Chapter 56
When a Decision Must Be Made
Anshi tried hard to maintain a façade of composure, but her hands were still trembling faintly.
Whether it was because of the earlier incident that had startled her, or because something in her body had gone wrong after saving him, she couldn’t tell.
How much of that woman’s life had he taken this time?
Damion suddenly felt utterly repulsed by himself—by the fact that he was prolonging his existence by borrowing her life.
“Do you know him?”
That was all he could manage to say to hide what he was feeling.
Pathetically inadequate.
“…I borrowed money from him once. I’m sorry. I paid back the agreed amount, but there was still some illegal interest that wasn’t in the contract. I never imagined he’d come after me all the way here. It was my mistake.”
Anshi answered steadily, keeping her gaze fixed outside the carriage window.
“That illegal interest doesn’t exist anymore. I paid it off.”
Damion said it as if it were obvious.
Anshi’s eyes wavered. So it was him. She clasped her joined hands tightly.
She didn’t ask how he knew about the debt. After all, Gerris had come all this way to try to kill him—what was the point of bringing it up?
“Was there nothing else?”
“I don’t know why he attacked today. When I ran into him yesterday, he didn’t try to kill me…”
“Yesterday?”
One of Damion’s eyebrows arched upward.
She’d run into that man yesterday and hadn’t said a single word to him about it?
Saying he hadn’t tried to kill her still meant he’d threatened her in some way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t think there was any need.”
“What else could possibly be worth telling if not something like that?”
His voice was edged with unmistakable anger.
Anshi glanced at his profile—his tightly set mouth made him look angry indeed. Still, she stubbornly asked,
“And if I had told you I ran into Gerris yesterday, what would’ve changed? Would today’s events not have happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe before dawn I’d have gone to find that bastard and done something about him. Maybe you wouldn’t have had to come running half-dressed and nearly get shot.”
“But no one was hurt in the end. Neither of us died. Isn’t that enough?”
Damion narrowed his eyes.
“You make it sound like one of us should have died.”
His words made Anshi’s lips press into a thin line.
He didn’t waste that opening.
“I’ll ask again, Anshi. Did you know that bastard was going to shoot me in Dde Forest today?”
Anshi’s mouth fell open in shock. She thought she understood the suspicion forming in his mind.
“Are you seriously implying that I called Gerris here?”
Her voice shook with disbelief.
She knew that if one looked only at the facts—she knew both Damion’s meeting location and Gerris personally—she could seem suspicious.
But still… she had saved his life today.
Was it right for him to think that?
A bitter sense of injustice, tinged with wounded pride, welled up inside her.
She forced herself to take a slow breath.
Damion turned the wheel; the car curved smoothly along the road.
Her heart was pounding, but he looked perfectly calm.
“No. What I’m asking is something else entirely.”
There’s something else to that question?
She stared at him, waiting for an explanation.
Catching her gaze, Damion slowly turned his head toward her.
Their eyes met.
An odd tension made her body stiffen.
“Did you see a future where I died in that forest today?”
“…!”
For a moment, Anshi felt as if she’d been flung out of the moving car.
They were already nearing his estate.
In that familiar landscape, the man’s face felt suddenly foreign.
“…Damion.”
“I thought so.”
The car stopped in front of the mansion. Damion gave a brief nod toward the door.
“We’ll talk later.”
Anshi got out.
He didn’t follow.
Leaving her with that verbal bomb, he pulled away again.
She stood there blankly, staring at the car until it disappeared.
After dropping Anshi off, Damion’s face twisted in barely restrained rage.
He hadn’t shown it with her sitting beside him.
Foolish woman.
What would she have done if she’d been shot, rushing to block him like that?
Why stop something that was going to happen anyway?
What was so precious about throwing away her life that she would come running, desperate, to get in the way…?
“Damn it.”
The truth was, he knew—he wasn’t angry at her or calling her foolish.
It was himself.
The fact that he had used such a pure woman to achieve his goal of seizing Orphe made him feel filthy.
Through the open window, warm wind blew in, but it carried, to him, the stench of a gutter.
