"The bastard… the things he wants to know…"

Cutting the call and turning around still muttering, what he saw was her — leaning against the wall, arms folded, looking straight at him.

It was plain from her face that she had heard every word he'd said. He shrank into himself completely. Seeing the look on his face, however hard she tried to hold it back, her laughter burst out.

The moment he saw her mocking laughter, all his embarrassment vanished and the anger inside him came rushing out ten times faster. He charged at her, seized her by the cheek, and slammed her back against the wall.

"What gave you the nerve to do what you did last night…? Did you think you could escape me that way…? What will you do now… Speak…! You're nothing but something to be crushed under my hand… I'll give you the punishment for last night right now…"

He brought his face closer to hers. Expecting tightly shut eyes and lips trembling with fear, what he saw instead were eyes staring back at him in defiance… His eyes caught on hers and held. Not the slightest fear… she stood there utterly unfazed. It was the first time a woman had ever stood before him with a battle-cry in her eyes. Without his realising it, her gaze had stirred a curiosity in him… some strange attraction… to those eyes.

The grip of his fingers loosened. That one moment was all she needed — she seized his left wrist, twisted it, spun him around, and pinned him to the wall. His face struck the wall and stayed there. The instant she locked his shoulder, he howled, unable to bear the pain. With the door shut, nothing could be heard outside. He could neither turn nor break free of her hold. Without taking her hands off him, she brought her face close to his ear.

"I'm someone who has nothing left to lose… My body is the only thing I have left that is mine… and I will not let anyone touch it against my will. It was for my body that you married me, wasn't it…? As long as I'm alive, you will never get it… I can't go on being afraid and giving in any longer… least of all before someone like you… I have to win… and if I have to kill you to do it, I will… Don't trouble me for nothing…"

Saying that, she let go of his hand. With one scornful look at him, she took a dress from the cupboard and went into the bathroom.

Vic was left utterly dumbstruck… He couldn't understand what was happening… If she had this much nerve, then why had she been so afraid of me in the beginning…? The Elena he had known long ago and the Elena who was now his wife had nothing whatsoever in common… It was as if she had become someone else entirely… I'll have to be careful going near her from now on… It's clear from her movements that she knows a fair bit of self-defence… A direct attack won't work… I'll be the one who ends up hurt… But what is happening to me when she comes close…? I feel a strange pull toward her… I've never felt anything like this before… Is it because I've married her now, or is it just curiosity at this change in her…? Those eyes… What's so special about them…? I can't take my gaze off them… Ugh… what on earth are you thinking, Vic…? She's your enemy… It isn't right to admire an enemy's beauty…

Vic gave his head a shake.

You're still right here, aren't you… I'll have you yet… he said in his mind, looking at the closed bathroom door.

It was just then that Ram called him. With the wedding, Vic was on three days' leave from the office… Ram was the one handling everything in his place. Vic himself had kept Ram with him, insisting he stay on after college. And not just Ram — Stephen and Sophie were with them too… Kevin had joined his father's business… Danny was working in another city and came by now and then.

Seeing Ram's call, Vic hesitated, not knowing what to do… Should he tell him…? That swine would catch any change in him in an instant… No matter who else he lied to, he could never keep it up in front of him.

Vic drew a deep breath and answered the call.

"Hey… where is she… Did you hurt her…? What's she doing… Is she crying…?"

(The swine… all he cares about is her… asking whether I hurt her… and did she leave me standing on my own two feet…?)

"Hey… why aren't you saying anything…? Did something happen to her…? What did you do to her…?"

"Whatever I brought her here to do, I'll have done it… I didn't marry her to keep her around as a showpiece, did I…?"

"Is she okay…?"

(She's fine, you fool… I'm the one who's not okay… Try lying on the bare floor all night in the cold with your hands and feet tied — then you'll know how lovely it is… A man can't even tell which part of him hurts… And anyway you've always been on her side… You're my friend, you swine, not hers.)

"What's the problem… She came here expecting all this too, didn't she…?"

"Vic… at least listen to me this once… Isn't your spite satisfied by now…? Don't hurt her any more… just leave her alone…"

(Spite, never mind — how am I to tell this idiot that I haven't even managed to lay a finger on her, oh God… If they all found out, I might as well be dead.)

"We'll talk about it… Did you call just to say this…?"

"No, I need your signature on a few files… Are you coming to the office, or should I bring them to the house…?"

Vic was still in the middle of answering him when she came out of the bathroom… She was dressed in jeans and a sky-blue top that fell below the knee, her hair left loose… Water dripping from her hair had dampened the back of the top.

"Hey… why aren't you saying anything… Hello… hey… Vic… are you there…?"

"Ah, I'm here… go on…"

"What's with you… you sound rattled… Something's up, isn't it…?"

(Oh, didn't I say he'd catch on…)

"It's nothing, I'll call you back…"

Vic cut the call and looked at her.

(Has she cut her hair…? It used to reach her knees, and now it's only a little below her shoulders…)

Seeing him standing there watching her doubtfully, she raised an eyebrow and asked what it was.

He shrugged to show it was nothing.

While she turned away and was doing up her hair, he walked toward the bathroom to freshen up… The moment he reached the door, he turned and called out to her.

"Don't go thinking I'll back off because I'm afraid of you… This is my turf… However much you fight back, in the end you'll lie writhing beneath me, drenched in my sweat… You're right here, aren't you… we'll see…"

"We'll see about all that… First, you go and brush your teeth… I'm the only one who knows what I had to endure earlier when you came at me with that mouth of yours…"

Saying that, she gave him one contemptuous look and walked out.

