Doberman

Chapter 25

 

BANG.

 

Behind her, she heard a man leap across the table. Even if she hadn’t looked, her glass would have fallen to the marble floor and shattered. Her head pounded as if it would explode. Fear, threatening to grab her by the back of the head at any moment, made her legs tremble.

 

Who is it? Who is it?

 

Who is that man with the same face as him?

 

There was a doorknob right in front of her. She reached for it and was grabbed by the hair.

 

“Ow!”

 

Sarin let out a long scream.

 

Thump!

 

At that moment, the dogs started barking loudly. They rushed forward, growling threateningly, showing their hostility to the man with Owen’s face.

 

“Shut up, boy. Where are you going to show your teeth to your master?”

 

Boom!

 

The blue dog kicks the man in the stomach, unable to stop himself from lunging. The dog’s body slid sideways on the man’s long paw.

 

“Blue!”

 

Sarin called the dog’s name, forgetting the pain of her head being grabbed, and it jumped to its feet, blocking his path and barking again.

 

“Damn, you catch on quickly. Your sister is so naive, easily fooled, isn’t she?”

 

Sarin’s struggle to get to Farang stops. She hadn’t expected the words about her sister to come out of the man’s mouth.

He tugged harder on the strands of her hair in his hand, yanking her back to face him, her small, slender body jerking against his.

 

Her gaze met his, her eyes cold and heatless.

 

Owen’s eyes were a little deeper, the surrounding black holes surrounding the golden pupils much darker. Again, this man was not Owen, not by a long shot, just a shell.

 

Sarin realized in hindsight.

She and her sister weren’t the only twins in the world.

Identical twins.

 

“You… what did you do to my sister!”

 

Sarin’s hands fumbled to pull her hair out of her face. She screamed, clinging to the taller man.

 

“I heard you had a brother with unusual eyes, how can you have eyes like this? They look like the eyes of a dog that’s about to die of old age….”

 

“Answer me!”

 

Snapped.

 

He grabbed a handful of Sarin’s hair and used the other to force him to release her grip, then close the distance and slap her across the cheek in a flash. Her body jerked to the side. The only reason she didn’t fall was because this man was holding her head in a vicious grip.

 

Her vision turned white.

She didn’t know if it was from anger or from being hit. But she wasn’t afraid. She had been beaten every day by her stepfather, an alcoholic.

 

Thump, thump, thump!

 

“Blue, stay still!”

 

Blue barked like he was about to pounce. Sarin shouted loudly. He’d kill the dog if the blue jumped on him again. She knew these kinds of people.

 

“Behave yourself. I was very close to your sister.”

 

She glared at him like he was going to kill her, and she stopped rebelling. She realized something during the beating: these men, like her stepfather, beat her harder the more she defied them. Mama had been beaten so many times that she had lost the will to run away, and Sarin and Irin, once they were big enough, took over, trying to cover her.

We did it all together.

 

Sarin turned to face him, her eyes still poisonous.

 

“…What did you do to my sister?”

 

Her voice trembled uncontrollably. Rage overcame her, and she couldn’t control herself. The man smirked as he watched Sarin’s hair stand on end. 

 

Owen never laughed like that.

His laughter was more of a man-scratching kind.

 

“I don’t know. Maybe I was in love. Your sister unilaterally chose me.”

 

“Don’t lie to me!”

 

His brow furrowed at her exclamation, and he shoved Sarin right back.

 

Thud!

 

Sarin’s back and legs ached from the landing, but she struggled to keep from falling.

 

“I just need to talk to you for a second, don’t run away, okay?”

 

He smiled sweetly, mimicking Owen’s tone. But it was all a lie. She might have been fooled by his face earlier but not now.

 

“Do you know why Owen is looking for me?”

 

“How do I know that?”

 

“That’s odd. I’m guessing it has something to do with you.”

The man rubbed his chin, frowning slightly. 

 

Then Sarin’s eyes slowly widened.

“Hello, Pavel.”

 

The same face appears from over the man’s shoulder. The greeting is flat, without a hint of surprise. When the man called Pavel turned to look back, his face slammed into Sarin’s side.

 

Kwak!

 

“Ack!”

 

A sound not unlike the scream she’d let out when she’d been grabbed by the hair erupted from Pavel’s mouth. Owen’s impassive eyes flickered across Sarin’s face.

 

“I told you to say hello when you got here.”

 

“I’m sorry. I just thought you….”

