No Love For The Villain - vanish into fiction

“Did that woman entice you? Did she tell you to bring her food or something?”

Sierra grew anxious, fearing Miriam might be driven out of the village because of the few pieces of clothing she had received from her.

“No. I came on my own. I did it by myself. Please don’t tell the Pastor, please…”

Sierra clung to her pleadingly, like a child who knew her own fault well, and seeing this, Mrs. Miles’s expression softened. The gentle expression she wore when people from the church sought her out, looking for a kind pastor’s wife, had returned.

“Sierra, we’re always worried about you. With such a tender heart, how will you survive in this harsh world, hmm? What can you possibly do on your own?”

This gentleness bound her more tightly than any rebuke could. The hand softly stroking her cheek, the affectionate way she called her ‘Sierra’—these things were like the treats the Pastor gave the children.

‘A dog may bite an owner who beats it, but it will never bite one who pets it affectionately.’ How foolish.

Sierra instinctively sensed the moment a leash was being fastened around her neck and shrank back.

“Be careful of that man,” Mrs. Miles warned.

“The Pastor is worried that man might do you some harm. I feel the same. I was so worried last night I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know what that man wants, but what I’m worried about is…”

Mrs. Miles brushed Sierra’s hair back like a mother tending to her young daughter. As her obscured vision cleared, Sierra found herself face to face with the watching eyes, with no way left to avoid them.

“…is you ending up like that woman. Like that destitute woman with a fatherless child.”

Sierra slowly processed Mrs. Miles’s words. Like someone drawing something they’d never seen before, the unfamiliar wickedness slowly filled her mind.

She could imagine the man with the cold eyes killing someone, but she couldn’t imagine him desiring a woman.

Him giving a woman his child…?

It was unimaginable.

But Mrs. Miles pressed on, forcing the image upon her.

“Taking advantage of a parentless girl’s loneliness to disgrace her is something no real person would do, but that man doesn’t seem human. How can someone who kills other people so easily, who feels no guilt, be considered human?”

“……”

“So, if it were his child, it wouldn’t be a human child, but a beast’s offspring. How shameful and horrifying. If my gentle, kind son had to live raising a beast’s cub, I’d rather…”

Mrs. Miles’s hand touched her waist. Sierra flinched. The hand pressing down on her lower abdomen felt like it was squeezing the life out of anything inside. Even if there was nothing there, the forceful grip felt threatening.

“…I’d rather become the beast myself.”

Mrs. Miles said those words while laughing. Laughing like a kind mother.

Sierra looked at the mother of the son. She knew this woman would never be ‘her’ mother, yet, starved for affection, she had clung to that very grasp.

Sierra struggled to breathe, feeling as if Mrs. Miles was pressing not on her lower abdomen, but on her throat. Her head spun. The sin Mrs. Miles had stuffed into her mind filled and then mutilated her thoughts.

Mrs. Miles simply watched Sierra gasping for air. There was none of the worry she showed when watching her feverish son. Staggering, Sierra tilted backward the moment Mrs. Miles’s hand left her.

But she didn’t fall. A hand gripping her shoulder pulled her, and she leaned her back against it. The cool, leather-like scent that enveloped her from behind had already become familiar.

Horror dawned in Mrs. Miles’s eyes.

“Si—Sierra, Sierra!” Mrs. Miles called out urgently. Then, a man’s voice followed.

“Is it really that shocking?”

Leaning against Eli, Sierra felt the low resonance of his voice vibrate through her body.

“Why, are you afraid I might get her pregnant?”

The words Eli uttered so indifferently sent violent waves through Mrs. Miles’s eyes. Her trembling pupils, filled with anxiety, remained fixed on Sierra. Mrs. Miles was desperately trying not to look at the man standing behind her.