Vic's face went the way of a balloon with the air let out of it… He'd delivered a fine hero's dialogue with the air of a man who would never give in to her — and she'd poured cold water all over it without a shred of mercy. Ugh… couldn't she have said something else…? The whole thing was humiliating… Damn… I should have brushed my teeth first and then gone to pick a fight with the girl… rubbish…

He slunk off to the bathroom, scratching his head.

By the time he had freshened up and come back, she was nowhere to be seen… Even as he sat down at the table to eat, his eyes were searching for her without his meaning to… Seeing this, Richard nudged Catherine and pointed it out to her.

(Where has she gone…? Has the dutiful daughter-in-law marched into the kitchen and started working…? How do I even ask them…?)

"She's just stepped out for a bit…"

Reading his eyes as they kept drifting to the kitchen door, and his reluctance to ask them outright, Catherine spoke to him.

"Stepped out… where…? Here…?"

"She didn't say… Besides, you only brought her here for a little while, didn't you… so we didn't go asking either… For as long as she's here, let the girl come and go as she pleases… that much we should at least do for her, shouldn't we… You can't bring yourself to love her, after all… so until she leaves, she's our daughter…"

(Has this girl won them over too…?)

He was about to say something more when his phone rang.

It was from Elena's family… they were inviting them over to the house.

The moment he heard it, a sly smile spread across his lips.

(This is the only place your villainy gets to run free, isn't it… In your own house you're just a little kitten, aren't you… You were the servant to that whole lot, weren't you… I want to see what you'll do once you're there…)

✦

"What is it, Father… Are they coming today…?"

Mona asked Roger as he turned back after hanging up the phone… Her younger sister Nina stood right beside her.

"I've told them… said they could call round in a little while…"

At that, Mona's face brightened.

"You know why I invited him here, don't you… It's because I learned you have your eye on him that I asked them over… Otherwise I wouldn't have spared that girl a second glance… She's the seed of the woman who threw away my honour and ran off… That's why, even knowing it was to make her suffer, I went ahead and arranged this marriage… and only after extracting a guarantee that she'll never come back to claim what's hers…"

This is Roger… Elena's uncle.

Elena's grandfather, Gerald Merrick, and her grandmother, Beatrice, had two children… Paula and Roger… Paula, who had gone away to the city to study nursing, fell in love with a doctor of mixed heritage… Ivan Savine… His mother was one of their own people… Irene… and his father, some great landowner from a distant province… Preston Savine…

Just as they were about to tell the family of their love, the family settled on Paula's marriage to Roger's friend, Vincent… Paula learned of it only when she came home on leave… She told her family of her love at once, but they would not agree, saying they had given their word to Vincent… What's more, they put her under house arrest and resolved to hold the wedding quickly… With someone's help, Paula got word of all this to Ivan… He came with his father to ask for her hand, but Roger insulted them and threw them out… That very night Ivan whisked Paula away from the house and married her… For Roger this was a terrible humiliation… he swore he would never again let the woman who had gone chasing her own desires set foot in the ancestral home… Ivan took Paula away to his own homeland… Years later, Gerald Merrick forgave them and called them back… Roger did not like it at all… But on their way back, Paula and Ivan were killed in an accident… Their daughter was Elena… She was three years old then… After that it was the grandfather and grandmother who raised her… as if in atonement toward their daughter… Unable to defy his father, Roger too kept his displeasure hidden… But Elena's hard days began after her grandfather's death… She was in the tenth grade then… With that, she became a mere servant in that house… The grandmother was often helpless… yet she saw to it that the girl's schooling did not stop… Roger's anger toward Elena was milked to the full by his wife, Susan, and their two daughters… They made her work to the bone… They drilled into her the awareness that she was being raised on their charity… She had neither the ability to argue back nor to stand up for herself… and so she obeyed everything they said to the letter.

It was two years after she started college that the trouble with Vic arose… Her grief was something she could share with no one… But later, when Vic's marriage proposal came to the house, she came to understand that her uncle was the manager at his office, and that he had taken a large sum to hand her over to Vic… Not only that… Vic had also given a guarantee that she would never come asking for her mother's rightful share… Even so, thinking her uncle didn't know about Vic's grudge against her, she went to tell him — only to hear that Vic had already told him as much… He was in the middle of explaining it to his wife and daughters, who had been questioning why he was marrying her off into such a grand family…

She understood that her life was over… Leaving everything to God, she submitted to it all without a word.

It was no lavish wedding… A registry marriage, followed by a small ceremony at the chapel where he placed the ring on her finger — that was all there was.

It was on the wedding day that Mona first saw Vic… The very instant she laid eyes on him, she melted… The more she looked at his broad chest and his firm, hard body, the more an insatiable craving for him grew in her… Her eyes roamed greedily over his body… She made up her mind to make him hers by any means… Knowing her desire, her father and mother egged her on.

"That alone isn't enough… Somehow you must get her a job at your office… That's the better way for her to get close to him… The moment they arrive, you must speak to him about it… Once she's got a foothold in the office, our girl will see to working her way into his life herself… won't you, dear…"

It was his wife, who had come into the room in the middle of their discussion, who said this.

✦

Handing over the file, Ram studied Vic intently… Vic faltered for a moment under his gaze, but, not letting it show, sat with his head bent over the file… Ram was still watching him, suspicion in his eyes.

"Hey… tell me the truth… Where is she…? I haven't seen her since I got here…"

Vic was just about to tell him when a car pulled up in the yard… They could see it through the glass wall of the office room… Elena got out of it with a great many shopping bags.

To be continued…