To My First Love, With Regret - 105

The moment Owen reflexively jerked his head up, a cold muzzle pressed firmly into the center of his brow. The silhouette, seen only faintly, was a Constance-issue pistol.

But the pistol’s owner was still sprawled in the snow. The one aiming the enemy’s weapon at Owen was none other than his ally, Ethan Fairchild.

—I… I knew it… Of course….

The voice forced through his gritted teeth trembled violently, ravaged by a mixture of terror and rage.

—I was a fool to trust a devil….

—You’re just smart enough to know that much, you moron.

Ethan mocked him, letting out a twisted, derisive laugh as if he couldn’t bear the delight of seeing his cornered prey’s despair. Just like that, Ethan Fairchild stripped away the hero’s mask he had briefly worn, revealing the cruel nature of a villain.

—Ugh….

The muzzle—which felt as if it might spit fire at the slightest touch—tapped against Owen’s head as if Ethan were toying with him.

—Beg me for your life.

…If I beg, will he actually spare me?

No. The man was intent on pulling the trigger. He simply wanted to savor the sight of Owen crushing his last shred of pride, pouring out pathetic flattery and pleas first.

Since he was going to die anyway, Owen had no intention of playing the clown and providing amusement for this goddamn enemy. Despite the tears streaming down his face from the fear and sorrow of death, he kept his mouth shut and held out—only for the man to offer a ‘kind’ lesson on exactly how he should be begging.

—’I have a child who will be born soon.’

In that instant, Owen’s trembling shoulders froze as if by magic.

—’Don’t you feel pity for a child who will grow up without a father? Let me see my child’s face at least once.’ Go on, say those words to me too.

The man had been listening to his desperate plea for mercy to the enemy from beginning to end.

Ethan Fairchild found out Lady Evelyn is carrying my child.

That’s why he’s trying to kill me.

Because Owen had what he did not. Owen was certain that his clear victory had driven the loser mad with jealousy. The way Ethan’s voice shook with a rage nearing its boiling point as he recited those words only confirmed that jealousy was the motive. Instead of a winner’s joy, a sense of injustice surged within Owen first.

You had a child with her too!

Just as Owen suspected, Ethan was burning with jealousy. However, the spark that ignited that fire was different from what he imagined.

So, she told this bastard she was pregnant, did she?

To think she kept her mouth shut to the child’s real father, while letting a fake like this blabber about it first.

Ethan’s stomach churned. He couldn’t stand the nausea of hearing the word ‘child’ come out of Owen’s mouth. Rage toward Eve flared up for insulting him in such a way.

…But what if, by some miracle, it’s really not my child?

The anxiety he had been suppressing broke free at the worst possible moment, sinking its venomous fangs into his mind like a viper. Ethan gritted his teeth and trampled over that disgusting assumption.

Who gives a damn. Even a cuckoo’s egg is my fledgling if it hatches in my nest.

In the end, it didn’t matter whether the child shared his blood or not. As long as it was born with the name Fairchild, that was enough. He didn’t need a ‘child’; he needed a justification to seize Kentrell.

Calming his anxiety with cold logic, Ethan regained his composure to sneer down at the ‘cuckoo’ before him once more.

—You don’t need to see its face anyway. There won’t be a single strand of hair on that child that resembles you.

Because it will look like me. Despite his vow that blood didn’t matter, Ethan stubbornly claimed the child as his own, picturing a face in his mind that was a half-and-half blend of himself and Eve.

A boy who looked as if Eve’s face had been spitefully pasted beneath the cold, winter-sunlight blonde hair inherited from him.

Cruelly, the moment he imagined the child’s appearance, the face that came to mind was Tony—the boy who had tearfully told him to return safely on the day he left.

Damn it, why the hell did I think of that enemy’s brat?

Ethan groaned inwardly at the unsettling thought before continuing his cruel consolation to the man who would soon be a corpse.

—And don’t worry about the child growing up without a father. I’ll make sure to return alive.

At that brazen declaration, the man’s face—which had been deathly pale—flushed a deep, explosive red as he lashed out.

—That is my child! Don’t you dare think of stealing it!

—Tsk, you still haven’t grasped the situation.

Finally, Ethan exposed the truth—a truth that would make the man faint with a sense of betrayal if he knew it.

—Then again, what would a dumbass know? You were busy sleeping like a log right next to us while another man was busy taking your wife.

—W-what does that….

