DM Chapter 26
“So if it’s not your child, then she must have been raped without her knowledge.”
The question was directed at Pavel, but his gaze was directed at Sarin. She had always suspected him, thinking of him as the biological father.
She couldn’t even begin to imagine where Owen knew about this. She thought the man who ruled Eden City wouldn’t bother to invest time and effort in someone other than himself.
Why? How?
She had promised to behave quietly and nicely, just as he said.
Owen put down Pavel, whose face had already burst, and approached Sarin.
Out of habit, he twirled the ring in his bloody hand. The ring didn’t even make half a turn. She felt dizzy, as if the moisture in her body had evaporated and disappeared. With only a few steps away, she closed her eyes tightly. A bloody hand stroked her cheek.
“It seems like you know what will happen next.”
With just one hit from Pavel, Sarin’s cheek was swollen. One of Owen’s eyes twitched slightly. And when he turned around to go to Pavel again, someone blocked his way.
“Stop.”
“Move.”
“The old man is here. Stop it.”
Yuri, who often used honorifics in front of others, stopped Owen in a firm tone. At the mention of the old man, Owen raised the corner of his mouth.
“Very well, quite indeed.”
“What’s the point of all this?”
Pavel grimaced with pain. He shouldn’t have come here without safety measures. Pavel hadn’t set foot in Eden City since he’d been nearly killed after posing as Owen and siphoning off laundered funds.
While fleeing, he once hid in a house belonging to one of his many government contacts, but Owen was already waiting for him there. He didn’t understand how he could predict his impulsive decisions.
It was initially Owen’s business, and he held responsibility for the customers.
Pavel was almost thrown as fish bait on a coast in the Baltic Sea after being cut off by him because he was angry. Not only because he stole his money, but also because he used Owen’s name to touch numerous women and expand his underground business.
Owen doesn’t do dirty work. Initially, he had made a promise with his grandfather, Nikolai, to oversee Eden City and the casino, raising his funds. He refrained from getting involved in activities like drugs, prostitution, or smuggling that could bring in significant money.
So Pavel briefly sold his name and acted as Owen as he took charge of those activities.
It looked good until he faced the crisis of his body being torn apart in the government’s house.
At that time, Pavel had made one promise to Owen: to survive. Despite being furious to the core, he promised not to bring up other matters, never to set foot in Eden City again, and not to recklessly spread dirty seeds. He warned that if he broke this, the entire Baltic Sea would be a grave.
Pavel nodded, knowing that Owen’s words were sincere. It wasn’t like he was being asked to spit money, so a promise like that was no big deal. That is, until an unknown variable appeared: a child.
“Wait here, Pavel. Be quiet. Don’t be an asshole.”
With an indifferent voice, Owen warned. Pavel smiled and waved his hands as if he were to see him later. Turning away with a cold face, he passed by Sarin and said to Yuri:.
“If he moves, cut off his legs.”
Her body trembled.
Even though she knew it wasn’t directed at her, his voice felt horribly intense.
Except for his bloodied hands, he appeared more sunken than usual. Not a single strand of his well-pomade hair was out of place. When Owen went a short distance away, Sarin’s hesitant body finally moved.
Even the dogs seemed to sense their owners’ discomfort and stood still in their places.
Between the closing elevator doors, Sarin squeezed her body. Owen, with one hand in his pocket, watched with cold eyes, observing how far she would go.
“My sister has a kid.”
Sarin said, barely able to fit inside the tiny box.
“Really?”
Owen responded, looking slowly at her red-swollen cheek and lifeless face.
“Don’t… touch her.”
He mercilessly slapped a man who looked just like him, saying dirty seed. Owen, with no hint of hesitation, didn’t seem like he would just let Hayan go.
Above all, the threat that moving would result in cutting off his legs wasn’t just mere intimidation. It was a punishment for Pavel for crossing the line drawn by Owen.
Did her sister truly not know that he wasn’t Owen? Did she not know it, or didn’t she want to admit it? The diary contained only stories about Owen.
The reason why the woman, who had hidden her child and couldn’t confess the truth to the child’s father, had no choice but to return home hastily, trembling in fear, was now right in front of her.
She knew.
If the real Owen found out that fact, he would not let her off.
“I was wrong.”