 

Before Pavel can finish his sentence, Owen spins him around, grabs him by the hair, and slams his big hand down on the man’s cheek.

 

Hard.

 

Thud.

 

Crack.

 

The flesh rips, and red blood spurts from the corner of his mouth. Owen turns his shoulder slightly to dodge the droplets of blood that burst from Pavel’s mouth and continues to slap Pavel’s cheek with an expressionless face. A ringed finger grazes his cheek, leaving a mark like a whip.

 

As Sarin slowly stepped to the side, two identical faces came into view, and she couldn’t believe her eyes.

 

The three dogs eyes that stood by her side were directed toward the one who had given her love and affection so completely.

 

“…Stop. It’s wrong….”

 

Pavel took the beating with no sign of protest and opened his mouth with bloodied lips. When Owen stopped hitting him, he tapped his ear a few times with his palm to make sure his eardrums weren’t out, and frowned.

 

“I told him I’d kill him if he messed with me.”

 

“What?”

 

Sarin shuddered. Her legs, which hadn’t collapsed when she’d been hit, went limp and she stood still. 

 

Pavel asked again if she thought he’d misheard.

 

Owen knows everything.

The man who said he didn’t remember her sister found Hayan’s father and brought him here with his own hands. Sarin’s face went white as she realized that Owen had never really had a relationship with Irin.

 

“I am disappointed that you would use my shell like this in my absence.”

 

Owen lifted Pavel’s chin with his hand. He moved his hand this way and that, looking at his mirror image with sunken eyes.

 

“What are you saying….”

 

“I thought I told you I’d kill you if you spilled a single drop of your filthy seed.”

 

“No! I didn’t!”

 

Damn. Pavel swallowed the expletive into his mouth. It was rare for Owen to call Pavel out first; he’d been dodging him for a while now because he’d heard that he’d freed a man, and he’d come to him on his own accord because he thought it was funny how the Romanovs had gotten away with it.

 

Owen of Heaven, who had no interest in women, now had an oriental woman by his side, someone the family would not welcome.

 

As soon as he looked into Sarin’s eyes, he remembered one of the women who had crossed his path in the past, an Asian who had worked as a casino dealer, and how she had told him that her twin sister was an eau-de-vie and that one was a beautiful ash color.

 

When Owen had been in Russia for a few months, he had briefly filled in for him on his grandfather’s orders that it should not be known that the owner of Eden City was away. It was their grandfather, Nikolai, who had made such a good use of the twins in the first place.

 

Having to learn his behavior in order to imitate Owen was terribly annoying, but messing with the women beneath him was a different kind of pleasure.

For Pavel, who loved all the pleasures of the world, Eden City was heaven. He couldn’t fathom why his grandfather had chosen Owen to run the place instead of him.

 

“Owen! You know I wouldn’t break my promise!”

That damn promise.

 

Pavel gritted his teeth. Owen, who had seen him flirt with many women, had threatened to kill him if he left any unclean seed behind. Owen’s threats had sent chills down Pavel’s spine.

 

Owen hated the blood that coursed through their bodies.

 

F**k, f**k, f**k.

 

Pavel rolled his eyes. It was the only thing he was better at than Owen. Separated at birth and raised in different circumstances, they hadn’t met until they were both adults.

Unlike Pavel, who had been raised by his grandfather for years, Owen proved his mettle by stomping on his head and getting up.

 

BANG!

 

Owen’s fist went straight into the side of Pavel’s ear. A piece of wood bounced off the broken door.

 

“Yeah, Pavel. My brother wouldn’t do that, so who’s lying now?”

 

Unlike the merciless touch that had made me cringe, Owen’s tone had no highs or lows.

 

“Because women lie, just like my mother did.”

 

As Pavel said this, he turned to Sarin, who stood dumbfounded beside him. Owen’s head turned slowly toward her, two sets of eyes on her.

 

Unable to say anything, Sarin shook her head silently. She could feel Owen’s anger turning on her at any moment. She pursed her lips, her eyes frozen.

 

“No… ah….”

 

The courage she’d shown Pavel in the face of violence had vanished in the face of Owen.

 

She was afraid. The look on her face, not knowing what she was thinking.

 

It reminded her of her first day here. Her stomach dropped at the sight of the man’s brashness. She didn’t know where to start, how to explain the existence of Hayan, and the father of that child, so she couldn’t even organize who exactly she was.

 

No, the man who sees himself with that face is definitely not the child’s father.