try begging
The man walked over to her, raising his hand to indicate that he was going to touch the gramophone. Grace turned her head forward again and put a cherry in her mouth. She kept her expression hard and smiled inside as the man circled the bar and took a bottle of brandy and a crystal glass from the wall shelf facing her.
That man had come to negotiate or persuade. In order not to fall for his clever tricks, I needed to seize the initiative in advance. So I brought up the topic that seemed the most disadvantageous to that man, and his spirit was instantly dampened.
The lion's teeth fell out in three years. Believe it or not, Grace never missed a chance to stand on top of that man's head.
"So what will you be interrogating today, Captain?"
"Grace, I..."
"Oh my, hearing my name in the captain's voice. It's already torture."
The man, who was trying to say something to her with a serious face, made a troubled face at her twisted attitude and closed his mouth.
"there is."
When the man offered her a brandy, Grace replied curtly, stirring her tall glass with a muddler. The man sat down next to her, placed a crystal glass filled with ice and brandy on the bar, and reached into the inside of his charcoal-gray suit jacket.
"Ellie hates the smell of cigarettes."
As she came out empty-handed, Grace laughed inside again.
You're a lot weaker than you used to be, Leon Winston.
From then on, Grace just hummed along to jazz melodies, her chin resting on her hand, and stirred the inside of her glass with a muddler. Occasionally, she could be heard exhaling slowly.
Only when the ice in the brandy glass began to melt and clank did Grace look up. The man did not drink or speak. He was staring straight ahead with his chin resting on his hand, so Grace followed his gaze and met his eyes.
The man was still looking at her reflection in the mirror on the wall. It was the same look in his eyes as he had watched Ellie play with her dolls earlier.
"It's pretty."
Leon's gaze changed the moment the woman in the mirror glared at him with provocative eyes. He took a deep breath and muttered as he exhaled.
"Blonde hair suits you well too."
And even those bright red lips.
"Looking at it this way, don't we look alike?"
Leon suppressed his inappropriate thoughts and changed the subject to something insignificant. The desire he had thought to be dead was awakened as soon as he met Grace again.
"I wanted to see you die...."
Do you think we're the lovers we broke up with? Grace kept glaring at the mirror, but the man suddenly turned his head towards her.
"You probably didn't miss me very much."
Grace also turned her head towards the man. She was about to look him in the eye and say, "You know me, right?"
"Because you must have seen it every day."
Grace glared at the man who had the same smile as her daughter.
"So, how have you been?"
He said this again. As if they were lovers meeting again after a long time. She didn't answer and just raised her glass.
"I haven't been doing well."
The man answered a question that wasn't asked. The man who met his eyes in the mirror smiled bitterly. But soon the smile faded.
"I regretted it every day for two years. There were more than one or two things I regretted, but I couldn't stand it because I missed the chance to meet my child. Do you know how painful it is to miss a face you don't even know? You can't even see it in your dreams."
The man looked at her and laughed again, but Grace did not laugh.
"So this time I went to find Ellie first."
Of course, there was also the calculation that if Ellie was caught, you would be caught as well. She glared at the man who added that. Only then did the man tilt his glass and drink the brandy, and he laughed as bitterly as he was drinking the liquor.
"It was beyond my imagination."
The corners of his lips, forced up, trembled slightly.
"It's painful because she's so lovely. Then how lovely must our daughter have been for the past two and a half years? That too must be beyond my imagination, but I'll have to just imagine it forever."
"congratulations."
At those words, the man laughed without enthusiasm and muttered.
"I guess you taught me a thing or two about punishment."
"It's an honor to hear such praise from a consultant with 12 years of experience."
Grace lifted her glass, mocking him with a sarcastic tone.
"Oh, I have one more thing to praise you for."
"Oh. Santa, are you listening?"
The man chuckled and continued speaking.
"You named my daughter after a human being I absolutely loathe. You have a knack for getting on my nerves. But you didn't know this. The Lady Elizabeth Winston's nickname is Beth, not Ellie. My dear, you're half-way done."
