Chapter 614: Chapter-614
"Well, try to think a little closer to the bookshelves next time," she muttered, her cheeks flushing slightly, though clearly more out of embarrassment for the mess than attraction to him. She struggled to her feet, balancing the massive tower of literature in her arms.
The Prime Minister stood up smoothly, towering over her. He reached out, his instinct to dominate taking over, and gently plucked the top three heavy books from her stack to lighten her load.
"Hey!" she protested.
"I am simply taking responsibility for my blindness," he murmured smoothly, looking down at her with a completely new, dangerously intense focus. "Where are you taking these?"
The woman frowned, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously, entirely immune to the celestial smile that had fooled the rest of the empire. "To the front counter. And then I am going home."
"Then allow me to escort you to the counter," the Prime Minister insisted gently, refusing to hand the books back.
As she walked ahead of him, grumbling under her breath about arrogant noblemen who didn’t know how to step aside, the Prime Minister walked silently behind her.
He looked at her messy hair, the ink stains on her fingers, and the fierce, unyielding set of her shoulders. She had absolutely no idea who he was. She hadn’t heard the terrifying rumors from the morning court. To her, he was just an irritating, handsome idiot who had ruined her reading schedule.
His dark, sociopathic heart gave a strange, rhythmic thud.
Heena had completely ruined his life and shattered his ego. But looking at this fierce, brilliant, and completely fearless woman, the Prime Minister felt the cold, empty void in his chest begin to fill with a thrilling, intoxicating new obsession.
He didn’t just want to crush her defiance. For the first time in his twisted life, he actually wanted to see what would happen if he let the fire burn.
The woman paused, letting out a long, heavy sigh as she looked at him holding her heavy engineering books. Her fierce scowl softened just a fraction, though her chin remained stubbornly high.
"Look, I... I am sorry, okay?" she grumbled, avoiding his intense, dark gaze. "I do not mean to be rude. It’s just... it is actually your fault for making me angry in the first place by standing in the middle of a walkway."
The Prime Minister was completely, entirely speechless.
He stared at her. A half-apology that instantly pivoted back into blaming him? It was so profoundly audacious that his brilliant, hyper-calculating brain actually stalled.
"Which family do you belong to?" the Prime Minister finally asked, his voice low, thrumming with a dangerous, captivating curiosity. He needed to know exactly who had raised this fearless creature.
The woman immediately rolled her eyes, a mocking, utterly unimpressed smile crossing her lips.
"Oh, please," she scoffed, waving a dismissive, ink-stained hand at him. "You just helped me pick up a few books. That does not mean I am going to give you my family name. What are you going to do? Run and complain to my father that I was mean to you in a paper shop?"
The Prime Minister’s lips parted. For a moment, he actually forgot how to breathe. He shook his head slowly, a genuine, bewildered smile forming. "No, actually, I—"
"Miss!"
A frantic, high-pitched voice suddenly echoed down the quiet aisle.
A young maid, dressed in the uniform of a high-ranking noble household, came rushing around the corner, looking completely out of breath and utterly panicked.
"Come on, Miss!" the maid pleaded, wringing her hands together. "If you keep doing this—sneaking out to buy these heavy books—my lord is going to be so angry! We have to go back before he notices!"
The woman let out an exasperated groan, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. "Yeah, yeah. I’m coming. Stop making such a fuss."
The maid rushed forward to take the books from the tall, handsome stranger assisting her mistress. But as the maid looked up and actually saw the man’s face, the color violently drained from her cheeks. Her knees instantly gave out.
"Oh my God," the maid gasped, throwing herself onto the polished floorboards, completely ignoring the books as she pressed her forehead against the wood. "I... I greet the Prime Minister!"
The woman entirely froze.
The casual, irritated expression on her face shattered. Her eyes widened, slowly darting from the kneeling maid up to the devastatingly handsome man standing quietly in front of her.
He is the Prime Minister?
The man at the absolute pinnacle of civil power? The very man who, according to the explosive capital gossip she had heard on her way here, was supposedly a ruthless, untouchable tyrant who was secretly hiding a male harem in the palace?
The Prime Minister watched her face carefully. He waited for the inevitable. He waited for the terror to set in. He waited for her to drop to her knees beside her maid, to beg for forgiveness for insulting him, to weep and ask him to spare her family’s life.
Instead, the woman took a deep, shaky breath. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and looked him dead in the eye.
"Ma’am, please!" the maid sobbed from the floor, tugging desperately at the hem of her mistress’s skirt.
The woman didn’t kneel. She snatched her structural engineering books right out of the Prime Minister’s hands.
"I apologized before, so I think it’s fair," the woman stated, her voice trembling just the slightest bit, but her pride remaining completely unbroken. "You were the one who made me fall. It’s not my fault."
With that absolute, mind-breaking finality, she turned on her heel and marched right out of the aisle, her spine perfectly straight.
"Ma’am!" the maid squeaked in sheer horror, watching her mistress walk away.
The maid slowly turned her head to look up at the Prime Minister. Tears were violently streaming down her face. She was completely convinced that she and her entire family were going to be executed before sunset.
"I apologize, my lord!" the maid sobbed hysterically, bowing so hard her forehead bruised against the floorboards. "I am really sorry! Please spare us! My mistress is not usually like this, I swear it!"
The Prime Minister’s personal knight stepped forward, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword, waiting for the order to arrest the insolent woman and her servant.
But the Prime Minister didn’t say a word.
He stood perfectly still in the middle of the aisle, looking at the empty space where the ink-stained woman had just been standing. He slowly raised his hand, looking at his empty palms where she had snatched the books away.
She knew exactly who he was. She knew his power. And she still refused to bow.
"My lord?" the knight asked hesitantly, confused by the absolute silence.
The Prime Minister slowly lowered his hands. A slow, incredibly dark, and completely obsessed smile began to stretch across his flawless face. The crushing humiliation of his morning defeat at the hands of the Vanguard Madam entirely evaporated from his mind.
"Do not touch them," the Prime Minister murmured softly, his dark eyes gleaming with a terrifying, ravenous light. He looked down at the weeping maid. "What is your master’s name?"
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