Why Does Everyone Want Me Dead（Nepheia's POV）
Those five men fixed their lewd stares on me again.
"No…"
Memories of the violation I had suffered in my previous life crashed over me like a wave, pulling me under. And behind them came the image of Mina nestled against Koujirius's chest, looking down at me with those eyes — merciful on the surface, venomous underneath.
"Nepheia, stay on this island and think about what you've done."
Two lifetimes' worth of grief and despair detonated inside me all at once. I stared at Seriomel's retreating back and screamed out my last attempt in a raw, tearing voice: "Please — help me! It's Koujirius! Mina seduced him, they slept together, and then they sent men to gang-rape me! They're trying to destroy me!"
I was hysterical, tears streaming down my face and mixing with blood and grit, leaving me a wreck.
Seriomel's footsteps stopped. "You expect me to involve myself in Koujirius's engagement?"
"You're both Leneaux," I said, fixing my eyes on his back and gambling the last chip I had, "but you've never wanted the same things. Him locking down the heir's position does nothing for you."
He turned around, his gaze settling on my face. "Who told you to say that?"
"Koujirius wants to ruin me so Mina can take my place in the alliance marriage," I pressed on. "But Mina isn't some well-born daughter of a distinguished family. She's the daughter of our old housekeeper — she stole my life. That housekeeper donated her heart to save my grandmother, and only on her deathbed did she confess that Mina was her daughter. From the moment I was born, she'd already been switched in for me."
I braced my hands on my knees and pushed myself upright, fighting to keep the tremor out of my voice. "Mina and Koujirius plan to destroy my reputation first, then announce to the world that I broke off the engagement on my own. The Fatasleigh family will disown me to save face, and the alliance marriage will pass to Mina as a matter of course. If you're willing to help me, I'll personally dismantle their plan."
"From where I'm standing," the man said, his low voice drifting through the empty hall with an unhurried edge of contempt, "you can't even beat your own family."
It was cruel. It was also true.
I clenched my fists. "Because I was stupid before."
Seriomel turned to his aide. "Leo. Get her off this island. Drop her at a police station and let the Fatasleigh family send someone to collect her."
My chest seized.
If I went back, Jonson would hand me straight to Koujirius. Mina would throw her arms around me and sob, asking why I'd run away from the engagement. The moment I was back within their reach, I would walk the same road I'd walked before.
I lunged forward and grabbed Seriomel's sleeve.
Everyone in the room looked over. The aide he'd called Leo sucked in a sharp breath, staring at me the way someone stares at a person who has just reached into a cage of wild animals.
Seriomel looked down at my hand.
I let go immediately. "You can't notify the Fatasleigh family," I begged. "Jonson will force me to hand over the shares that were left to me."
Seriomel's brow creased slightly. "Evidence."
I had nothing to say.
The scheme had only just begun. I couldn't prove any of it.
He studied me for a moment, then glanced at the five men who had been bound and gagged on the floor. He made a slow, deliberate gesture toward Leo — one finger drawn across his throat.
The blood in my veins turned to ice.
Why did Mina get to live under his protection while I was left with nothing but a death sentence? Ever since I had been found and brought back to the family, everyone had chosen her. Jonson shielded Mina in everything. Koujirius had been ready to kill me over a hairline scratch on her face.
I couldn't bear being gang-raped again. I couldn't bear being left to starve to death in the dark.
Seriomel seemed to turn to leave. I had come back to life only to find that nothing could be changed — and the despair that realization brought swept reason clean away.
A sob broke out of me before I could stop it, raw and unguarded, like a child who couldn't find her way home, like a condemned prisoner being walked to the scaffold.
"What did I do wrong?"
"I only wanted what was already mine…"
"Why does everyone have to push me toward death?"
I threw myself forward and wrapped my arms around Seriomel's legs.
"Please — don't kill me."
