The woman didn’t laugh at the joke.

The cold blue-green eyes and hot, bright red lips created a stark contrast. Although her face was colored with intense colors, it did not feel alive. She looked foreign as if bright red lipstick had been applied to a pale corpse.

“Try smiling a little.”

Leon, who thought it was because of her expression, tried to comfort her with various sweet words. However, when the eyes behind the white veil were cold, he muttered with a short sigh.

“…That d*mn old man.”

At that moment, the woman’s face became slightly distorted.

“…I’m tired. Party or anything, do whatever you want and get it over with quickly.”

In his ears, it sounded like she was telling him to f*ck her as much as he wanted and then leave quickly. The woman behaved like a prostitute as soon as she received a guest that she wanted to send away.

Even though he had planned to treat him like a lady just for today, she was about to break his patience.

With her body.

The woman started taking off her clothes before he told her to. The dress around her left shoulder was pulled down to below her elbow, exposing one of her chests. It was a blatant demand to bite, suck, and pounce on her.

However, what caught his eye was not the white flesh with the tip a glossy pink color, but rather the long arms with reddish, ridged scratches.

“Why did you do this?”

He turned her right arm so that he could clearly see the inside of the wound.

“Your body is mine, so I told you not to hurt it without permission.”

The man took ointment from the bathroom and applied it to Grace’s arm.

In her eyes, that kind act seemed like nothing more than sewing up a doll with a burst seam. No matter how expensive and pretty the things this man bought her and gave her, she only felt like she was being treated as a toy.

“I think you misunderstand…”

At the remark that seemed to refute what she was just thinking, Grace broke off her train of thought and stared at the man.

“I said seduction was dirty. I didn’t say you were dirty.”

The man could see clearly that this was a sign of self-harm and why she had hurt herself.

“So, don’t ever do something like this again.”

She pushed away the man who tried to hug her as if to comfort her when her pain was his own pleasure.

“You are dirty.”

His darkened face quickly became fierce, as if he was genuinely worried about her.

“Honey, can’t you see I’m trying as hard as I can to make you feel better?”

He clenched his teeth behind his softly curved mouth as though to prove that he was still showing patience and suppressing his anger.

“I never cater to other people’s wishes.”

It was because he didn’t need to, and he didn’t want to.

“Not my superiors, not even the King, ever.”

It was none of his business whether others disliked him or not. He only wanted to be useful and never wanted to be loved. Humans were just chess pieces to each other.

Still, he didn’t want to remain just a chess piece to this woman.

To him, Grace Riddle was both a chess piece, a means, and also the goal itself that he wanted to achieve by using all the means he had… and he foolishly hoped that she would also see him as an object.

Even though he knew that something like that would never happen.

He was bloody stupid.

“But even so, I try to please you. Don’t you know that I love you more than anything in this world?”

Grace couldn’t agree with the last statement. However, it was true that this man was watching her mood tonight and trying to comfort her. Of course, it didn’t work in his selfish and arrogant way.

“And the woman who shamelessly played with me twice. There is no fool like me in the world.”

“I agree with your last statement.”

The man made a clicking sound from the corner of his twisted mouth and muttered like a sigh that he would just let it go that far.

“Today is a bad day for both of us, so I’m saying that both you and I should stay within the boundaries. Can you please do that?”

She didn’t answer.

The only thing that came out was a question asking why he should come face to face with people who were in a bad mood and made them feel even worse when he opened his mouth.

The man who had been waiting for an answer let out a deep sigh, then lifted the clothes that she had pulled down onto her shoulders and straightened them out.

“Aren’t you thirsty?”

He asked softly in a scruffy voice, whether he was calming his anger or feeling resigned, then picked up a glass of champagne from the table and put it in her hand.

Grace, who had been staring blankly at the small bubbles bubbling out of the light golden liquid, hastily took a drink as soon as Winston clinked their glasses together. She asked the man who was watching her with worried eyes as he finished his drink.

‘…Was he doing that too?’

When the man locked her in the torture chamber, he only indulged in alcohol and s*x, like someone who wanted to forget something. Did he then, like her now, experience things where his faith was precariously tilted, and his feet trembled?

Just like that man, the only thing that could help her forget the shock was alcohol and s*x.

‘When did I become so corrupt?’

Among them, the one that made her feel less guilty was alcohol.

“Drink a little slowly.”

Grace took a gulp of the champagne. Every time she lifted her mouth from the glass, the man put a bite-sized piece of almond cake into her mouth. His act of pretending to be worried was so believable that if she had been a little less intelligent, she would have been fooled.

“Haa… I don’t know anything…”

“You don’t have to know. Forget it. Forget everything.”

Leon held the drunk woman in his arms and whispered the same thing sweetly into her ear.

She knew very well that even if he told her to forget, there was no way she could. Instead, he made her weak by reminding her to forget and protecting her, making her vulnerable… so that the egg, which was harder than steel, would break easily.

Leon held the depressed woman as he guided her and hummed a song along with the sound of a waltz faintly coming from outside the window. Then, he spoke to the woman, who closed her eyes as if she was falling asleep.

“Do you know how to waltz?”

Grace shook her head.

“I’ll teach you.”

When he tried to stand her up, much to her annoyance, Grace shook off the hand and stubbornly buried her face in his shoulder.

“I know how to dance. I just don’t want to dance with you.”

She was too drunk to realize that she was being hugged by someone she didn’t want to dance with.

“What a princess…”

The man’s tired sigh passed her ear.

“If you don’t like me, throw me away.”

This time, an astonished sigh poured out. The man tightened his arms around her body as if answering the words to throw her away and asked.

“So, did you and that b*st*rd dance a waltz at the engagement party?”

He was really jealous of everything. In fact, there was no way Grace didn’t know that it was the engagement, not the waltz, that this man was jealous of.

“I don’t know. It’s been so long I don’t remember.”

“When did you do it?”

“When I was nineteen.”

Seven years was not a long enough time to completely forget what happened at the engagement ceremony. Nonetheless, the man, whose attention was focused elsewhere, did not explore the loophole.

“Why did you do it so early?”

It was because her father passed away around that time.

The Riddle family’s right to speak in the leadership was weakened. As her brother, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and sat at the round table alongside the elders, became anxious, Grace also became anxious.

Now that she looked back, she wondered if it was true that everyone was equal.

‘…Another useless thought.’

Jimmy, who was already in love with her, proposed an engagement to Grace, who was worried about her remaining family members after her father passed away. They could send a message to everyone that the Riddle family was one family with the Blanchard family.

The Blanchard family occupied the most seats at the round table, so Grace’s engagement gave her brother quite a strong foundation.

She thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to marry him anyway, so she responded with gratitude, but in hindsight, a thought occurred to her.

‘Now that I think about it, Jimmy was condescending as if he was a great benefactor.’

When the two held hands and announced their engagement plans, the reaction of those around them was different than expected. There were not many people who readily congratulated her. While most people were not strongly opposed to it, they were careful to discourage it, saying it was too early.

Her mother even called Jimmy over and talked to him alone for over an hour, but he didn’t tell her until the end what was discussed.

And her brother, who had been enthusiastically in favor of their engagement, eventually urged Grace to break off the engagement and leave together when he left for the revolutionary army.

‘Wait a minute, all that dissuasion is actually because I’m a half-revolutionary soldier…’

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