Translator: Nox

Chapter 98

98. False Savior

2024.01.06.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner……”

Elaine looked flustered and apologetic, not knowing what to do.

Olivia was just staring blankly at her cold teacup.

“I, I only heard about it recently.”

Only then did her eyes, as barren as the dry branches of winter, look across at Elaine.

“That day, the day you won the first match. The day there was a banquet at Riverside. Madam Lauren was a little too drunk. I heard it from her. I wanted to tell you sooner, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Olivia.”

“Madam Lauren too?”

Olivia’s face turned white.

How widespread was this scam?

Shame flushed Olivia’s face red.

“Yes. The story came up about the Marquess buying the Anne Gilbert necklace. I said something about how wearing it around your neck at the Rose Ball was the worst thing you could do. Madam Lauren said she couldn’t help it. It was the Marquess’s request.”

“!”

“He demanded that you be recognizable at a glance, even if your face wasn’t visible…… Madam Lauren said she only understood the meaning of it later. She really didn’t know that the photos would be taken and cause a scandal like that…… Oh, Olivia?”

Olivia felt dizzy, as if she had been hit hard on the back of the head repeatedly.

“Are you okay?”

Elaine, startled by Olivia’s paling face, grabbed her hand again.

Olivia pulled her hand away forcefully.

“……What did you just say?”

Words she couldn’t possibly believe brushed past her ears like the wind.

“I’m asking what you said.”

“……”

Only then did Elaine sense something was wrong.

From some point on, the conversation had been spinning like misaligned gears. A chill ran down her spine.

“Y, you said you heard it.”

Elaine stammered, looking at Olivia’s expressionless face. She was like a stranger, cold and changed.

Olivia didn’t bother to answer. Nevertheless, she could guess from Olivia’s reaction.

“……That’s not it.”

Elaine was startled and froze.

She was overwhelmed by the realization that she had made a rash judgment and a slip of the tongue, but the two had already crossed a river from which there was no return.

Looking back, the bridge was already on fire. Elaine squeezed her eyes shut.

Olivia’s breathing became rapid. Her ears were ringing.

She must have misheard.

She felt as if her nape had been seized in a sudden grip. Her cold hands trembled as if convulsing.

Yes, that must be it.

Olivia wanted to deny it with all her might. It was too absurd.

“Still…… no matter if he had such a plan…….”

Her voice choked. Olivia bit her trembling lower lip tightly and asked clearly.

“It’s no use if I don’t go to the ball, how……? I wasn’t even planning on going anyway…….”

Her voice, which had been trembling more and more, finally stopped. The blue eyes, with anger lying low, gradually became clear.

“Elaine.”

Elaine lowered her gaze.

“……Tell me it’s not true. Please.”

Tears streamed down Elaine’s cheeks, staining her thin silk dress.

“……I’m sorry. Olivia.”

‘Please create a special ball with Blanchett.’

There were no eternal secrets in the world.

The suspicious anonymous letter and a large check that arrived for Elaine that day.

The beginning of this nightmare started there.

The invitation to the Rose Ball.

‘I know the situation well, Blanchett. You absolutely have to go with me. Because someone made it so I have no one to go with.’

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry……”

Elaine sobbed.

Olivia listened to her confession calmly. Her blue eyes, like a window with the lights off, darkened.

The truth was more cruel than she had imagined.

A beloved lover, a friend with whom she shared friendship, the glory of a shining victory.

Everything was a lie.

In Elaine’s repentance, Olivia simply continued to exhale shallow breaths. She felt like she was suffocating.

Winston Manorhouse, where the sobs had subsided, was as silent as if it had fallen into death.

Yohan forbade the servants from entering the second floor where Olivia was staying. He stood blankly in front of the tightly closed door.

‘Please, leave. You too. ……You leave too.’

Olivia, who had banished the uninvited guests, was alone in the bedroom enveloped in silence.

Even Anne was turned away, and he couldn’t know what she was thinking now.

He wouldn’t be so anxious if he could at least hear her crying sadly. Beyond the door, it was as quiet as a mouse.

‘Eek!’

A maid’s scream echoing through Greathill sounded like a hallucination.

Yohan’s consciousness had already jumped from the study to Olivia’s bathroom in an instant.

Yohan slowly composed himself and watched the tragedy before him.

The water filling the ivory marble bathtub was spreading red on her white body, a gruesome sight as vivid as blood.

It was the day his wife first harmed herself.

Fear crept in.

“Olivia!”

Yohan shouted, pounding on the door with his fist.

“Open the door. Olivia!”

There was no response from inside.

“Olivia!!!”

Damn it, a rough curse escaped his lips.

Yohan, who had been banging on the door fiercely, turned around. He needed the key right away.

She wouldn’t do such a reckless thing again. If it was her, who had turned into someone else.

As he calmed his anxiously beating heart and was about to take his first step, the sound of neat heels echoed in the empty hallway.

