To My First Love, With Regret - 69

Then there was only one way to plant his son in that woman’s womb: to seduce her with honeyed words until she willingly invited him into her bed.

Would this be easy, given that he was still a pathetic fool who loved her? Hardly. Because he loved her, it felt more like hell.

Ethan swallowed the rising bile and the jagged shards of his shattered pride down his bitter throat. A beast must always lower itself before the hunt.

Instead, he wore a frigid smile.

Perhaps I should be grateful. She’s ensured I won’t fall for my own deception.

Thanks to her, things were clear now. Evelyn Sherwood had never truly loved him. If she had, she wouldn’t have been able to hide her lingering feelings, just as he couldn’t. There would have been a flicker of agitation, a moment of wavering at the suggestion of starting over.

But Eve had offered him nothing but pure, undiluted contempt. What had their memories even meant to her? That cold gaze, that icy demeanor. Yes, perhaps Evelyn Sherwood had never actually betrayed him—because she had never loved him in the first place.

I was a fool to believe that the mere impulse of a cold-blooded woman who doesn’t understand love was actually love.

Ethan was submerged in a swell of resentment, much like the moment his world collapsed when she delivered the breakup notice that felt like a death sentence. But he was no longer nineteen; he didn’t shed weak tears as he had that day.

Fine.

This woman still felt no remorse for playing with him like a toy before breaking and discarding him. With this, his final revenge gained its justification.

I won’t have to feel sorry for using you to replace your family with the Fairchilds.

—Ethan….

Eve looked at him with a faint smile. He despised her attitude—the air of a queen bestowing a final mercy upon a condemned prisoner.

—If you mean to start over, I’m sorry, but I like things just the way they are now. So, I hope you find a new love somewhere else.

Damn it. Even though he had expected to be rejected at first, Ethan had to grit his teeth and swallow his mangled pride once again.

Did I ever say I wanted to play at that pathetic, ‘poor-man’s love’ we had at nineteen?

Did she really think he didn’t know the snobbish Princess was already bored of such trivial house-play? But now was not the time to roar. It was the time to lower his body for the hunt.

—I know I’m still a man who falls short of being husband material for you.

For a split second, Eve’s heart throbbed. In Ethan’s self-deprecating words, she saw the innocent version of him from before everything was ruined.

Foolishly, a cruel vision clouded her eyes again, and a vain hope—that it might not be too late to make it real—sprouted like a poisonous mushroom.

But in the next heartbeat, Ethan cruelly trampled that sprout of hope once more.

—I might be a failure as husband material, but I wasn’t a failure in bed. I’m telling you to consider the utility of that. Strip away the annoying things like emotions, and we can just be there for each other when we need to, with no strings attached. How about it?

Eve stared at the man before her as if he were a species she had never encountered.

Ethan Fairchild might not be a devil.

He was just a beast in heat.

Had he always been such an animal? Yes, perhaps the ‘innocent Ethan of the past’ had never existed at all.

His single vulgar sentence forced Eve to rewrite her entire history. In an instant, the pure memories of her first love felt like sickening hypocrisy.

A look of loathing, as if she were looking at a maggot, appeared on her face again, but this time, Ethan felt an absurd sense of relief.

That loathing was a pure reaction to his proposal of an ‘emotionless relationship.’ At the very least, it seemed there was no other man currently serving as the drainage pipe for Lady Evelyn’s desires. That single fact satisfied him, outweighing her blatant rejection. It truly was a pathetic, idiotic heart.

Just as he expected her to reject him with another lecture, Eve opened her handbag and pulled out a pen. She scribbled something on a paper coaster and slid it toward him.

It was Eve’s bank account information.

—If you return the rest of my assets to this account.

Ethan’s blood ran cold instantly. Did this girl, having lived only in a greenhouse, not realize what this meant?

—Physical relations in exchange for money. That is the very definition of prostitution….

If he could simply buy her body with money, the task would become incredibly easy. It wouldn’t compare to the effort of trampling his own pride to beg the noble Princess to open her legs just once. Even knowing this, he crushed the opportunity himself—because Ethan Fairchild was a contradictory fool who couldn’t bear to see the woman he loved reduced to a prostitute.