The man leaned toward her, his chin resting on his hand. The smell of his perfume grew stronger, and he was close enough to touch her ear, but Grace pretended as if nothing had happened.
"You know what? The fact that you want to drug me in some way is proof that you can't shake me off."
That's not wrong. But it's wrong to say that the daughter's name is evidence of that.
"I just named it that because it's the most common name, you idiot."
"To your only daughter? That's too much. If Ellie hears, she'll be disappointed in her mother."
Grace tilted her glass and smiled broadly.
"Will I just disappoint Dad?"
The man bit his lower lip, nodded as if he was acknowledging it, and walked away obediently. Then he changed the subject.
"By the way, you were the one who saved my life yesterday."
I thought he was going to spout some nonsense about how the fact that he saved me was proof that he couldn't shake me off, but that wasn't the case.
"thank you."
"I regret it. I should have let you die."
The man laughed as if he knew that it wasn't true.
"Did you see the movie? Wasn't it bad?"
"This is a masterpiece."
"I think so too."
He smiled and muttered, fiddling with his glass of brandy.
"It's not a bad thing to hate the same things. People tend to get closer when they hate the same things than when they like them."
It was a virtual effort to somehow intertwine them. Grace looked at the man with pitiful eyes and asked.
"So what you're saying is that anyone who hates a guy named Leon Winston is my match made in heaven?"
"It means I am your match."
While Grace was speechless in surprise, the man poured his drink with a bitter face. The man, who was the epitome of narcissism, said that he hated himself. I was confused.
"Grace, I came to apologize."
The man put down his glass and turned to Grace. From his expression to his voice, all the playfulness and humor was gone and he was serious. It was only when he started apologizing that I realized that it was more uncomfortable when this man showed his sincerity than when he was acting shamelessly with a mask on.
"No need."
The man wrapped his arms around Grace's waist as she stood up. Her body was pressed against his chest so that her shoulder was touching his chest, and Grace warned the man who was looking down at her with desperate eyes.
"Let go right now."
"It's up to you whether you accept the apology or not. Please just listen."
He's going to say something arrogant and shameless again under the pretense of an apology. Grace glared at him as if telling him to try. The man moved his lips as if he was choosing his words, but he managed to say them with difficulty, as if he was trying to say something great.
"I misunderstood you as deceiving and using me. I hate you, and I should hate you, but do you know that I, who likes you, couldn't stand it and was miserable and pathetic?"
"Is that an apple?"
"Listen until the end."
The man grabbed Grace's arm as she tried to shake it off. When she glared at him, the man released his hold on her arm.
"please."
But he continued speaking while still holding her waist.
"It might be funny, but I was scared of you."
At that moment, Grace remembered the words the man had whispered to her while she was unconscious on the day she almost died hanging from the noose.
"Grace, to be honest, I'm scared of you."
At that time, he was a man who held the power of life and death in his hands, so she mistook it for something she had heard in a dream.
"I called you a whore because I was afraid that if I didn't trample on you, I would be trampled on, and I treated you like a dog because I was afraid of being dragged around like a dog by you."
"so?"
"I'm not saying this to justify my actions. I didn't know it then, but I know now what I did. In the end, I chose a path that was pathetic and cowardly."
You're acting now. Grace's eyes wavered as she looked into the man's sincere eyes, trying to peel off the invisible mask.
"Everything that happened between us was my fault. You didn't do anything wrong. I'm sorry."
This apology sounded sincere. That made Grace even more uncomfortable. She wanted to run away, but her feet wouldn't move.
"I would like to go back and apologize for everything I've done to you, but it would take all night and I think it's just an unpleasant story for you... ."
What on earth happened to you while I was away? Her arms around his waist fell away, perhaps because he thought she was rejecting him since he couldn't say anything because his mind was too complicated.
"I'll stop here. If you change your mind, let me know. Have sweet dreams, Ellie..."
It was a man, not her, who took the first step.
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