TCBW C76

Chapter 76

Every step sent sharp stings of pain through his body, and his eyelids kept threatening to close, but Suhoe forced himself to ignore it. He tied up his disheveled hair with trembling hands and stopped before the front door.

Given the hour, there was only one person who could possibly be visiting. He told himself it had to be Haeon—of course it was.

Truthfully, he didn’t have the energy to think beyond that. So, suppressing the fever that scorched his throat and the thirst that made him dizzy, Suhoe composed himself and opened the door without hesitation.

And there she was—like a thunderclap wrapped in human form.

He froze. His body instinctively took two steps back.

If only he could turn back time—or at least find the courage to slam the door shut right now. But all he could do was flinch and retreat.

“What the hell—You!”

Standing there was the last person he ever wanted to see. The one woman who could, at any moment, snatch Dowoon away.

Sara.

When their eyes met, Sara let out a piercing shriek—so loud that it felt like it contained every sound Suhoe had ever made in his life, all at once.

“How funny! How hilarious! Hahahaha!”

Her usually sleek, chest-length hair was now a tangled mess, and instead of the chic dresses that had once flattered her exotic beauty, she wore a wrinkled, filthy suit.

She looked like someone who hadn’t gone home in days—and yet, she laughed carelessly, shamelessly, as if she were proud of it.

The contrast between this unhinged figure and the dazzling woman Suhoe had once seen made her all the more terrifying.

“You!”

“Y-yes?”

Sara, wearing scuffed heels, strode toward him. She wasn’t much taller than Suhoe, but the way she loomed over his frightened, shrunken frame made her seem enormous.

Suhoe had once watched a drama with Mrs. Kim about a mistress getting caught by her lover’s wife. Now, he felt like that character himself.

The sheer hostility in Sara’s movements made his blood run cold. His face went pale, drained of color. Her shrill voice rang in his ears, leaving him dizzy. Every instinct screamed at him to run.

“Why are you here? Who the hell do you think you are, huh?!”

“Ack!”

Sara grabbed a fistful of Suhoe’s loosely tied hair and yanked hard. Though the front door was still wide open, she didn’t care if anyone heard—she was too consumed by rage to care about witnesses.

Her fury was physical, visceral. She yanked his hair again, forcing him to meet her blazing eyes as she scanned him from head to toe.

He looked like someone who had just gotten out of bed—her bed, their bed.

“So you’re the reason I let it slide, huh? Because you’re some quiet little boy toy? What, you let him screw you because you look so innocent? Ha! What a joke! So this is Lee Dowoon’s pretty little lover?!”

“Ah—ah!”

The sight of Suhoe here—inside Dowoon’s home—infuriated her even more. Not only was he a man, but he was also the same cleaning boy she had once dismissed without a thought.

That same boy, standing here, wearing Dowoon’s scent.

That night at the hotel, Sara had locked the drugged Dowoon in a room after giving him the illegal stimulant, waiting for the effects to kick in so that he would crave her. She had planned to go to him if it took too long.

“Even if you screw up, you don’t screw up like this! You gave a drug to the CEO of Yongseong Finance, you insane bitch!”

Afterward, her father—the chairman of Saeman Group—had somehow found out and called her himself, raging through the phone. But she hadn’t cared. She had never been rejected in her life.

She refused to be humiliated by a man—especially not by one who had turned her away.

So she’d given Dowoon a drug so potent it could make even Betas go into heat. She had imagined him begging at her feet soon enough.

But instead—

“He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?!”

Dowoon had vanished. So had Haeon. The drug had backfired, and Sara had been left scrambling.

The police had raided the hotel. Yongseong and Saeman both wanted her caught, but Sara had fled, hiding wherever she could.

Eventually, she found out where Dowoon lived.

At first, she had waited at his old apartment near the company—the one he’d used for entertaining women—but he never returned.

Then, she discovered this apartment in Balhwa-dong.

