Dirty Heart - Chapter 8

When Courtney opened her eyes again, it felt like she’d been transported to an entirely different world.

Instead of the musty stench of mold, a sharp medicinal smell tickled her nose, and instead of a damp stone floor, soft bedding wrapped around her body.

After staring up at the endlessly soaring ceiling for a long while, she turned her head and saw rows of medicine bottles lined up. It seemed to be Lionel’s room.

“…Ah!”

Startled, she tried to sit up, but a stiff ache flooded through her whole body. No matter that he’d laid down his uniform, the rough act they’d done on hard stone had left scrapes all over her.

But there was something even more confusing than the physical injuries.

It was strange. She’d clearly gone through something awful, but it wasn’t as shocking as she’d expected. How to put it…. It felt like she’d just had a dream. A brutally filthy sex dream.

“So you still haven’t slept with the man you said you started to like.”

“Hhk, ah…! Mmng!”

“That’s why your hole’s this tight. Yeah? It’s going to tear.”

The sensation of a tongue stirring inside her mouth, the relentless hand rubbing her clit. And that hot body heat as he held her….

For an instant, even Lionel’s clear blue eyes flashed through her mind, and she slowly placed a hand over her chest.

Thump, thump.

Unbelievably, her heart was beating fast.

“…You’re insane.”

Muttering like a sigh, she pressed her forehead with a sharp tap.

That was when.

“You’re awake.”

With the sound of the door opening, a familiar voice filled the room. It was Lionel.

A shirt smoothed out without a single wrinkle, hair neatly brushed back. Aside from a face a bit too pale, he looked perfectly fine.

“How do you feel?”

Stretching his long legs as he approached, Lionel casually placed a hand on her forehead.

“Don’t touch me!”

She snapped sharply and jerked her head away.

Facing Lionel’s polished face, so neat and pristine unlike her battered state, anger surged up in her. In the middle of it, the heartbeat pounding on its own was endlessly humiliating too.

“Courtney. Are you mad?”

He awkwardly drew back the hand with nowhere to go, then tried to enchant her again with a tender, gentle voice. It seemed he’d completely forgotten how he’d taken a woman who’d starved for three straight days in that damp dungeon, like a beast.

“I’m sorry I came so late, Courtney.”

Lionel whispered low. His face was full of apology, but there probably wasn’t even a speck of sincerity in it.

“Father was furious. So it was hard to pull you out on my own.”

Lionel quietly knelt in front of Courtney. Then, without leaving her any room to refuse, he kissed the back of her hand.

After choosing his words for a moment, he slowly lifted his head and met Courtney’s eyes. His long, clean eyeline curved softly like a spring breeze.

“To get to the point, there was someone else who did it.”

“The culprit…?”

“Yeah. The culprit who swapped the nutrient solution for insecticide.”

Those clear blue eyes that held only Courtney’s face flickered boldly.

Listening to the man quietly, Courtney pressed her lips tight.

Being locked up and starved in prison for three days pissed her off, and the fact that the real culprit was only being revealed now, after she’d cried out that it was unfair, also pissed her off.

The fact that Lionel hadn’t come sooner pissed her off too, and on top of that, having sex in prison as if she’d been assaulted pissed her off, very, very much.

But more than anything, what gave her the worst chills was that the sex they’d had in the dungeon kept coming back to her.

In the end, unable to endure the wave of self-loathing, she let out a short whimper and burst into tears.

“Sniff… I… I kept saying it was unfair, and nobody believed me…!”

“Don’t cry, Courtney. The real culprit has been punished enough.”

Unlike her, lifting her head with her face soaked in tears, Lionel’s lips were curved in a pleasant smile.

“How dare the head maid frame you, Courtney. I couldn’t just let that go.”

At that moment, a wind blew outside the window. The silk curtain fluttered through the slightly open gap, then slowly drifted aside with the breeze.

In the middle of the oak tree, yellowed and withered, one large branch was bent in a way so grotesque it was unsettling, and it swayed, dangling.

Limbs drooping limp, hair hanging down like a ghost, tongue lolling out.

A woman in a maid uniform, hanging precariously as if she’d climbed up on tiptoe. It was Ella, the head maid who’d relentlessly tormented Courtney up to now.

“…Kyaaaaaaah!”

A scream so sharp it felt like it would tear the room apart rang out.

***

From far away, it looked like nothing more than a peaceful father and son tea time. The sound of a teaspoon tapping against a teacup was quiet, and on the table, ripe fruit and scones were neatly arranged.

However, the conversation passing between father and son was nothing like the peaceful scene.

“Did you really have to kill her? Cutting off her arms and legs and feeding them to the pigs would’ve been enough.”

“I heard the head maid was bullying Courtney.”

“Was swapping out the nutrient solution also your doing?”

At the duke’s question, Lionel silently nodded.

“I see. You needed a reason to get rid of her.”

Having calculated his son’s intention at once, the duke turned his gaze toward the oak tree outside the window.

Perhaps he found it quite regrettable that the tree he’d cherished for so long had reached the end of its life, because he clicked his tongue briefly.

“Wasn’t it a tree you cared about. Are you alright?”

“It’s better than Courtney getting bullied.”

He accepted that without hesitation as well. Under the sky, there was never anything more important than his son’s heart.

“But why did you keep that child locked up for so long?”

By that child, he clearly meant Courtney. If the purpose from the start was to punish the head maid, there was no reason to lock Courtney in the cold dungeon for three full days.

Looking at his son, who resembled him so much in his younger years, and who therefore felt all the more pitiable, the duke continued lightly.

“You know better than anyone that the transplant day is close. If something happens to that child’s body, it’ll become troublesome.”

“It’s just….”

As if he’d thought of Courtney, a faint smile hung on Lionel’s indifferent face.

“She hasn’t been listening lately. So I just gave her some punishment.”

Like tightening the leash even more on a pet caught trying to run away, the punishment toward Courtney was, from Lionel’s standpoint, nothing more than a perfectly natural measure.

But as he listened to his son’s explanation, the duke instead furrowed his brow. As someone who’d studied his son’s illness for many years, he seemed to have sensed Lionel’s subtle change at once.

However, he couldn’t press his only son over nothing but a sliver of speculation. As a father, he chose to gently coax him instead.

It was because of his somewhat complacent belief that since Lionel’s twenty-third birthday was less than 100 days away, no major variable would arise in that short time.

“…In any case, don’t give that child your heart too much.”

Lionel gave a short laugh.

“To that insignificant woman?”

There was ridicule in his voice, but an unrelated scene floated up in his mind.

“Hhk, mmng! Ah! It, it feels, hhk, weird, hng! Ah!”

The damp dungeon. Courtney’s voice as she trembled there and clung to him desperately. Her slit, helplessly spreading to match his pounding, her babbling lips and hair soaked with sweat, the lewd fluids that had drenched his uniform….

‘And yet she said she was going to leave me?’

As soon as he thought of what happened then, his center grew heavy again.

Even he found it ridiculous to feel this kind of lust toward a woman he’d always held only out of obligation, but surely, taking a woman more roughly than usual, in a place that wasn’t the bedroom, was an unfamiliar experience.

In other words, even if it hadn’t been Courtney, he would’ve gotten in heat like this all the same.

Noticing his father’s gaze still fixed on him with worry, Lionel turned his head with a calm face.

“Don’t worry, Father. I’ll make sure nothing happens until the transplant.”

In his eyes, which had been mostly empty from years of illness, a lively gleam shimmered for the first time in a long while.