding between his legs—he only sat with his thighs spread. When a wave of unbearable frenzy hit, he thudded his own crotch with a fist.

“And Lee Wooshin...”

Panting, he pressed the back of his head to the sofa. Blood beaded on his bitten lip; the misery of it was plain. He panted like a man surrendering to desire, then squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath.

“...as you see, is a failure.”

Each time he ground his fists into either groin, his hard waist jerked, and cold sweat dripped. He clawed at the expensive, fine sofa leather with his nails, turning his neck—red-hot like a bar of iron—slowly. Half out of his mind with arousal, he still never left the sofa’s bounds. Now and then a sobbing moan made Seoryeong’s belly quiver.

He could have snatched her arm and pinned her with one reach, yet Wooshin seemed like a convict bound tight in invisible chains.

“Excuses are so pathetic it’s even more fucking awful...”

He almost grabbed the buckle that looked ready to snap, then clenched his fist instead.

“You scare me now—because you don’t even get angry anymore, and you don’t bind me.”

“......”

“Restraint is the basics of interrogation, but seeing you not even do that...”

“......”

“It feels like your heart has gotten that light—and that terrifies me.”

“Did you know Ju Seolheon is my birth mother?”

“What?”

The rough voice snapped out, threatening. He lurched up, then collapsed again. She had asked it on purpose—something that could cut off his surging emotions like a blade—and he wore a face like she’d stabbed him in the vitals. Wooshin grabbed her in a panic like a man being strangled. His palm clung sticky-hot, like a live volcano.

“Who the hell said that kind of bullshit?”

“I came knowing all of it.”

“......”

“Tell me. Was I born as one of Ju Seolheon’s operations? Did Ju Seolheon approach Rigaï on purpose to conceive me, then dump me in the Sakhalin convent? And so I...—”

Seoryeong couldn’t finish. When she’d heard it from Kiya, it had felt unreal somehow, like chewing old, desiccated meat.

Strangely, trying to say it in front of Lee Wooshin made her throat feel like it was melting. It felt like needles through every inch of her; she couldn’t move.

As her breath grew rough, Wooshin staggered upright and collapsed around her, holding her tight.

His hands trembled like a patient’s, but he kept stroking her frozen back with ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) steady warmth.

“Tell whoever it is I know what bastard he is—and to shut his mouth. You were born out of love.”

“......!”

A lie you could see a mile away. Another of Lee Wooshin’s ridiculous lies, right in front of her eyes. God, she was sick of the lies.... She let out a cold snort.

Kiya was unspeakably vile, but he wasn’t someone who lied as easily as eating, like Lee Wooshin. Looking back, he always said things that hovered close to the truth, so Kiya’s revelation had to be true to some extent. And yet....

“Don’t shake. You’re still somebody’s baby, somebody’s one and only love. If you hadn’t been born into this world, I’d have gotten tired of waiting and waiting, and gone anywhere to find you.”

“......”

“I might’ve picked a bone out of my own bones to make you.”

She didn’t know what he was angry about, but the sight of his mouth set hard made the hunger in her ease. His warm, gentle hand traced along her eyebrows. It made her whole body itch unbearably, and her chest ache.

Seoryeong looked up at him through a strange heat. This was an interrogation, clearly, and yet every line sounded like a confession. When she pressed her chest to him, the man soaked himself to the groin. Viscous semen stretched and seeped down in a vertical line, wetting the linen.