Even his own bones and flesh felt like they weren’t his.
As if every part of his body were rotting away, he felt sick to his stomach.
He pulled over near a patch of brush.
Even after he emptied his stomach, the nausea didn’t pass.
Of course not—the source of his revulsion was himself.
“Anshi…”
Her name came out in a hoarse whisper.
That calm, clear-sounding name felt as if it were engraved along the dark road leading to Sobelvio’s annex.
Damion straightened.
It was time to make a decision he had long delayed.
When he’d married Anshi de Lubelsa, this matter had never crossed his mind.
But now it had become something he could no longer avoid, something that had to be his top priority.
Should he leave her in the darkness, walking on until he reached the light?
Or should he take her hand and retreat, even if it meant gaining nothing—but losing nothing either?
“Weren’t you supposed to have a meeting this morning?”
Max, his aide, followed him into the CEO’s office.
Damion’s voice was dry.
“This morning in Dde Forest, a man named Gerris tried to kill me. He’s been handed over to the police, and we have witnesses. I want you to make sure he gets the maximum sentence.”
“What? How… how did that happen?”
“The meeting location was leaked. He was waiting for me there.”
Max’s eyes widened in shock.
Damion studied him quietly.
Perhaps that look of surprise was genuine—or perhaps Max was the one who had leaked it.
Damion had known Max since before he returned from the military, back when he was only investing rather than running the business himself.
But that didn’t mean he was off the suspect list.
He had already instructed someone else to look into Max.
If the man turned out to be guilty, Damion would feel some disappointment, but not betrayal.
After being shot in the side in the war, he’d learned how foolish it was to trust anyone completely.
There were other possibilities too—perhaps the leak had come from the meeting partner’s side, or that obsessed criminal had followed Damion and found out by chance.
Or… perhaps Cardian had been involved.
If so, the suspect list narrowed considerably.
“There’s likely a mole among the secretarial staff.”
“Are you referring to Nancy?”
“Probably.”
He had suspected that Nancy might be working for Cardian.
For that reason, he hadn’t shared highly confidential matters—like meetings with Orphe’s elders or sensitive business information—with her recently.
He had been quietly watching her, thinking that if she made a suspicious move, he could use it as a pretext to strike Cardian.
He had also used her to lull Cardian into a false sense of security.
Recently, Damion had been targeting Cardian’s textile business clients one by one, and he’d made sure only Nancy was given different information about that work.
That had been a mistake.
He should have confronted her immediately.
He’d assumed that since his plans hadn’t yet surfaced, Cardian would be slow to act, still thinking of him as a toy.
Had something about the textile work—or the elders—already reached Cardian’s ears?
Now there was no choice but to extract Cardian’s name from Nancy.
He needed proof that Cardian had a hand in today’s attempt on his life.
“I’ll speak to them myself. Bring in the secretaries one by one, starting with Nancy.”
“Um… the thing is…”
Max trailed off awkwardly. Damion raised an eyebrow.
“What is it?”
“Nancy didn’t come in to work today.”
Damion’s face hardened. He clicked his tongue, tasting bitterness.
“You’ll have to handle the secretary investigation, Max.”
“Yes, sir.”
Damion stepped outside.
The sky was dark and heavy. It looked like rain was coming.
Driving back to the mansion, a humorless, incredulous laugh escaped his lips.
“Hah…”
Had she caused trouble and run?
Or had Cardian gotten rid of her?
Given how well Cardian knew how to cover his tracks, the latter seemed more likely.
No doubt any evidence connecting Gerris to this would already be gone.
The physical proof had vanished.
But one thing was now certain.
Cardian was once again trying to kill him.
If he kept walking this path, there would be more days like today.
And next time… it might really be his wife who died—
after giving her life to save his.
When he arrived, Nouvel opened the door.
Damion climbed to the second floor and lingered outside Anshi’s room, then headed to his own.
He intended to calm himself before speaking with her.
But the moment he opened his door, he froze.
“Can we talk now?”
Anshi was sitting in his room.
