No Love For The Villain - Chapter 44
She was captured as though she couldn’t tear her eyes away, like someone looking at winter trees beyond a window—an affectionate, lingering look.
By binding a fleeting moment as if it were eternal, the woman in the photograph would forever be gazing at the man beside her.
Eli slipped the photograph of himself and Sierra together into the inside pocket of his jacket.
He pressed the button for the first-floor lobby.
Stepping out into the lobby, he headed for the desk where a staff member stood.
“Do you have any medicine? For cuts.”
“Yes, just a moment.”
The staff member handed him a first-aid kit filled with assorted medicines.
“Would you like the number of a nearby hospital?”
Eli recalled the wounds left on Sierra’s knees and hands.
At first, he thought they weren’t serious enough to warrant a hospital visit—then he changed his mind.
If the wounds were his own, he wouldn’t have cared.
But a woman with hands and feet barely larger than a child’s was another matter.
And she might fall ill with a fever again.
“All right.”
The staff member, smiling kindly, wrote down the address and phone number of a nearby hospital on a memo pad.
Eli took the note and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
Standing before the elevator, he checked his wristwatch again.
The promised fifteen minutes had already passed.With long strides, Eli approached the elevator, and the hotel bellboy already inside held the door open.
“Ninth floor.”
At Eli’s words, the bellboy pressed the button.
The elevator began to rise at an unhurried pace.
Staring at the slowly changing floor numbers, Eli met the bellboy’s eyes.
Startled by the ferocity of that gaze, the bellboy flinched and pressed himself against the wall.
“The elevator’s an older model, so it’s a bit slow.”
His voice, meant to soothe a guest’s dissatisfaction, trembled slightly.
Eli let out a short, humorless laugh after hearing him.
It wasn’t because of the explanation about the slow elevator.
It was because he had realized how impatient he himself had become.
Even as he looked down on himself, as though watching someone else, for growing anxious over the promised time slipping by, his eyes kept checking the rising numbers.
The floors crept upward.
6, 7, 8…
As if watching the numbers might somehow make the elevator go faster, the bellboy stared at them too.
Finally, the ninth floor.
The doors opened.
Eli stepped out before they were fully open, and only then did the bellboy relax enough to let out a breath.
Striding down the corridor, Eli opened the guestroom door.
Beyond the open doorway, it was quiet.
Not a single light was on; the dark room looked exactly as it had when he left.
For an instant, Eli’s eyes sharpened as he stared into the darkness, as though no one were there.
A woman with nothing but her own two legs couldn’t have fled far in such a short time.
He knew that—and yet, the steps carrying him into the room were rough and hurried.
In the pitch-dark guestroom, a blur of blond hair wavered faintly, like a trace of light.
Sierra was asleep on the bed.
Stopping in front of it, Eli looked down at the sleeping Sierra.
Her winding, tousled blond hair lay scattered over the blanket, and in her hand she still clutched a glove.
“Sierra.”
When he called her name, Sierra murmured sleepily, “Mm…”
That whining little sleep-sound felt like an answer, and Eli smiled quietly.
He laid his hand on her cheeks, flushed pink with drowsiness.
Sierra tilted her head toward the palm reaching for her, as if she had been waiting for the touch.
“You ask me to kill you, and yet you act this pretty.”
Eli stroked Sierra’s cheek as she followed his hand.
She looked endlessly fragile—
like a child abandoned by her parents, or a fledgling pushed from its nest,
something too weak to survive by its own strength.
A parentless child taking the one who cares for it as a new parent is instinct for survival.
Otherwise, it cannot live.
Then for what reason does the one who gathers up the weak take on the role of a parent?
“Because I want to hear your voice.”
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