There was no doubt that the Empress of Blue of Dawn was gorgeous, and even as a man who had seen plenty of what the world had to offer, Tom had to acknowledge that she was in a league of her own. The rumors and photos did not exaggerate anything at all.
But no matter how pleasing to the eye she was, the fact that she was openly ignoring him while keeping him in such a disgraceful position was still infuriating! After all, if this wasn’t an open insult, what was it?
Granted, he had been involved in her attempted assassination, and it was natural for the girl to bear some grudge, but didn’t it all turn out okay in the end? Why was she still being so childish?!
Although he couldn’t voice his protest through the tape on his mouth, Tom couldn’t help but scoff in his heart. ‘As expected, the more beautiful a girl is, the emptier she is in the head. Look, she can’t even tell she’s probably being exploited by these two bitches, can she?’
Of course, he didn’t blame the two girls, and even admired them a little. Given such a delicious, dumb sheep jumping in the palm of his hands, who would be dumb enough not to slaughter it whole?
The girls didn’t even lose anything in this ‘trade’, and gained not just incredible influence and wealth, but also had ‘fun’ on top of it!
Unfortunately, he hadn’t been lucky enough to stumble across her at the right time. Well, even if he had, he might not have had the same ‘chance’ as these girls, given his position would definitely make the people protecting the girl more wary.
The only real pity was that he probably wouldn’t even get to lay down a few traps for the ones ‘who did him in’ in the end, just because this little girl was too dumb to make full use of her opportunities.
Knowing the president of Red Dusk as well as he did, Tom knew the man didn’t have the habit of talking out of his ass. Since he was so confident in the ‘poison’, there was no way he had any chance of staying alive beyond the tenth day, and he could already feel his heart palpitating strangely.
Had he not been aware of it, maybe he would never have realized something was wrong. As it was, however, the feeling of approaching death made him so terrified that he even forgot to curse the careless empress in front of him.
Fortunately for him, Emilia didn’t continue ignoring him for too long. After all, since her fun time with Crystal and Dixie had already been interrupted, she couldn’t just have this guy dying here uselessly!
”Can you bring me a glass of water, Dixie dear?”
The dark-haired girl did as she was told, and Emilia put the glass on the coffee table in front of her without taking a single sip.
Emilia finally looked at the bound man on his knees with a half-smile. “Tell me, mister chief of Red Dusk’s intelligence division… how does it feel to be so close to death?”
Dixie took the hint and ripped off the tape from the man’s mouth, making him groan in relief.
”F-Finally… little girl, you’re really too much, treating a dying man like this!”
Emilia blinked at him innocently. “Have you already accepted your death, then?”
Tom sneered. “Don’t expect me to beg you or flatter you at this point, little girl. Just bring me a camera so I can record my last words, and you can let smarter people on your side decide how to best hurt that bastard.”
The crimson-haired girl gave him a strange smile, but motioned Dixie just the same. “Well, although Uncle did something hateful in trying to kill an adorable girl like me, I don’t mind fulfilling a dying man’s wish. Dixie?”
Her dear ‘knight’ was already working on it before her words finished, and within moments, the ex-chief intelligence officer of Red Dusk had a camera pointed at his face.
Tom had been a selfish and petty man throughout his life, but never had he ever had the thought of betraying the commonwealth.
After all, it was his motherland, his foundation! Even if he had to share it with his enemies, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to weaken his own foothold for the sake of temporary, quick gains like some other fools.
When he eventually rose to the top, it was this very foundation that would give him the power to do anything! The stronger it was, the better.
Unfortunately, it was only when his death was imminent that he realized how foolish the notion of ‘future’ was for fragile creatures like them. In this sense, those ‘short-sighted’ fools who did whatever they could to maximize their gains every day really turned out to be ‘wiser’, after all.
Of course, Tom was not quite ‘generous’ enough to just admit defeat and go down without a fight. Now that he could no longer gain anything from this ‘foundation’… he didn’t mind even if it was shattered to bits and pieces!
”My name is Tom Harks, I’ve served as the chief intelligence officer of the Commonwealth of Red Dusk for fifteen years. Before that, I have—”
Every dirty secret he knew of, every shameful lie and deceit that he had helped the government come up with or stumbled across, and every single ‘unspeakable’ truth that was never meant to see the light of day was laid bare in front of the camera.
All to hurt the ones who led to his death as much as he could.
Neither Emilia nor the other two girls interrupted the man in the middle of his venomous speech, and only continued to listen to his words in half-fascination and half-exasperation.
Clearly, the man fully expected to die soon, and was holding absolutely nothing back.
Dixie and Crystal couldn’t help but wonder… if he knew that Emilia not only had a way to ‘save’ him, but would definitely keep him ‘alive’ for just the fun of it at this point… would he throw up blood from anger die immediately instead?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━