—Is Lady Evelyn suggesting she sell her body now?

The moment Ethan pointed out her slip of tongue, Eve burst into a laugh so loud the wine in her hand sloshed precariously.

—If I were going to sell my body, why on earth would I sell it to you?

It wasn’t an ignorant slip of the tongue. It was a calculated mockery. Having trampled his pride once again, the woman elegantly pulled out a cigarette and fitted it into a cigarette holder.

She savored the victory as she watched his face harden, and then, as the pleasure faded, she mocked him once more.

—Now that I think about it, I have an expert on prostitution right in front of me, don’t I?

It was an insult meant to imply that a thug like him must frequent brothels as if they were his own home.

What do you take me for?

However, Eve wasn’t merely mocking him as a dog of the brothels.

—Aren’t prostitution rings usually run by gangs?

—I don’t touch that business.

—Ah, then perhaps you wouldn’t know. I was just agonizing over a few things I was curious about, but I had nowhere to ask.

What on earth could the Princess of Kentrell be curious about regarding the prostitution trade? Ethan felt the conversation derail from the tracks he had painstakingly laid, but he had no choice but to cling to the back of Eve’s runaway train.

—I know a fair amount. What are you curious about?

But the nature of her curiosity was…

—It seems there are men in this world who find pleasure in becoming slaves to a woman who reigns over them like a queen.

Deviant desires.

For a moment, Ethan felt a sense of crisis, as if he were a fanatic witness to a sacrilege. It was the fury of having the memories of his first love—white and pure, even if it had been a hypocrisy—trampled by filthy feet.

Certainly, Ethan had desires he could never speak of. But to him, Eve was a sacred idol, far too holy to be defiled by such low, carnal lust; he had done nothing but suppress his own urges. And yet, someone had dared to casually corrupt the sanctity he had protected so fiercely.

Ethan could hardly believe it. Even as she spoke of deviant sexualities, Eve wore the face of a noble and refined lady who knew absolutely nothing of the disgusting discharge of lust that occurred in brothels.

Yet, there was a strange certainty in Eve’s tone—something beyond mere curiosity about a bizarre behavior from a world far removed from her own. She sounded like someone who had actually dealt with such a perverted man.

—If you happen to know about this as well, could you teach me how it’s done?

In that instant, Ethan’s reason snapped.

Which bastard was it?

Like a fool, a murderous impulse surged within him.

⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅

Tucked away inside the fireplace behind the screen, Tony recited the ironclad rules of a spy he had read in a book.

Rule number one: Never move. Even if your legs go numb, you have to endure. Even if your nose itches, you mustn’t scratch.

Rule number two: Never make a sound. Not even the sound of breathing. And definitely no sneezing!

Though the dust and ash floating inside the fireplace made his nose tingle, Tony kept his eyes wide and endured. If he didn’t, he would miss the villains’ secrets.

—We have to kick Ethan Fairchild out of here immediately. Owen, have you still not thought of a good way?

Based on his observations, those villains met secretly either in the Dowager Duchess’s bedroom or in Tony’s study. However, there was no pattern to when or where they met. That was why he had kept missing them until now, but today, luck was on his side; the two appeared while he was already hiding in the study.

—We can’t just wait for him to leave on his own. At this rate, Eve might end up carrying Ethan Fairchild’s child again.

…Again?

Tony was so shocked by that single word that he almost forgot the ironclad rules of a spy and let out a gasp.

‘Again.’ Didn’t that mean Eve had carried Ethan’s baby before?

What happened to that baby?

Could it be… me?

He had finally obtained a piece of the massive secret that had driven him to commit acts of espionage in his own home. Perhaps, just like this, the entire great secret would be revealed.

Please, just say one more thing.

Say that Tony is that very baby, that Eve and Ethan are Tony’s real mommy and daddy.

His heart throbbed. Just as Tony—terrified that the sound of his own heartbeat would drown out the truth—finally broke the rules and leaned his body forward…