Chapter 001
[PART I]
Prologue
Why is my life like this?
“Isaac, stay with me. Please, stay with me.”
Isaac’s blood soaked through his shirt, making it damp.
He was only nine years old. I couldn’t even imagine how much it hurt to be stabbed with that little body.
“It… hurts… Aun… ty…”
“It’s okay. It’s okay, Isaac. Auntie will protect you.”
Just ten minutes ago, we were sitting on the bed playing a board game, but now Isaac was dying from a stab wound, and I was running from a murderer.
The killer, covered in the blood of the servants, mistook Isaac for the one who opened the door and slashed his neck.
It made sense; he was visibly shocked when he realized he had stabbed a child. He must have aimed for the chest or stomach, but for little Isaac, it was his neck.
“Isaac, just wait a bit. Auntie will… Auntie will…”
Damn this body.
“Ahh. Ugh! Ugh!”
My chest tightened up. I’d managed to hold up for this long, carrying a nine-year-old boy, but now the effects were catching up to me.
It was a miracle I didn’t have a panic attack amidst this intense stress.
I saw the medicine room in the distance. Thankfully, the East Wing, where I lived, wasn’t far from the medicine room.
But I couldn’t breathe. My throat was closing up.
“Ugh! Ah!”
Just fifty meters more to the medicine room, but those fifty meters felt so far.
I put Isaac down and took out some medicine from my pocket. Meanwhile, blood was still pouring from Isaac’s neck.
“Ugh, ah.”
I pounded my chest and swallowed the medicine. But before I could even swallow it, a man appeared at the end of the hallway.
Despite not being able to breathe for several seconds, my heart felt like it was going to burst, and I picked up Isaac.
“I will protect you.”
With a big event happening in the city today, there were no adults at home, and all the servants were killed by an unknown man.
Even though I was only an eighteen-year-old girl who had barely become an adult eleven months ago, I was Isaac’s guardian at this moment.
‘I just need to hold on until my brothers arrive, just a little more…’
I ground the pill between my teeth as I ran.
I tried to dodge him, but a shard from a broken vase scattered across the floor jabbed into my skin with each step.
Blood poured from my feet, making the marble floor slippery.
“Ah!”
My foot slipped in the blood, and I stumbled. As I fell forward, I curled up to protect Isaac.
My forehead hit the hard floor first. It felt like my neck was going to break. I couldn’t stay conscious. The half-dissolved pill in my mouth fell out.
“Cough. Cough!”
In that moment, a shadow loomed over me. I couldn’t tell if I had blacked out for a second or if the man was just incredibly fast.
A pair of cold, blue eyes—so dark and deep they looked like the ocean—glared down at me. My legs went weak with terror at the deadly aura radiating from him, and tears started to fall.
“Hic!”
I felt like I was going to die right there because I couldn’t breathe, but I wanted to speak.
Please, let him live. Let Isaac live.
The man grabbed me by the collar and lifted me up.
I dropped Isaac and hung limply in the air, held up by the man’s strong grip.
Blood from my forehead made my vision blurry. Tears streamed down my face even then.
“Ah!”
Was it for money? Or did the enemies of my brothers send him?
The lack of air blurred my vision, and I felt myself fading. Just as I was gasping for any hope, my throat finally cleared and air filled my lungs.
“Ah!”
Finally, I could breathe. Then, I reflexively shouted out.
“Please, save him…”
It was the first time in my life I’d ever begged for anything.
Who would have thought a day like this would come in Scarlett White’s life? I had lived my whole life like a flower in a greenhouse, the princess of the White family.
“Please, save Isaac. You can kill me, but please save him.”
I didn’t know I would ever beg for my life from someone. Today, I found out my arrogant nature could break down like this.
My vision blurred, but I kept pleading and pleading.
“Please save Isaac. You can kill me. But this child is innocent.”
Isaac couldn’t die. My beloved nephew, my little croissant.
Just ten minutes ago, we were wrestling over who would roll the dice first. Isaac, I will save you. I will save you…
“Isaac can’t die. Not this child. You can kill me. Please, I’m begging you.”
At that moment, a thunderous sound echoed. Someone had shot a magic bullet at him. The man, startled, dropped me.
The man turned to see who shot the magic bullet, and I just grabbed Isaac and ran.
I must have twisted my ankle when I fell because I lost feeling in my foot. My body wobbled as if it would collapse at any moment.
I never had to run unless I was playing with Isaac or Abigail, my niece, so this situation was overwhelming both mentally and physically.
‘Finally!’
I reached the medicine room. I laid Isaac on the table, locked the door, and blocked it with a chair.
“Isaac, wait. Hemostatic agent… Where the hell is it?”
I rummaged through the drawer and found the medicine labeled “Hemostatic.” I poured it all over Isaac’s neck, then quickly wrapped his neck with bandages. Meanwhile, I heard knocking on the door.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The precise knocking sent chills down my spine.
I rolled up the carpet on the floor of the medicine room and lifted the marble slab underneath. I was the only one who knew about the empty space under the floor because I often came to the medicine room.
Isaac, pale as a corpse, blinked his dark eyes. My blood dripped onto his red curly hair. I kissed his forehead and whispered,
“Isaac, listen to me. You can’t make any noise.”
Isaac opened his mouth to say something.
“I’m fine.”
My poor nephew. Even in this moment, he was trying to comfort me. I covered his mouth and whispered,
“Isaac, promise me. You have to stay quiet until our family comes. Okay? I’ll go out and get help. Just wait a little. I love you, my croissant.”
I kissed him one last time before putting the floor back in place.
I smashed the window with my bare fist. Glass shards cut into my arms and hands, but I ignored the pain as I pulled myself out. Glass tore through my clothes and into my waist, but I didn’t care.
