If I Disobey the Duke

Lily de Winter (2)

TW: verbal abuse, descriptions of past abuse

Lily’s eyes widened as if they were about to pop out. It felt like she heard a foreign language. It wasn’t something that could have come from her father.

“Otherwise, when you took my wife and left the house, for what reason would I have spent the money and time to find her?”

Lily’s head was spinning. It seemed as if someone was grabbing her hair from each side and pulling it out. His rage and despair simultaneously devoured her in half.

“…H… How is love…”

Love was an investment and a return. Everyone, including Lily, knew.

Her mother. As her days went by, she remembered her, who had nothing but pale flesh.

The woman who somehow managed to win her husband’s attention every night. He treated her better only when she was pregnant. The woman who could hardly admit that her husband’s tender days were very few.

She was twenty-seven and she had a ten-year-old daughter.

“A man’s affection needs to be earned. Has she not come to her senses after she was abandoned twice by a man?”

“She just got divorced. That… She was not abandoned.”

It wasn’t even a marriage made of love, but how could he say that she was abandoned?

After she lived here, she could be sure. It was only after receiving love that she realized how wrong her previous life was.

“Then, if your husband dies again this time, what will be left of you?” Shylock clicked his tongue. Far from being agitated, he glanced at Lily with a more insignificant look. “As long as you have no children, no matter how much you are loved, you’re a reed in front of the wind. A married woman belongs to her husband. Your husband implied that I took the Isles from you, and our whole family’s efforts are in vain. If you feel like you have something over me, it’s all hallucinations.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “Think with that clever brain of yours then. Of all the things in your grasp, it seems that it’s yours temporarily. How miserable it is to have someone else’s heart to lean on.”

“…”

Lily frowned.

Meanwhile, Shylock spoke to her. It was his last attack.

A weakness that his eldest daughter would never escape from until the moment she closed her eyes in death.

He poked his rake towards that weakness. “Didn’t I keep the girl who killed my wife I loved so much rather than abandoning her, and even raised her as a noble? What is it if that is not love?”

“I didn’t let Mother die!”

Shylock shut his mouth.

Lily glared at her father. “She died of an illness… It was not murder, it was misery.”

Her spirit, which had been crumbling out of control, became clear. She lived through her own misfortune. In fact, she didn’t know that none of the others lived like her.

She was neither commoner nor noble, and for the longest time, she had been deceived by the behavior of the people around her.

Vlad was the first one to accept her and tell her the truth. He was the first to comfort her by saying that it wasn’t her fault, that she went through what a normal person never did.

He lifted the veil that covered Lily’s whole life.

“I did nothing wrong. Not me, everyone… It’s your fault!”

“…”

The glass prison that surrounded her and followed her was cracking. She made a clear and high-pitched shout, and the glass was shattered to pieces.

Her sight was clear. Air rushed into her lungs at once. It seemed that she only now realized that she had been breathing harshly.

She could go anywhere and say anything. Life was really like that to her now.

Yes. I could have done this. I just didn’t know.

Lily got up, her hands leaving the railing. She narrowed the distance toward her father by a few steps. “It’s all your fault.” Her voice trembled, with relief or anger, she didn’t quite know.

Shylock’s face softened. His eyes twitched wildly.

His eldest daughter realized something about him. It was over if he let her go further because she was born intuitive. She was clearly out of control. The gears in his head were spinning like crazy.

“Do you know the duke? What would happen if the duke, who loves you, found out that you were married for his seed?”

“…” Lily flinched.

He hated his lineage. And now, she fully understood the reason.

Everyone had a wound that left the realm of understanding. For him, that was his bloodline.

Shylock’s lips loosened after confirming her reaction. “Did I not tell you? How much is the heart…”

He stopped.

The gaze that had been nailed to Lily suddenly turned over her shoulder.

Lily looked back and stiffened even more. “Dandelion….”

Dandelion and Talin were standing at the front door.

Dandelion trembled as he grabbed Talin’s sleeve. His legs were trembling. It was like a big cat and a mouse put in a cage.