The Grand Duchess Escape - Chapter 117.1
In her wide field of vision, she saw the door where he had been standing just moments ago.
Asella’s pupils fluttered violently as she recognized the distinct pattern engraved in the center of the door. An incoherent and indistinct whimper struggled to escape her lips.
“You should be happy, Asella. Haven’t I lightened your burdens?”
Asella’s vision blurred. Her body trembled violently, and her heart pounded at a frenzied pace as if it might burst at any moment.
‘Mother…!’
The symbol carved on the door was something she was deeply familiar with. It was likely a symbol she would never forget for the rest of her life.
The button that the dying Adel had torn off from an assassin and handed to her— it bore the exact same pattern as the one on that door.
“You must have seen it too.”
Tears rolled down from her eyes, swollen with overwhelming physiological terror. As Asella began to tremble uncontrollably, Calix’s beautiful face grew even more intense with a smile.
“So, do you know the meaning of that symbol?”
Asella’s head stiffly moved from side to side, as if it might make a creaking sound any moment. She tried to say no, that she didn’t want to know, but her voice didn’t come out as if her throat had been blocked.
“Karma.”
Asella paled. Her body trembled violently as if she was having a seizure, and her vision flashed white. His lips twisted mockingly at her.
“If you tremble like this already, where does that leave me?”
Calix lightly brushed aside the strand of hair that covered her face, his touch almost tender as he caressed her wet cheek.
“I haven’t done anything yet.”
The man who had stepped back a little to show her the symbol approached her in the blink of an eye and closed in on her.
In an instant, Asella’s body was lifted upright and warped in Calix’s embrace, almost as if she were being buried. The sensation conveyed by his arms, enveloping her waist and back, was vivid– and while she was trapped by him, unable to move an inch, Asella’s body stiffened.
“Asella Benvito.”
His body felt excessively hot. The heat radiated from his body filled her with warmth, causing any chill she felt from the cold basement to vanish.
“Do you want to live?”
Asella’s words got stuck in her throat. He looked at her murderous aura filling the air, it almost felt like it would strangle her at any moment. However, the gaze with which he looked at her felt strangely dangerous in a different way.
“You need to answer.”
“Sob…”
Frustrated and unable to express herself, she burst into tears. Asella, while sobbing, nodded repeatedly. She wanted to live. She begged to be spared.
Finally, the man who had remained silent to the point of it being terrifying and in the face of her pitiful plea, opened his mouth.
“I don’t keep anything alive that could become a source of trouble later on.”