That was why it had taken her this long to find him.

“How dare you! You filthy thing!”

“Aah! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, please, I’m sorry!”

Sara’s fury exploded again as she shook Suhoe’s head violently by the hair. He didn’t even think to fight back—he just kept gasping out apologies, his thin body trembling and weak.

He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for. The words came out of desperation alone, a plea for mercy.

“P-please, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

He was dizzy from the shaking—his stomach heaving—but he couldn’t stop apologizing. In his mind, he truly believed she was someone he couldn’t compare to, that he had no right to resist.

“Where’s Lee Dowoon? He’s here, isn’t he? Huh? Show me! You must know—you’ve been rolling around with him, haven’t you?!”

But begging was useless against someone like Sara.

“Or maybe I’ll just go in myself.”

She laughed, throwing him to the floor. The hard impact rattled his bones.

“Ah!”

“Where is he?! Tell me!”

Suhoe didn’t even try to stand. When Sara grabbed a flower vase from the entryway, raising it as if to hurl it at him, all he could do was curl up tighter and pray the blow wouldn’t hurt too much.

“Or maybe I’ll just go find him myself.”

Sara sneered at the pathetic figure crumpled before her, then slammed the vase onto the floor. The shattering sound was so loud it seemed to split Suhoe’s eardrums.

“W-wait!”

The porcelain pieces scattered everywhere, but Suhoe ignored them. He grabbed Sara’s ankle with trembling fingers.

If Dowoon hadn’t woken up after all this noise, it meant he was still unconscious—completely drained.

“Are you insane?”

She didn’t understand—she couldn’t smell pheromones. She didn’t know that Dowoon’s scent still lingered faintly upstairs, proof of his presence.

“H-he’s not here. He… he left.”

Whenever he lied, Suhoe couldn’t meet someone’s eyes. His voice always wavered. But Sara didn’t know that about him.

If she believed the lie and left, that was all that mattered.

Even though his body burned with fever and pain, even though his mind felt like it was collapsing, Suhoe couldn’t stop himself from clinging to her leg. He had to protect Dowoon, no matter what.

Sara found the sight absurd. She pulled out her phone, switched on the flash, and snapped a picture of him.

“Pfft.”

Her laughter rang through the house—sharp and cruel.

“So that’s it, huh? His Omega gets beaten and doesn’t even fight back. And when I first met him, he stopped me from getting too close—what, was he already hiding you? Hah! Where could he possibly have gone, leaving something this pretty behind?”

“Hhkk…”

“Ha… let’s make this fun, then. Tell me—are you good in bed?”

“W-what?”

Even with shards of glass embedded in his skin, Suhoe barely felt it. His body had long since stopped registering pain.

He was too exhausted, too broken, teetering on the edge of collapse.

“Aren’t you curious? You’re Lee Dowoon’s little boyfriend—how good are you, huh?”

“……”

He stared at her blankly, disbelief flickering across his pale face.

Sara smirked.

“Or maybe he just likes you because you’re so damn pretty it’s annoying. Ha! What a joke.”

While she continued to sneer, Suhoe’s eyes didn’t leave her.

More precisely—they didn’t leave her neck.

When she leaned forward, mocking him, a necklace slipped out from under her shirt.

“This? Is this what you’re looking at?”

A faint crease formed between Suhoe’s brows.

He recognized it immediately—it was the same necklace he’d once seen in a jewelry catalog on Dowoon’s desk.

A delicate, teardrop-shaped pendant on a fine silver chain. It had been marked as a “wedding necklace.”

For a foolish moment, he had wondered if it might one day be meant for him.

And now, seeing it around Sara’s neck, he felt like the biggest fool alive.

Everything he had ever dared to hope for always missed him by just a little—always ending up somewhere else, with someone else.

Today, that truth struck him harder than ever.

His life had never amounted to more than this.

How much lower do I have to fall?

Tears welled up in Suhoe’s eyes.