Sarin’s mistake had brought her to this point. She had no choice but to come. She wondered if there was anything wrong with a child crying while looking for her real parent. Tears silently streamed down her cheeks.
She came here, using the excuse that the child wanted to see his father and to ask for child support if the child’s father was still alive.
In Korea, money was a debt pressing down on Sarin. There seemed to be no hope of living with the child or finding a way out. Rather than both dying, it seemed better to grab the last straw.
However, upon arriving in Eden City, the issue was not money; the dominating thought in her mind was the need to survive and return.
“It’s… my fault.”
Sarin had always made the worst choices. The consequence of those choices reached out, grabbing her by the throat and pulling her in an instant.
Instinctively recoiling from the bitten upper body, he scanned the dampness, disappearing along the edge of her hairline with his gaze.
“I hate rainy days.”
In his cloudy eyes, the dampness reminded him of that narrow space where, as a child, he could only see the world through a small, round window the size of his palm. The window, too small and high for a child’s hand to cover, looked exactly like this on rainy days.
It was only when he grew much taller that he realized it wasn’t a window but simply a hole in the top part of the basement leading outside.
“It’s pretty.”
Her heart sinks to the bottom of her stomach. Owen had grown quite fond of this perfect face. Like that solitary hole, there was only one face like this.
A sky that never clears.
This woman resembled that place.
Sarin closed her eyes. The sound of tears falling somewhere resonated in her ears. The elevator descended. The feeling of her body sinking down made her wish she could just fall asleep like this.
With her eyes closed, it felt like a blur.
Quickly arriving at the bottom floor, she heard the clatter of slots being spun where Owen had dragged her. The thick smoke of cigarettes, the neat and mechanical voices of dealers, and the sounds of cheers or sighs mixed with frustration were etched into her ears. To avoid being dragged like a dog, she moved her feet frantically.
Curiosity flickered in the eyes of those who looked back at them every step of the way. What had that woman done to anger the owner of this place? What interesting situation was unfolding?
Glances mixed with curiosity followed them. Owen, who was leading Sarin, soon stopped in front of the roulette table.
He lets go of his grip, and her body sways. Grabbing a glass of whiskey from a passing server’s tray, he turns to Sarin at an angle, tilting the glass over his bloodied hand.
“I’ve been curious for a while.”
A sense of foreboding.
Was she in the situation of meeting this man for the first time right now? So how did she come back to the situation on the first day they met?
The smell of alcohol pierced her nose, penetrating her shaky and fragile heart. Instinctively, Sarin’s gaze slowly moved towards the glass of pumpkin-colored liquid flowing down the man’s fingers, dripping beneath the red carpet in an almost slow-motion fashion.
“This way?”
Owen pointed to the roulette table with a chin gesture. Regardless of his actions, the game was still in progress.
“Bet down, please.”
The dealer’s voice, urging a bet, ended slightly tremulous with surprise. The sound of the spinning beads was deafening. The glass he’d been washing his bloody hands in was set aside, and with a wave of his hand, he summoned the server again, asking for another glass filled with whiskey.
Aligned with Sarin’s gaze.
His golden eyes, held at just the right height, reminded her of a beautifully broken gem—an amber. The eyes visible through the glass were gently folded. The spilled whiskey, as if caressing the man’s fingers, flowed down and disappeared into the floor.
“Or this way?”
Unbeknownst to herself, her tongue slipped out between slightly parted lips.
It slid past the lower lip, swallowing dry saliva. Her hands trembled, and her mind went blank. It seemed like there was a breakthrough in the chaotic mess before her eyes. Could she have hidden it from the beginning?
Now, the man’s voice, cruelly probing, was unexpectedly gentle to the point of excess. Sarin’s body trembled uncontrollably.
She wanted to run away.
Left alone with her mother after her sister left, she was easily broken.
After her sick mother fell asleep on painkillers, she had to endure the night alone, so she turned to alcohol. She couldn’t forget the horrified look her sister gave her upon returning from Eden City after their mother’s passing.
Unable to endure the smell of alcohol any longer, Sarin eventually lost strength in her legs and sank to the floor.
“No more bets.”
The betting was over.
The remaining cards were all overturned. Already, from the beginning, from the moment she met this man here,.
