If You Are Suited for the Villain's Secretary - Chapter 65

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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If the Villain’s Secretary Suits Me
Chapter 65
I had no intention of selling La Mar’s documents to do Crimson any favors.
If I’d been the type to do such a thing, I would have flapped my mouth long ago.
Because I possessed information far more precious than any Black Label documents—locked away in my own mind.
But they couldn’t possibly have an antidote. And even if they did, they would never give it to me.
‘It would be far simpler for them to just kill me to silence my tongue.’
Though I’d cornered Norbert into having no other choice, perhaps that’s also why he’d been relatively forthcoming about the poison.
After all, a man with only seventy-two hours left to live might as well be magnanimous with his revelations.
The clearer the answer became, the clearer my situation grew.
‘In the end, I won’t be able to hear Mother’s final words.’
It felt desolate and hollow.
‘…I won’t even be able to ask Father why he did that to me, why he abandoned me and ran away.’
Foolishly, tears threatened to spill.
“Ha. Now it’s starting to feel real, isn’t it?”
Norbert, who’d drawn close without my noticing, carelessly tapped my lowered cheek with the back of his hand—once, twice.
I didn’t want him to see me cry. Not this man, of all people.
So I tensed my lowered jaw, but Norbert dismissed my feeble resistance without concern. He seized my hair and forced my face upward.
“That’s right, you’re frightened. Resentful too, I’d imagine. But listen here—the one you should truly resent isn’t me.”
Tap. Tap.
With my eyes squeezed shut, the sting of his strikes and the sharpness of Norbert’s voice cut through me all the more keenly.
“It’s your own judgment for deciding to work at a Trading Company like La Mar in the first place.”
“….”
“And your superior, Aden—the one who makes enemies everywhere and ends up putting even his own secretary through this ordeal. You should blame him instead. Shouldn’t you?”
Aden.
“It’s not a difficult choice, is it?”
Contrary to Norbert’s words, the choice was anything but simple.
Even before I could be certain that Father and the antidote were both lies, I’d never felt inclined to readily sell out Aden’s secrets just to preserve my own life.
I was the type to adapt and solve problems as circumstances demanded—so why had I felt that way?
Simply because I disliked Crimson? Because those Crimson bastards seemed more villainous?
…No. That wasn’t it.
“I remember.”
Beyond the words he’d always followed with—that he would bear all responsibility himself—I remember everything Aden had said to me.
Even if he erected some inexplicable wall between us, nothing he’d done for me could be erased.
“What would you like me to do about it?”
The way he’d asked that, while also telling me he respected my wishes.
Offering me tea and listening to my story. Providing me shelter when I had nowhere else to go. Standing between Tessa and me. Coming to rescue me the day I nearly got dragged away by Jack. I remember it all.
That’s why. With such memories, I couldn’t help but hope.
‘…He’ll come.’
Aden will come for me this time too.
Even as I cut off his words sharply, he was clearly watching my retreating figure as I headed toward the Investigation Bureau—just as he had come to those employees dragged to Marquis Vito’s Residence, he would come to me too.
Trusting someone meant bearing the weight of potential disappointment. That’s why I had grown accustomed to swallowing my pain and enduring it alone.
And yet, despite everything, this strange and irrational sense of anticipation was somehow….
‘Aden will come.’
I didn’t want to let it go.
Into a heart that had only known fear, different emotions slowly began to bloom, and my senses—dulled as if paralyzed—awakened.
I opened my eyes, which I had been keeping tightly shut, and took a deep breath.
“Contact me here once you obtain the documents.”
There was a watch on Norbert’s wrist as he rummaged through the inside of his jacket.
Confirming it had been about fifty minutes since I left the Investigation Bureau, I shifted my gaze.
“You must have learned how to use a communicator at La Mare, so there’s no need for me to teach you. Fair warning—it’s an untraceable number, so don’t waste your effort trying anything foolish.”
Norbert tucked a business card into the front pocket of my blouse, then tapped my cheek once more—a gesture urging me to look at him.
But I didn’t give Norbert my attention. Instead, I was carefully observing the long horizontal window behind his back.
It was a moment.
The instant I caught a faint light passing over that window,
“…What? Why are you smiling….”
I seized the opportunity and sank my teeth into his hand.