I had to make it look like Isaac escaped outside. I needed the man’s attention focused somewhere else, or he’d find Isaac in the medicine room.
My heart pounded with every second. The blood made the doorknob slippery, and it was hard to open the door.
Bang!
The door opened. I locked eyes with the man, whose eyes were a cruel shade of purple. Such a rare color looked even colder on him.
His gaze fixed on me. He walked over and grabbed my hair before I could escape through the window, pulling me back inside.
“Ugh!”
I swallowed my scream. If Isaac heard, he might get scared and cry out.
The man was even more covered in blood than before, likely having killed the person who shot the magic bullet.
“What… did I do wrong…?”
Why was this happening to me?
“Just… kill me.”
I couldn’t get the last words out as he choked me.
Hanging in the air, I weakly punched his arm. But he didn’t budge.
Even in my dying moments, I clung to a small hope. That I had saved Isaac. That he would survive and be rescued.
“Ack!”
It felt like my flesh was burning.
Real hell was about to start. I was going to die in the most brutal, unimaginable way in this man’s hands.
He kept stabbing me until I stopped breathing. He slashed me five times and threw my body against the wall.
I died, silently screaming for Isaac. That’s how I died.
* * *
“Gasp, gasp, gasp!”
The moment I woke up from the nightmare, I reached for my anti-anxiety pills and swallowed them dry. The bitterness made my head feel numb.
I rang the bell to call for Mary.
That’s how my day started.
“What the hell is going on! Do I have to worry about the security of this house too? Why do I wake up every dawn, trembling with fear!”
“Miss. Nothing happened last night. Please calm down. If you get worked up again, you will-”
Mary quickly rang the emergency bell. Already having a panic attack, I pounded my chest.
“Ugh! Ugh!”
I could never get used to the feeling of not being able to breathe. That terrifying sensation made me knock over everything on my nightstand.
Even while gasping for air, I didn’t forget to glare at the servants. I couldn’t stand their negligence. After struggling to breathe for a while, my body finally returned to normal.
“You all want me to die, don’t you? You want the crazy Scarlett White to die so you can be free, right? Is that why you’re torturing me like this? Did you call the doctor late on purpose?”
My emotions had always been erratic, but it had gotten worse since I came back from the past.
I died a month before my nineteenth birthday, but when I opened my eyes, I was back in the past.
Even though I had traveled back in time, my memories hadn’t reverted, and I couldn’t recover from the trauma of being murdered.
For a hundred days, I’ve been living in fear, taking anti-anxiety pills and sleep aids, waking up in the middle of the night screaming. It felt like climbing a cliff, holding onto a frayed rope.
Scott showed up just in time. The long-pending request slipped out as soon as I saw him.
“Scott. Please find him for me.”
I forced myself to calm down, my nerves barely hanging on. It felt like they were about to snap at any moment if someone even slightly brushed against them.
“Are you taking your medicine?”
“I’ve been taking it up to the limit. They say I can’t increase the dosage anymore.”
Scott was my third older brother and also Susan’s twin brother, Isaac’s mother.
His network of information was more accurate than that of the government. It was thanks to our mother being an only child, so he inherited the military business from her family, the Kravitzes. The Kravitzes had a long-standing reputation for their intelligence gathering.
“I need to find that man.”
“You’re not going to tell me who he is, are you?”
“I’ll tell you later. Another time.”
“Blond, a little over 180 cm tall… anything else you know?”
“I don’t remember. Scott, I owe him a huge debt.”
A debt so massive it would still feel too small even if I was torn apart and killed. That man stabbed me five times until I died.
At the mention of “debt,” Scott’s expression became more complicated.
If the White family had a debt, it probably wasn’t financial. It must have been something personal.
But I didn’t have any acquaintances or even real friends. So it made sense he’d be suspicious of what I was saying.
Still, he must have thought this would give me some kind of purpose, so he gave me a faint smile and let it go.
“By the way, there was some noise at the house the other day.”
Scott pulled out a faded piece of paper from an envelope.
“Isaac, who lost his playmate because his aunt was sick, was found playing with the ancestors in the portrait room.”
“What?”
“I debated whether I should tell you this, but I think you need to know. Listen carefully before flipping it over.”
“What is it?”
“This is a portrait of Ashford.”
At Scott’s words, my face crumpled.
“Ashford.”
That was my father’s mistress’s last name. She was the woman my father had an affair with while my mother was pregnant with me.
I almost tore the paper in rage, but my hands were shaking so badly I dropped it. When the paper landed face-up, I couldn’t help but take a sharp breath.
“T-this is…”
I wasn’t shocked because Julia Ashford was some stunning beauty. No, it was because her face looked *exactly* like the murderer who had stabbed me five times.
Purple eyes.
The same eyes as the man who butchered my body.
I gasped and grabbed my chest, searching for my medication. Scott quickly found the pills and handed them to me.
“Calm down. It’s okay. Breathe, Kali.”
Who was that man to look so much like Julia Ashford?
My hands trembled. I felt my body go weak, chills running down my spine.
My stomach and chest, where he had sliced me open, started to ache again. I wanted to rip my clothes off and check if I was okay.
What the hell was going on? Where did Isaac even find this painting…?
“Someone had hidden that woman’s painting behind your father’s portrait. Kali, listen closely. The reason you’re sick is all because of her. She claimed her son looked exactly like her and insisted he was your father’s son. Because of that shock, your mother had a premature birth, and you were born weak. But the latest information I got says that woman is dying.”
“…Her son?”
“Yeah. She had a son. He’s one year older than you.”
My body started shaking uncontrollably. Her son. The one who killed me.
“I’ll do what you want. What do you want me to do with her?”
Scott’s eyes glowed darkly. I took a deep breath.
“I… I want revenge.”
200 days. The time left before I was killed. I want revenge.
