A flush rose on Willow West's face, but her voice remained steady.
"I'm an adult!
I have needs. It's perfectly normal to do this kind of thing!
What?
Uncle Pierce, are you planning to go snitch on me to my uncle?"
Detecting the annoyance in Willow West's tone, Aiden Pierce's dark eyes grew colder.
'She really holds a grudge!'
The man's deep, magnetic voice slowly drifted into her ears.
"Since you're an adult, you understand that you need to take responsibility for your mistakes, right?"
A wave of panic hit Willow West, but she forced herself to remain calm and nodded.
Only then did Aiden Pierce curve his lips into a satisfied smile.
He got up and stepped off the bed.
The lines of his back muscles were fluid. As he moved, his tall, perfect physique was revealed.
Willow West's gaze fell, unbidden, to his body. Healthy, wheat-colored skin, a well-proportioned chest, with sleek, sharply defined muscles.
A neat six-pack of abs, and below that, the faint outline of V-lines.
'Six-foot-three, with those ideal proportions… does anyone even get it?'
Willow West couldn't stop herself from whistling at him.
'That waist, those legs, that body… getting to sleep with him was a total win!'
Aiden Pierce wrapped a towel around his waist and turned, his eyes meeting hers before she had a chance to look away.
Willow West's cheeks instantly heated up, her heart skipping a few beats. She quickly lowered her head.
"Wait till I'm done with my shower. We'll settle this then."
Aiden Pierce turned and entered the bathroom, and the sound of the running shower filled the air.
Willow West took the opportunity to grab her scattered clothes from the floor and hastily put them on.
'Wait obediently for Aiden Pierce to finish his shower and settle the score with her?'
'She wasn't an idiot!'
'Was she crazy, or was he crazy, to think she'd just wait for him to lay into her?'
Grabbing her bag, Willow West tiptoed out like a thief, but then she remembered Aiden Pierce's earlier words and stopped.
She dug through her bag, pulled out all the cash she had, and tucked it under the man's watch on the bedside table.
She took a few steps, felt something wasn't right, and turned back.
Willow West tore a note from her bag, scribbled a short message, and tucked it under the cash. Now she was satisfied.
Willow West stealthily fled.
When Aiden Pierce came out of the bathroom, the room was already empty.
His cold, sharp gaze swept over the nightstand and landed on the items there.
We slept together. You feudal relic. Boring. Transaction complete!
Looking at the cash on the table, Aiden Pierce pressed his tongue against his cheek and let out a bitter laugh.
'What a "transaction complete"!'
'What a "feudal relic"!'
'That little quail, as bold as ever!'
'Seduce me, sleep with me, and then just run off?'
'Very well!'
'Little West, just you wait!'
Willow West left the hotel, found a pharmacy, and bought a box of emergency contraception.
After paying, she hailed a taxi and gave the driver an address.
Once she got home, Willow West took the pill and went into the bathroom.
In the mirror, her body below the neck was covered in hickeys and finger marks.
The fragmented memories of last night gradually became clearer.
Last night, Aiden Pierce had seemed to go mad, shifting from initial restraint and gentleness to a fierce, ravenous possession.
In the end, he had made her cry.
Willow West felt her breath catch in her throat.
Willow West stood under the showerhead as warm water poured down over her.
The billowing steam flushed her face red.
In her mind, the image of Aiden Pierce's incomparably good body and his cold, ascetic face surfaced unbidden.
'So annoying!'
A knock sounded at the door.
"Willow, Bianca said she wants to postpone your marriage registration. Did you make her angry again?"
It was Melanie Ulrich's voice.
"Willow West, you get yourself cleaned up and go apologize to Bianca!"
The knocking outside grew more urgent.
Willow West frowned, her slender fingers balling into fists.
"I don't feel well!"
Melanie Ulrich snorted, her voice leaving no room for argument.
"Willow West, I'm not here to negotiate with you!
Right now, your father's research is at a critical stage!
The West Family has raised you for so many years, and this is how you repay them?"
She was not the West Family's biological daughter.
She was their adopted daughter.
According to Melanie Ulrich, Willow West was supposed to be eternally grateful to the West Family.
But Willow West didn't see it that way.
'Sacrifice the rest of her life for the West Family? Absolutely not!'
'Make her apologize to Robin Sutton?!'
'Fine, she'd go and see what other tricks Robin Sutton had up her sleeve!'
Aiden Pierce sat on a leather sofa, his expression growing colder as he listened to Victor Quincy's report.
During his years abroad, Aiden Pierce had been keeping tabs on Little West's situation.
She had spent four years at the Etiquette Academy.
After that, Little West became outwardly obedient and sensible, but privately, she was vibrant and defiant. Of her one-hundred-pound frame, ninety-nine pounds were pure rebelliousness.
When the news of her engagement to Bianca Sterling broke, Aiden Pierce had been utterly devastated. Still, he thought that as long as Willow West was happy, he would keep his love for her hidden.
Two months ago, the tabloid stories about Bianca Sterling started popping up one after another.
It was around that time that Aiden Pierce decided to shift the entire focus of his business from Country Z back home.
Victor Quincy looked at the information in the investigation files. 'Miss West's life these past few years…'
'…has been so miserable!'
'I really don't know how Melanie Ulrich could have been so cruel!'
Aiden Pierce's hands gradually tightened into fists, a sinister ruthlessness filling his eyes.
'Good.'
'The one person he, Aiden Pierce, wouldn't even dream of harming… How dare Melanie Ulrich!'
"Where is she?"
"She went to The Rivenway Bar."
「The Rivenway Bar. Nightfall.」
Wearing an elegant long dress, Willow West pushed open the door to a private room.
The moment she entered, the noisy music inside the room came to a screeching halt.
Immediately after, a series of cheap catcalls and whistles erupted.
Inside the room, besides Bianca Sterling's crowd of scoundrel friends, was Robin Sutton, dressed in a little white dress.