—Since last autumn, the amount of seed I’ve spilled inside that woman would be enough to fill one of those drums over there.

—…What?

—If you can do basic math, the calculation should be simple. Whose brat is really in that womb?

In that instant, an ominous calculation began in Owen’s mind, unstoppable.

Lady Evelyn had promised him a child, but the man who had remained by her side during that period was not Owen; it was Ethan Fairchild. Owen had been forced to leave the estate, pushed not by his own will but by the insistence of the woman who claimed she would bear his child. During that time, Chantal had suspected Lady Evelyn was having secret trysts with her ex-husband, but Owen had dismissed it as paranoia.

This, too, was a result of being deceived by that woman.

His intimate relationship with Lady Evelyn had happened only once. Even then, he had no memory of it. Yet, she had insisted she carried his child.

But why would she go through the trouble of drugging him to sleep only to receive another man’s seed behind his back? The daughter of Kentrell never dirtied her own hands. Why would a Queen, who even committed murder through the hands of others, soil herself like a common harlot to carry an enemy’s child?

…Because of Tony.

A ruler will kneel before an enemy if it is for the sake of an heir. If all her actions were a devotion to a son who had to live a frail life due to a rare blood type, then the fruit of that labor had to be Ethan Fairchild’s child.

As the smoke screen obscuring his vision cleared and he recalculated based on raw facts, the possibility of the child in her womb being his own blood grew slimmer and slimmer.

It was the cruelest math in the world. The moment he accepted the answer, he would fall from a man leaving behind a legacy to a discarded male who had lost not just his life, but his bloodline.

—No! It’s not true! It’s a lie!

He howled like a beast, rejecting the truth.

—It’s my child! It’s my blood!

—Regrettably, the only thing your blood is doing is soaking into this mud.

Watching the petty thief—the one who had audaciously stolen his place—writhing in realization was a delightful spectacle. But after a moment, the entertainment grew stale as Owen continued to struggle against the reality he’d been so graciously taught.

—I suppose there won’t be anyone to mourn your death, then.

Ethan pressed the muzzle so hard against Owen’s forehead that the doctor’s head was forced back. He wore an expression of immense relief, as if a long-aching tooth had finally been pulled.

—Farewell, Owen Karras. I’m taking my place back.

An ecstatic smile graced Ethan’s lips as his index finger pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Have you ever heard a gunshot from inside your skull rather than from the outside? Do you know the sensation of a flaming muzzle being hot enough to sear flesh? These were sensations Owen learned for the first and last time in his life.

There was no miracle for this bullet. The hot lump of lead passed cleanly through Owen’s head.

He had always wondered: did soldiers who died from a hole in the head die instantly, or did they have to face their own death, if only for a fleeting second? Owen finally solved that riddle today in the most agonizing way possible.

The answer was: they do not die instantly.

His breath faded slowly, and though his thoughts were significantly sluggish, they did not cut off entirely.

The woman I thought was a perfect Queen was a perfect fraud…. She used me thoroughly from start to finish, and when my usefulness ran out, she set this hound loose to slaughter me….

The final emotion Owen felt was a wretched, visceral resentment.

I will have my revenge….

Do not let your guard down, thinking a man with a fading pulse can do nothing. If they thought it would end like this, it would be their most fatal miscalculation.

Ethan Fairchild, you had a child with her once before, too.

That child you abandoned is Tony!

When he had mistakenly thought Ethan was trying to kill him out of simple jealousy, the truth had risen to his throat, but he had swallowed it—the wisest choice of his life.

Telling the truth would have been like wishing a happy future for the enemy who murdered him. Ethan would have reclaimed his first love and his son, enjoying a perfect, disgusting happiness in a paradise built upon Owen’s blood, with four of them including the baby in the womb.

To strip away that happy ending forever—that was the revenge Owen Karras would inflict even in death.

—That woman… do you know… why she… abandoned you?

Owen squeezed out a voice that sounded like scraping metal, spitting up blood-tinged froth. The devil’s smile—which had been watching Owen die with the kind of pleasure one might find watching a naked woman in a brothel—cracked in that instant.

The man was still a slave bound to his past with Evelyn Sherwood. Wanting to know the secret, Ethan leaned down, bringing his ear close. With the last of his strength, Owen poured a lethal poison into that ear—a toxin that would leave Ethan Fairchild to rot and fester forever.

—Back then… she was carrying… my son.