Dirty Heart - Chapter 12

The bathwater had already cooled to lukewarm. Lionel’s hand slid slowly across the murky surface.

“Ah!”

As his fingertips persistently toyed with the entrance of her slit, the semen pooled inside her began to leak out in thick drops. Feeling like she might truly lose consciousness at this rate, Courtney shook her head desperately.

“Young Duke… I can’t do this anymore…!”

“Alright. I’ll just wash you.”

He’d confirmed her feelings once again, and the day he’d receive her heart transplant was not far off. From Lionel’s perspective, he wanted to increase the number of times they had sex as much as possible. The more he held Courtney, the more dramatically the transplant’s success rate would rise.

The problem was that Courtney was the one being driven to death because of it. After being summoned to the bedroom last night, she hadn’t slept a single moment and remained bound to his side. He tormented her relentlessly through the night. Even now, it felt like the stench of semen still clung to her entire body.

‘It got bigger again….’

Feeling something unfamiliar brushing below her navel, Courtney glanced downward, only to freeze in shock. His erection stood fully rigid, swollen and burning hot. Just days ago, he could barely move without gasping, yet she had no idea where he drew such strength from.

Though he was supposed to be the sickly male lead, Lionel transformed into something like a beast when it came to sex. Then again, he was the male lead of a romance novel. Wouldn’t it be stranger if he couldn’t perform?

“…It’s too much. I might faint.”

Begging once more, she gasped for breath and collapsed into his arms.

Fortunately, Lionel seemed to have no intention of continuing. He gently stroked the back of her neck.

She finally had a brief moment to rest, but her thoughts only grew more tangled. The side effect report she risked her life to steal from the duke’s study. Several days had passed since she obtained it, yet she still hadn’t properly opened it.

She couldn’t examine it in the servants’ quarters because of her roommate, and Lionel summoned her at all hours, leaving her no time.

Delaying it day after day, far too much time had already passed. The only saving grace was that the duke hadn’t yet noticed the report’s disappearance.

‘I need to check it and burn it before any problems arise….’

When she returned to the bedroom with that heavy thought weighing on her mind, breakfast was already prepared. The sight of a soft omelet steaming gently and a glass of fresh fruit juice made her mouth water.

She grabbed a spoon and hurriedly stuffed the hot omelet into her mouth. The taste melted instantly on her tongue. It was incomparable to the food served in the servants’ dining hall.

“I have something I’m curious about.”

Unlike her, who was devouring the food like a starving animal, Lionel sat across from her with his chin resting on his hand, staring at her intently.

“Yes, what is it?”

She answered casually while continuing to chew, but Lionel’s expression was unusually serious.

“You said you preferred a man healthier than me.”

“Oh, that was a slip of the tongue. Please forget it already.”

Without saying anything, Lionel picked up the water bottle and slowly filled her glass.

“Courtney. Then why did you ask to break up?”

“…!”

Her face stiffened instantly. She couldn’t exactly say it was because she didn’t want to have her heart taken by someone as petty as him, so she needed a solid excuse.

In the end, the sharp gaze of the head maid crossed her mind. Since the woman was already dead anyway, it should be fine to use her as an excuse.

Just like Vicky, Courtney didn’t feel the slightest pity for the head maid. She remembered perfectly well, without any embellishment, how viciously the woman had tormented her all this time.

“Actually… it was because of the head maid. Once she found out you favored me, Young Duke, she made my life miserable every single day. I thought maybe the harassment would ease if I broke up with you….”

Putting on the most pitiful expression she could manage, Courtney added quietly, “…And my lowly status weighed on my mind as well.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t care what anyone says.”

He shrugged as if it truly meant nothing at all. Then he smiled beautifully at Courtney.

“I just feel like I have the whole world as long as you’re by my side, Courtney.”

“…Young Duke.”

“Which is why, Courtney. Shall we go on a trip together?”

Courtney stopped moving her fork and tilted her head slightly. An ominous feeling crept over her.

“…A trip?”

Lionel nodded slowly as he spoke, “I know a place where no one will ever notice us. No one will be able to interfere with us there.”

Though his voice was low, like he was dreaming of an exciting journey, to Courtney it sounded like nothing more than a declaration fixing the date of her organ extraction.

In fact, Courtney’s surgery was secretly carried out at a remote villa in the original story, far from prying eyes. Everything was unfolding exactly according to the original plot.

“Well, Courtney? You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

Ah, shit. Way to ruin my appetite.

She set down her spoon and forced a strained smile. “I’m really… looking forward to it, Young Duke.”

Of course, she had absolutely no intention of surrendering her heart so easily.

She wanted to live, no matter what it took. She didn’t want to die.

But if, by some chance, the moment truly came when she faced death, she even thought it might be better to take her own life instead. Dying was already unjust enough, but dying only to benefit someone else was even more unbearable.

In other words, she would never willingly offer her heart to that bastard Lionel.

Just wait. On your long-awaited twenty-third birthday, I’ll be the one to stab you in the back.

***

Late at night, Courtney glanced toward the bed across from her.

“Krrgh… krrgh….”

Bailey snored loudly. After waving her hand back and forth in front of Bailey’s face to confirm she was deeply asleep, Courtney pressed her body flat against the mold-stained wooden floor.

Reaching under the bed, she searched carefully. Soon, the report she’d hidden like a treasure among several worn-out clothes revealed itself.

As the memory of that precarious moment when she smuggled the report past the tight security resurfaced, Courtney’s body trembled involuntarily.

Flick-.

A match flared to life in the darkness. Relying on the faint light, she carefully began reading through the document.

The densely packed text already made her eyes ache, but she examined every line with meticulous focus, determined not to miss a single word.

『Case of Sepsis Occurrence Due to Poor Sanitation Management』

* If proper sanitation procedures, including disinfecting the donor’s surgical site, are not adequately performed during the operation, there is a high probability of death due to sepsis.

The first side effect she could confirm was related to poor sanitation.

But it was far from what Courtney actually wanted. This was entirely the responsibility of the medical staff performing the surgery.

Moreover, since the notoriously meticulous duke planned to personally oversee the entire procedure, Lionel’s surgery would undoubtedly be carried out flawlessly.

“Hm….”

The next section was somewhat more interesting. The phrase ‘probability of death’ immediately caught her attention.

『Case of Cardiac Arrest Due to Acute Rejection After Receiving Donor Heart』

* If the recipient’s immune system recognizes the new heart as a foreign object and attacks it, the probability of death within 48 hours increases by more than 13 times.

However, this too was ultimately useless information, since it concerned events that would occur only after her death.

Courtney bit her nails anxiously.

At first, she tried avoiding sex to lower the transplant’s success rate, but that plan had completely fallen apart due to Lionel constantly summoning her.

Now, she needed a method she could execute somewhat discreetly.

For example, she could binge on sweets until her blood became thick and sluggish, or deliberately gain excessive weight to make the surgery itself impossible. Even if these ideas had no scientific basis whatsoever, Courtney was that desperate.

“Huh?”

Then, with time running out, another line caught her eye.

『Case of Rejection Reaction Due to Donor’s Promiscuous Sexual History』

* If the donor has a frequent sexual history with multiple partners other than the recipient, the risk of rejection after heart transplantation increases by more than 20 times.

Her eyes finally widened.

A promiscuous sexual history with multiple partners.

“…This is even better.”

Wasn’t this exactly the kind of genre she’d devoured obsessively in her previous life?

Before she knew it, a satisfied smile spread across Courtney’s lips.