95 - The Evil Husband (15th Anniversary Edition) Chapter 95
95
===
It didn't take long for Aileen, exhausted from being tormented, to fall asleep as if fainting.
After confirming that Aileen was sound asleep, Cesare took off his uniform and spread it on the floor. The medal symbolizing the glory of the Empire was laid on the ground.
It was a sight that those with strong patriotism would be horrified to see. But Cesare didn't care. To be precise, he didn't feel the need to pay attention to such things as medals.
Rather, as if that alone wasn't enough, he took off his shirt and laid it down as well. Only then did he lay Aileen on top of it. Cesare wiped Aileen's wet face with a handkerchief and then stood up.
Before he knew it, the sun had passed its zenith and was beginning to set. As the midday sunlight streamed into the house, the leaves outside the window cast mottled shadows on his solid upper body.
His body, contoured by light and shadow, was covered in scars. The scars etched into his beautiful naked body were like decorations, but they were traces of having crossed the boundary between life and death. They were evidence of a difficult past, having been drafted as a child soldier early on and rolling around on the battlefield.
Cesare slightly frowned at his reddish eyes, stained by the traces of intense lovemaking. After cracking his neck for a moment, he dropped the cumbersome belt to the floor and roughly straightened his lower garments. Then, with a dry look, he moved his feet.
When he opened the closed back door, the old hinges creaked and groaned unpleasantly. Cesare glanced back at Aileen.
But this level of noise couldn't wake Aileen, who was deep in slumber. Only after confirming that Aileen was sound asleep did he open the door completely.
The door, which was half-open, stopped with a thud, caught on something. Cesare looked out through the opening. He could see a wriggling shape beyond the door.
A terrible stench emanated from the huge lump of filth. After staring down at it indifferently for a while, Cesare looked at the hand protruding towards the door. The hand, covered in dirt and blood, was desperately wriggling.
The noise he had heard a moment ago must have been the sound of gnawing at the door with broken fingernails. If he had pulled out all the fingernails, there would have been nothing to bother him. As he briefly thought, a clumsy groan came from the filth.
"Huu... eugh... Aeeugh..."
It was a sound close to an animal's cry, difficult to call human speech. Cesare kicked the hand with his foot and stepped outside, closing the door.
He looked down at the thing squirming like a bug. It looked up at Cesare with tears in its eyes. The mouth, constantly gaping, was empty with a black hole where the tongue should have been.
He had never lied to Aileen. Lucio was clearly alive.
Even though his tongue was cut off, his arms and legs were riddled with bullets, and he was stripped naked and left in the forest.
He had been used as a practice target and thrown into the forest, but he had crawled all the way here, determined to live. Cesare stared at him with indifferent eyes as he shed thick tears.
He was a guy not worth dealing with. In fact, he was a trivial piece of trash whose existence he wouldn't have even known if it weren't for Aileen.
He didn't want to make a fuss and wake the sleeping Aileen. Cesare placed his foot on the back of its neck. And he pressed down steadily.
With a snap, the body that had been writhing and thrashing became still as bones broke. Cesare removed his foot after confirming that its life was over.
"...I don't know anything, so I almost misunderstood Cesare again this time."
Aileen said it was a misunderstanding, but she was looking at the essence properly. Even if Lucio had been innocent, Cesare would have framed him and dealt with him.
Because he was an eyesore and in a convenient position to use. After dealing with him, he would have moved on to Aileen without any explanation. There was no need to show her the unpleasant side of things.
He wanted Aileen to see only what he allowed her to see. Even if Aileen were to experience something frightening, he wanted it to be a fear given because he had allowed it.
But Aileen no longer wanted to be protected. She had been quietly staying within the fence he had created, but now she was starting to try to see what was outside.
Not knowing how to kill a person, let alone injure or subdue them. The most cruel thing she had ever done in her life was picking flowers or grass, yet she was peeking outside the fence to protect Cesare.
Still feeling insecure even though he had given her the position of Grand Duchess...
Cesare realized that he had made a similar mistake to the past. Instead of going inside, he leaned against the back door.
He fumbled in his pocket, took out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth, but didn't light it. He just kept it in his mouth and waited for the memories of the past he didn't want to recall to disappear from his mind.
After ending the war and returning to the capital, after the massacre of civilians in the tavern.
Cesare, who had killed all the guys who had defiled Aileen's corpse, was placed under house arrest. It was a light punishment compared to the act of killing dozens of imperial citizens for no reason.
Cesare was pleased with the house arrest ordered by the Emperor. In fact, Leone had also decided that Cesare needed time to clear his head, so he issued the punishment.
The nobles protested, but the plausible shield of being a hero who had ended the war suppressed the parliament.
Throughout the period of house arrest, Cesare searched for traces of Aileen. He couldn't recover even a single piece of the already torn corpse. All he managed to obtain after his efforts was a portion of the belongings Aileen had left behind during her lifetime.
Even that, he didn't get everything. Because Aileen's biological father, who had been stripped of his title and demoted to a commoner, had sold everything that could be turned into money and then ran away.
The cozy Brick house had become no different from a derelict house. The orange tree had been uprooted and disappeared from the garden, and all of Cesare's gifts that Aileen had cherished were gone.
Cesare stared at the Brick house, which had lost its previous fresh vitality, and then checked what he held in his hand.
It was a platinum Pocket watch with a broken glass plate.
The watch that Aileen had kept until the last moment was recovered from a pawnshop. It was a broken watch that had passed through several owners in the meantime. The latch was loose and often opened on its own, and it had stopped working, so he couldn't check the time. But Cesare always carried the watch in his arms.
After holding it for a moment, he put the Pocket watch in his pocket and slowly entered the Brick house. The door with the broken doorknob opened on its own with just a slight push.
The inside was a mess. As if debt collectors had raided the place, there wasn't a single decent piece of furniture. Hazy dust floated in the air, catching the sunlight. Cesare slowly went up to the second floor.
The second floor was no different. Still, some items remained in Aileen's bedroom. The books were all gone, but the waste paper that couldn't be turned into money remained. Things like Aileen's diary.
Aileen had enjoyed observing and recording things since she was young. The diaries she had been writing since she learned to write were quite extensive.
Cesare knelt down and took out the diary from the bottom shelf. And leaning against the window frame, he read them one by one.
There were some parts that were old and faded and couldn't be read, but he didn't skip over them and read every single word. He followed the entire life of the young Aileen as she grew up without missing anything.
The process of a ten-year-old child meeting The Prince and falling in puppy love, suffering from a fever alone and growing up, awakening to sexual love for the other person, becoming frustrated with the pain of love, and finally giving up.
Aileen's feelings were written unfiltered in the diary, which obsessively recorded everything about Cesare. Sometimes, the painful feelings were so overwhelming that she only wrote briefly.
As she got closer to the present from the past, Aileen's diary became more gloomy. The deep depression reached its peak when Cesare went to war to conquer Kalpen.
Aileen couldn't dare to resent the other person who had left her coldly without telling her anything. She just suffered, thinking that she had been abandoned because she was lacking.
Cesare stared at the diary with the clear traces of tears for a long time. He repeatedly read the sentence that was written in just one line.
[Maybe I was like a pet?]
