The heat and desire radiating from his gaze were undeniable.

‘I want you, even if it’s just like this.’

It felt as if I could hear Diello’s voice. My mouth went dry, and the desire he had been hiding until now was touching my body directly.

‘Hot.’

The moment that thought crossed my mind, I opened my eyes wide.

‘Too hot.’

I felt like I’d had this thought before.

‘Forget about plans, rational thinking, all of that. If that doesn’t work…’

‘Then, you’ve fallen for the maddened Diello Argenta, say it.’

‘Say that I’ve clouded your wise mind.’

It seemed that wasn’t a dream. He had dug into me as if he had lost his mind.

However, he never touched me again. Until now, he had been like that. With such profound emotions hidden, he stood beside me with a gentle smile.

The moment he lost control of himself…

‘What about the Ferro?’

It was only when I asked about Ferro. In particular, the face that had clouded over when I proposed to extend the contract a while ago came to mind.

‘Until the Ferro appears.’

The words I suggested…

‘Until the real Ferro marries me.’

He changed it with a strange intensity and urgency. It would have been more natural for him to remain silent than to lie.

“…I was trying not to lie anymore.”

He let go of the hand that had been touching me and stepped back, bowing his head slightly.

“Every time Krua was worried about me, it felt like my throat was constricting.”

He wrapped his hand around my neck.

“I was going to tell you everything. Not like this, but…”

After a pause, he continued.

“I’m sorry for disappointing you, Krua.”

He deserved to be punished for deceiving her.

His voice seemed to pierce into me clearly. That voice and the desire he had for me were genuine.

However…

“…Where, where was the acting?”

To my question, Diello answered without avoiding my gaze.

“Loving you wasn’t acting, everything else was.”

It must be a lie.

Looking into his blue eyes, I lost my words. It felt like I was looking into a bottomless abyss.

“I couldn’t hide my heart, Krua.”

He smiled faintly.

That smile reminded me of something.

When the meeting was over…

‘Isn’t your acting so good that you’re almost a different person?’

‘I told you, I can’t act.’

I thought it was very humble of him to answer that way, though it wasn’t humility or a lie. According to him, he wasn’t acting like he liked me back then… because he truly loved me. That was why he didn’t need to act back then.

‘I told you, I can’t act.’

And true to his words… he failed miserably at acting when he got angry at Pentas Alors. It felt like the puzzle pieces were falling into place.

My head felt numb.

“….”

I looked at him. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t send him away. Because of that gaze, his shaky legs couldn’t quite reach me, and the eyes seemed to be pleading. It seemed like he would keep looking at me endlessly from that spot if I didn’t accept him.

That was how desperate and earnest his gaze was.

“I know you’re angry. But since you said to be honest…”

Diello exhaled a heavy breath.

“I can’t turn back. If you told me to go, I’d rather stay in front of you pretending to be deaf.”

What should he do?

I looked at him silently as he asked.

Then…

“….”

Diello approached me slowly at my gesture.

As I stopped him before he crossed the threshold and fully entered the bedchamber, he stopped immediately when I held out my hand.

“Promise me that you’ll only tell me the truth from now on.”

“I will.”

The answer came quickly. I shook my head slightly.

“If you can promise to tell me everything without hiding anything now, you may come over here.”

“….”

At my words, Diello looked at me silently.

“Would that be alright?”

Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?

However, Diello was asking me sincerely. I wondered if he had hidden a lot from me.

“It would have been a hundred times better to reveal everything from the beginning than to hide it and make me feel betrayed like this.”

“Of course.”

Diello smiled faintly at my words.

“Then, I will gladly do so.”

Thud.

His footsteps crossed the threshold and headed towards me.

As I watched him approach, I uttered.

“Then, from now on, speak and act without a single lie, without hiding anything.”

At my words, Diello stopped in front of me, looking troubled. Holding the string that secured the canopy, he said,

“…Then, I can’t stay still now.”

Rustle.

His fingertips slowly untied the knot that secured the canopy.

At the sound, like the brush of a garment, I instinctively realized what his words meant. I quickly held out my hand to him.

“…I told you not to hide it. I didn’t tell you to refrain from it.”

Seeing him up close, it seemed to come back to me more vividly.

…The hot night where we had been too close.

The warmth that had comforted me. The heat he had suppressed.

I shook my head desperately.

“I’m not over it yet.”

As I crossed my arms, Diello quietly sat on the edge of the bed. He then looked at me and opened his mouth.

“…Then I must apologize more earnestly.”

The next moment, he lifted the hem of my dress and kissed my lips. Normally, he would have kissed my hand or forehead, but this time it was different.

It was as if he was asking if he was allowed to go this far.

Our eyes met. I couldn’t push away the heat that was approaching cautiously, as if it would melt if I touched it. Because I… didn’t want to.

The moment I realized that, I let out a short breath.

Diello smiled beautifully at me.

I deliberately stacked pillows between him and me and fell asleep. And when I opened my eyes, Diello had not crossed that boundary. Instead, he was asleep with just his fingertips reaching out to me.

“….”

Without realizing it, I almost reached out to take his hand. His hand, which was out of the covers, looked cold.

I took my hand away as if it had been burned and looked forward.

“….?”

And then I noticed unfamiliar documents that hadn’t been on the table yesterday. The documents, which were placed as if on purpose towards the bed, seemed suspicious for some reason.

Rustle.

I carefully got out of bed so as not to wake him up, then went to the table and looked at the documents.

“…Land deed?”

To be precise, it was a document showing the history of bids for a certain place. I flipped through the papers without thinking and stopped moving instantly.

“Huh?”

Daisy Forest was the forest that I was going to buy, but someone else outbid me on it.

I checked the owner of the document.

One of my eyebrows went up involuntarily.

The bid amount below it was exactly ten times the amount I had offered. In other words, it meant that he bought it by adding one more zero. If the purpose of buying Daisy Forest, which was completely useless at this point in time, at such a destructive price…

‘How about this place?’

‘This is Argenta, you know.’

I remembered him pointing to the Argenta forest while folding the map one day.

“…Diello bought it?”

Somehow, it seemed strange that someone would suddenly interfere when the deal was almost done!

“Krua, are you awake?”

At that moment, the shameless culprit sat up in bed. Even if he rubbed his eyes and smiled beautifully, the fact that this man was the culprit who outbid me for my Daisy Forest and snatched it away didn’t change.

“Was it Diello who bought the forest?”

At my words, Diello smiled faintly.

“Yes, that’s…”

He pointed to the documents I was holding and said, “You told me not to hide anything, so I brought them to you.”

“….”

The face that smiled as he said that was nonchalant. Should I say this was shameless, or should I say this was innocent?

No, before that…!

“What is this?”

He knew I was going to buy it!

Diello rubbed his eyes repeatedly as if he knew how I felt.

“I bought it for Krua.”

He continued with an innocent face.

“Since it wasn’t in your name, I didn’t know that the forest Krua was going to buy was there—”

He stopped as he said that. Then he lowered his hand, which had been rubbing his eyes, and smiled awkwardly.

“Ah, you said I shouldn’t lie.”

Then, he smiled even more brightly at me as if he had no choice.

“I bought it pretending I didn’t know it was Krua.”

Wasn’t that the same thing?

“Let’s make it our villa. What do you think?”

—