“……”

Soon after, a long figure strode towards him from the end of the opposite hallway.

Yohan could recognize the other person with just the blurry outline.

Edgar Langerston Lancelot. No, now just Edgar.

He walked leisurely. Unlike his neatly combed black hair and tidy attire, his sharp face was deeply fatigued.

There were clear traces of his wild rampage last night.

Edgar stopped in front of Yohan. The blue-gray eyes, staring at Yohan’s right arm hanging in a sling, narrowed slightly.

“What a mess.”

Yohan glanced down at where Edgar’s gaze was directed, then raised his head and looked at him with eyes as calm as the night.

“Did you want to look pathetic?”

Edgar sneered.

“What a tearful attachment.”

Considering the sincerity of coming on his own two feet, not knowing it would become his grave, Yohan quietly listened to his nonsense.

Furthermore, he even let out a faint chuckle. Because he couldn’t deny his words.

A tearful attachment.

The unfamiliar emotion that might have become love had become an attachment for the sole reason that he realized it too late.

“Is it you?”

The blue-gray eyes, from which the laughter had instantly disappeared, flew like arrows and pierced him.

“Yes. It’s me.”

Yohan smiled slightly.

“Wait. I’ll get the key.”

“Did I hear wrong?”

Edgar tilted his head with a suspicious look at Yohan’s unsettling kindness.

“Wasn’t your goal her?”

“……”

Yohan stared at Edgar with indifferent eyes.

He was the one who detonated the bomb, knowing that she would be hurt.

Avoiding hell seemed remote.

So, he thought it wouldn’t be bad to give Edgar the moment of hell he would soon face with his own hands.

In that hell, Diane Brooke and Edgar. And me.

It wasn’t a bad combination.

The door opened.

Edgar stepped over the threshold with cautious steps.

Stopping for a moment, Edgar slowly scanned the bedroom, which was plunged into darkness and empty.

Passing over the bed with the canopy neatly tied down to the floor, glancing at the mirror of the dressing table where he was reflected, he headed towards the round tea table, when a soft breeze blew from the balcony.

Each time the moonlight transparently illuminated the silk curtains fluttering in the night breeze, a slender body appeared and disappeared.

Olivia was standing on the balcony.

Edgar let out a deep sigh and quietly captured the faint silhouette in his eyes.

What is she looking at? What is she thinking? In her ex-husband’s space.

Somehow, he felt a little empty.

Edgar walked across the carpet at a pace that was neither hurried nor slow.

He crossed the threshold of the balcony and stepped onto the moonlight pouring down, just about to climb the marble stairs, when a low, sunken voice seeped into the silence.

“Don’t come any closer.”

The thin curtain, blown greatly by the wind, brushed against Edgar’s cheek as he stood still.

It was at that moment that he had an ominous premonition that this confrontation would not end easily.

The voice, devoid of any emotion, was unfamiliar.

“I think we need to talk about the Tiara you returned. Will you show me your face?”

“……”

Olivia slowly turned around. Now she could see the man standing at the bottom of the balcony stairs properly.

A cold-blooded businessman. A person for whom everything in the world was a card to be used and discarded, and nothing more than a disposable item for a fleeting amusement.

How ridiculous must she have looked in such a person’s eyes?

“Why are you here.”

As if she didn’t know anything, as if nothing had happened, the man called her name with the same smile as always.

“Olivia.”

The softly articulated sound scratched at her heart very sweetly.

Olivia stared at the blue-gray eyes that were quietly looking up at her.

She resented the spring afternoon when they first met at the tennis court of the Lancelot Hotel.

Why did she kiss you that night when starlight shattered and poured down?

The more she went back in her memory, the more miserable Olivia became.

She truly loved you.

‘She said she couldn’t help it. It was the Marquess’s request.’

“You.”

Unable to control her momentarily wavering gaze, Olivia closed her eyes. Her chest felt stuffy, to the point of suffocation.

She felt like she could breathe a little easier if she poured everything out.

Olivia opened her eyes. A faint sadness lingered in Olivia’s blue eyes along with betrayal.

“You deceived me.”

“Because you wanted it.”

Moonlight slid down the smoothly extended bridge of his nose. Like that cold color, Olivia’s heart had cooled down.

“Have I ever wanted anything from you?”

“Anneblin Grace Britt.”

The sound of shoes climbing the marble steps seeped into the silence. Edgar went over the barrier that Olivia had built and murmured lowly.

“You wanted it, Olivia.”

“So…….”

Olivia bit her lip. The hand twisting the hem of her skirt trembled.

“So, you also bribed the reporters?”

“……”

His gaze still remained on Olivia as he took another step. The footsteps that had been approaching her stopped there.

“Was that…… was that also because I wanted it?”

Her face, which had become pale in a day, was whitened by the moonlight.

At the moment when Olivia’s eyes became empty, Edgar collapsed.

“False savior.”