The violent surge of emotion was too much for a body already this badly injured. Oxygen drained from my brain. My vision blurred, and in that dissolving haze I caught a glimpse of Seriomel's cold eyes — something fierce and unreadable churning behind them. That high, untouchable indifference seemed to fracture, and through the crack came the faintest trace of something that looked almost like pity.
I couldn't hold on any longer. Darkness swallowed my vision and I pitched forward.
I fell into a pair of arms — firm and steady, carrying the faint, clean scent of cedarwood. In the chaos of the fall, the thin silver chain at my throat — already weakened from when I'd been thrown down earlier — snapped, and an old pocket watch tumbled free.
Seriomel caught it. He stared at it for a moment, then spoke. "Those five pieces of trash — deal with them. Weighted and dropped in the sea."
In the last second before consciousness left me entirely, I heard his voice above my head, cold enough to cut bone.
"Ready the boat. She's coming back to my private estate."
Endless dark.
A thick, suffocating dark, like a swamp closing over my head.
"You brought this on yourself — throwing yourself at men. Now you're the laughingstock of the whole family." Jonson's handsome face was full of contempt, as though I were something dirty he'd been forced to touch.
"Nepheia, why do you always have to fight me? Wouldn't it be easier to just die quietly?" Mina rested against Koujirius's chest and said the most vicious things in the most innocent voice imaginable.
Then came the cold basement. The scrape of chains dragged across concrete. The numb, crawling sensation of rats gnawing at my toes.
"No — stop—"
I wrenched myself out of the nightmare, gasping, cold sweat soaking through to my spine. Beneath me was a mattress softer than anything I could have imagined.
Where was I?
Then it reached me — Seriomel's scent, that distinct combination of cool cedarwood and faint tobacco, wrapping around me as he leaned down close, his warm breath grazing my ear.
"Awake?"
His voice was quiet. Low and rough, with a pull to it.
"Is your face still hurting?"
My mind went completely blank.
In the nightmare, Koujirius had grabbed me by the hair and ground my face into broken glass, and he had asked me the same thing in that same gentle tone: Is your face still hurting? That's what you get for daring to hit Mina. When Jonson broke my leg, he had smiled and asked: Does it hurt? You shouldn't have upset her.
They always used the softest voice first. It was how they savored your fear before they took you apart.
Seriomel was no different. Whatever he called concern was nothing more than the opening act of another kind of torture. He wanted to watch me suffer. He wanted to hear me beg.
The terror was absolute. It snapped the last thread of reason I had.
My eyes flew open. I scrambled off the bed in a single motion and threw myself backward until my spine hit the headboard with a crack.
"No — don't!"
I wrapped my arms around my head, my voice shredding itself into something high and ragged. "Please don't cut my face — don't take my hands — I'll do whatever you say, I'll listen, I promise — just please let me go—"
The words came apart as I said them. I was shaking so badly I couldn't control my own body, every syllable soaked through with tears, like a cornered animal losing its mind in front of the thing that had hunted it down.
Leo stood frozen across the room, nearly dropping the tablet in his hands.
Seriomel stood at the foot of the bed, and on that face — the kind of face you might find on a statue of a god — there was nothing but stunned disbelief.
"Don't touch me…" Each word I managed came out fractured with sobbing.
"Oh — miss, please, you have nothing to be afraid of!" Leo snapped back to himself, scooped up the tablet, and crossed to the bedside in three urgent strides. "I was saved by our boss too — he's genuinely one of the best men alive, I swear it on everything I have!"
He gestured wildly for emphasis. "You have no idea — you've been unconscious for three days, and our boss canceled three contracts worth billions combined just to stay by your side. Not once did he leave. And don't you worry about your face — the moment you're stable, I will personally go to the Alps and drag — I mean, invite — Dr. Allen out of retirement. He's the world's foremost specialist in skin restoration. We will get your face back to flawless. Better than before. More beautiful than Helen of Troy, honestly, and Helen had nothing on you to begin with."