“Aaaahhh!”
“You dare use poison to manipulate people? You’ve got some nerve.”
“Y-you crazy bitch…!”
“What, you’ll hit me? Go ahead, try. After all, you’ve got Iliana Grecia as a hostage—beat her to death if you want, then go report it to Kaileb Crimson!”
“What?!”
Norbert’s eyes went pale at the mention of Kaileb’s name, his bitten hand raised as if he would strike me down at any moment.
I had extracted nearly all the information I could get from Norbert. There was no need to continue pretending to cooperate.
‘Without Father and without an antidote, it’s not me who’s in a bind—it’s him!’
I sneered as viciously as I could.
“Curious about how much I know, Norbert?”
“Have you lost your mind…!”
“Since you brought up judgment, you should have made a better choice than this.”
Norbert seemed to seriously suspect that I had gone mad as I shouted wildly.
“If you wanted to seduce me, you should have brought stacks of money, not poison, you idiot!”
“This is insane!”
His hand was just about to reach my cheek.
But what reached my ear first was not pain.
“What!”
Crash!
It was a sound so loud it shook the cabin.
‘What else would it be.’
My outburst was not merely to vent my anger.
I had to create a disturbance, to draw Norbert and his subordinates’ attention away….
“Run! Get out of here now! Retreat, I said!”
Norbert wouldn’t notice people approaching this cabin!
Crash!
The ground trembled again with a deafening sound, and the rickety wooden door shook as if it would be torn from its hinges at any moment.
Norbert and his subordinates panicked in confusion, and the chair I was bound to toppled over with a thud.
My head struck the floor hard. The pain was sharp. I gasped and barely managed to open my eyes.
“Ugh….”
My vision wavered from the pain, and suddenly everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Blinking with difficulty, I stared at the chaos of the cabin in a daze.
A glass window shattered as it fell. One of the subordinates moving frantically cleared boxes stacked in a corner and gestured urgently to Norbert.
‘So there was a basement after all.’
It appeared there was a secret passage leading underground.
As Norbert entered the basement, he shot me one final glare before moving swiftly away.
One of the subordinates holding the door to buy time was sent flying. The back entrance had been breached first.
Knights in silver armor poured in one after another. Over the sight of them binding and restraining the struggling subordinates, shouts and screams mingled together.
“There’s a basement!”
“Don’t let a single one escape!”
I was watching the scene as if in a hazy dream.
Suddenly, the smell of gunpowder reached me. As gunfire erupted, dust billowed up in thick clouds.
Before I could even comprehend that the front door had been blown away, a fractured voice rang out.
“-liana!”
That voice, as if oblivious to the cabin’s chaos, the resisting subordinates, and the knights subduing them, pierced directly into my ears.
“Iliana, I….”
My name came out in a low, ragged tone that seemed more metallic than vocal.
The one who called my name approached me directly, his eyes seeing nothing else.
The hand holding the gun trembled as it fell. Yet the hand reaching toward me could not quite touch me.
The man who had seemed as unyielding as steel collapsed to his knees before me as if he might shatter at any moment.
“I’m sorry.”
Perhaps he was already broken.
“…It’s my fault.”
Aden’s face, as he spoke those anguished words, was ashen—like someone who had never drawn a single breath in their entire life.
Why was he blaming himself?
After all, he hadn’t betrayed my expectations.
So I smiled and opened my mouth.
“Director.”
“….”
“Look at me.”
The hollow eyes that couldn’t meet mine trembled sharply at those words.
Eyes devoid of any light.
When was it? I had seen his eyes like this before. It felt recent, yet it also felt like a distant memory….
Yet strangely, I felt neither fear nor unease.
When our eyes finally met, I whispered to him.
“It’s all right.”
An answer to his apology, and—
“Everything will be all right.”
Words I wanted to say to Aden, and to myself.
That everything would be all right.
Aden, who had been rigid as an ancient statue, seemed to awaken at those words. Slowly, his body bent toward me as if pouring forth.
With his forehead buried against my shoulder, he exhaled with the poignant desperation of someone who had been holding their breath through a long dive in The Sea.
“…Yes. That’s how it will be.”
Wait. He called me by name.
With that idle thought, consciousness slipped away from me.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com

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