CHAPTER 17
After a long silence, Victor finally spoke.
“I think it would be best if you came back to my house.”
“What?”
“You.”
Scarlett frowned.
“Me? Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Look at the way you’re living.”
Victor gestured toward her workbench.
Scarlett froze before looking up at him.
“Do I look more miserable now than I did when I lived with you?”
“Is that even a question? You think this life compares to living in my house?”
“I was miserable when I lived with the Dumpfelts!”
Normally calm and composed, Scarlett suddenly raised her voice.
Victor knitted his brows.
“But you said you were happy.”
“I was happy because I loved someone! Having to attend parties and luncheons every day with people I didn’t want to be around, pretending not to notice while they looked down on me from head to toeāthat wasn’t happiness. And in our marriage, I was always the only one trying while you…”
Victor’s expression darkened.
“Are you saying I never made an effort?”
“Can you really call that effort?”
“I believe I did more than enough.”
“You were only trying to turn your defective wife into someone you wouldn’t be embarrassed to introduce to others.”
At the bitterness in her voice, Victor fell silent.
The gaslight made it difficult to read his expression, but Scarlett could tell he simply couldn’t understand how she could possibly be happier hereāworking with tiny watch parts that were almost invisible without a magnifying glassāthan she had been living in the luxurious Dumpfelt estate.
“Why?”
“…”
“So what if you weren’t good enough? I raised you to meet my standards. I made you better. Isn’t that effort?”
Scarlett stared at him helplessly.
Then she simply closed her mouth.
Hearing him calmly describe her as defective drained all the strength from her.
Trying to convince someone as self-centered as Victor that she had wanted to be loved exactly as she was felt utterly hopeless.
“…”
“…”
Silence filled the room once again.
Since Scarlett refused to answer, Victor remained quiet as well.
Eventually, unable to bear him standing there watching her without moving, Scarlett spoke first.
“Any other questions?”
“The streetlights shine through the window beside your bed.”
“I know.”
“And you still prefer living here?”
“Yes.”
To Victor, who had grown up in a mansion surrounded by sprawling gardens, the idea of hearing the sounds of the street or having light from outside seep into his home was probably unimaginable.
Looking toward the window, Scarlett quietly said,
“I’ve always been anxious around strangers. Here, Andrei greets the customers for me, so I like it.”
“Then you should have told me.”
“How could I?”
She let out a hollow laugh before burying her face into the sofa.
“You were the one who told me that my only job was to do somethingāanythingāthat would help your success. How was I supposed to tell you that I couldn’t even do that?”
In the early days of their marriage, noble gatherings terrified her so much that she couldn’t sleep.
On those nights, she would curl up on the bed, hugging her knees and trembling until dawn.
Finally, she spoke.
“Would you leave now? You’re making me uncomfortable.”
“I’m not a stranger.”
“But you’re not a warm person either.”
Trying to calm her growing anxiety, she pulled both knees onto the armchair, hugged them tightly, and muttered,
“And you’re certainly not someone I love anymore.”
She remained curled up like that.
After quite some time, she heard the sound of Victor’s footsteps growing more distant.
“…”
The wooden door creaked, followed by the sound of him descending the stairs.
The moment he left, Scarlett climbed out of the chair.
If even one gear was slightly out of place, a clock would stop working.
Perhaps it was an occupational habit, but recently Scarlett became intensely stressed whenever anything wasn’t exactly where it belonged.
She tried to push the armchair back to its original position, but it wouldn’t budge.
She sighed.
“How did he even move this thing?”
Ever since the day she returned from being interrogated, Scarlett had begun experiencing strange episodes where entire chunks of her memory disappeared, only to return days later.
She had endured that terror completely alone.
The constant unease only made her obsessive tendencies worse.
Unable to bear it any longer, she ran downstairs.
For the first time in her life, she was grateful that Victor was such a heavy smoker.
She grabbed the back of his coat while he stood just outside the shop smoking a cigarette.
“Put the chair back.”
Victor turned to look at her, cigarette still between his lips.
Scarlett struggled to steady her ragged breathing before continuing.
“The chair. You moved it, so put it back where it belongs. Don’t touch my routine. Don’t try to fix anything!”
“Scarlett Dumpfelt.”
Why are you calling me Dumpfelt? I’m Crimson. I’m someone who makes watches using the Crimson family’s techniques.
She wanted to say those words.
But no sound came out.
Anxiety swallowed her whole.
Victor dropped his cigarette and caught Scarlett around the waist just as her knees gave way.
Held in his arms, Scarlett struggled desperately to breathe through the tightness in her chest.
Victor lifted her into his arms and gently rubbed her back.
“…She’s not even in the Navy.”
Clicking his tongue, reminded of the panic attacks some of his own subordinates occasionally suffered, Victor carried Scarlett upstairs.
He sat her on the bed before returning the armchair to its proper place.
Too exhausted even to remain seated, Scarlett collapsed onto her side and watched him quietly put the chair back.
As consciousness slowly slipped awayāwhether into sleep or unconsciousness, she couldn’t tellāshe murmured,
“I’m never… living with you again. So don’t ever appear in front of me… ever again.”
She tried to read the look in his eyes.
She was too tired.
Barely above a whisper, she muttered,
“I’ll kill you… if you show up again…”
Then she fell asleep as if she had fainted.
Victor stood there for a long time, expressionless, looking down at the sleeping Scarlett.
The alarm clock rang.
When Scarlett sat up, she noticed the curtains had been closed.
Apparently, Victor had found the streetlights shining through the window unbearably irritating.
“Oh no…”
Still half-asleep, Scarlett rose from bed, feeling as though all the blood had drained from her body.
She pressed both hands against her forehead.
“I threatened to kill Victor Dumpfelt…”
Her face completely pale, she hurried over and pulled the curtains open.
Only after the soft light of dawn streamed into the room did she notice that the built-in safe was standing open.
Her heart dropped.
She rushed over and looked inside.
Several of the blueprints she had drawn were gone.
All of them were biplane designs.
Even the miniature models she had built had disappeared.
While she had been unconscious during her panic attack, someone had taken every piece of evidence.
Scarlett collapsed to her knees before the open safe.
Her face turned deathly white.
People already claimed that trams were powered by demons.
Airplanes would be even worse.
The king had decreed that nothing was ever to fly above his head.
If anyone discovered her biplane designs, it would be enough to earn her a death sentence.
Closing the safe, Scarlett covered her face with both hands.
She had made the mistake of letting her guard down.
Because Victor had overlooked her illegal tram repair, she had foolishly wondered if perhaps he still retained some lingering affection for his ex-wife.
She had been wrong.
The only one who still harbored lingering feelings was herself, pretending she felt nothing at all.
Victor hadn’t ignored the tram repair out of mercy.
He had merely used it as bait to catch a much bigger prize.
