Before leaving, Calin jabbed a trembling finger at Sergei, wanting to curse him, scream at him something, but she was too angry and too shattered to form words.
Sergei sneered. "Say it. But what are you going to do, Calin? I'm pretty sure I accidentally called Shin Keir then."
Calin froze. Her finger dropped, her hand shook violently, her chest heaving.
"W-What do you mean…?" she whispered.
Sergei stepped toward her slowly. Each step was a hammer pounding into her chest.
Then he leaned in and whispered, voice dripping with venom:
"Whose idea do you think it was to knock me out? Whether he knew it was me or not doesn't change anything. Shin Keir had every intention of ruining you that night. If he had even an ounce of affection or the slightest respect for you, he wouldn't treat you this viciously."
It was like the floor vanished beneath her. Calin's carefully curated delusion, years of fantasy, shattered in an instant.
She collapsed to the floor, boneless, hopeless, as if her entire world had been ripped away.
Marianne, completely unaware of what the siblings had been arguing about, nervously scooped a bowl of porridge. She wanted to impress Sergei maybe comfort him a little.
"S-Sergei, you're still unwell, and I know you haven't eaten anything since last night," she said shyly, holding out the bowl with both hands. "I made you porridge."
Sergei, still basking in the dark satisfaction of having dragged Calin down into the pit with him, turned, intending to thank Marianne for being considerate.
But the moment his gaze landed on the bowl… his expression froze.
"What is that?" he asked flatly.
Marianne panicked. She already knew the color looked wrong, somewhere between pink sludge and minced meat.
"Ah- don't worry! I didn't put anything strange!" she blurted. "Just a bit of beets. You can't have something heavy yet, so I added vegetables instead."
The porridge, unfortunately, looked exactly like a bowl of raw meat mash.
Sergei's stomach lurched. His face drained of the little color it had left.
Behind them, Calin suddenly burst into ugly, mocking laughter.
"Hahaha! Sister Marianne, don't you know? This weirdo can't stand anything that looks like raw red meat. He has PTSD from it."
"Shut up! Get out right now!" Sergei roared, pointing furiously at the door.
He had expected Calin to be a wreck, broken, devastated, after hearing the truth. Yet here she was, recovering fast enough to mock him.
Really crazy.
Truly, she was a heartless, vicious creature with no shame.
"I—I'm sorry. I didn't know…" Marianne whispered, shrinking back, terrified she had done something wrong.
Calin only rolled her eyes and strutted toward the exit.
"Well, nothing can be done about the past. Actually, good thing it was you, dear brother. Imagine if you'd dragged some stranger that night, it would've been unbearable."
Sergei trembled with rage. He simultaneously wanted to strangle her and dissect her brain to see how it was wired so wrong.
"Sergei, I'll make you another—" Marianne tried.
But Sergei raised a hand sharply, cutting her off. "Ignore her, she's talking nonsense. I'm not in the mood to eat. Just leave it and you can go. I want to be alone."
Marianne bit her lip, worry clouding her gentle eyes. She clearly wanted to say more, to stay, to help but Sergei's tone left no room.
He wasn't in the mood to coax her. Moreover, he had no romantic feelings toward her anyway, and he never asked her to do any of this.
Once his bedroom door shut, Sergei bolted straight for the bathroom and retched violently.
---
Meanwhile, the moment Calin stepped out the door, her mocking smile collapsed, replaced instantly by a vicious, venomous expression, eyes burning with malice and rage.
The possibility that she had slept with her own brother had shocked her so deeply she still felt cold in her bones. But she forced herself to calm down and accept it.
At the very least the two of them would carry this secret to their graves, otherwise, they'd both be implicated. And knowing her brother, there was no way he would ever allow anything that could tarnish his reputation or shatter the image he worked so hard to maintain.
Her real problem was Shin Keir.
It wasn't that he would blackmail her or slander her; Shin Keir wasn't that type of man.
But his impression of her… it had definitely plummeted to the lowest of the low.
And Sergei's words echoed relentlessly.
For Shin Keir to mercilessly drug her, then abandon her with those disgusting lowlifes, meant she was nothing to him. Not a friend. Not family by association. Not even a dignified acquaintance.
If she hadn't been quick enough to hide in the bathroom, she might've been ruined by those men.
He didn't care. He never cared.
Calin's hands curled into trembling fists.
"Shin Keir… just you wait," she hissed.
She was Calin Ricci. She would never swallow humiliation quietly.
What she couldn't have, no one else would either.
Just then, her phone rang.
Calin answered with poorly disguised irritation. "What?"
"Calin, what is going on with you this time?" Saeki sounded both exhausted and fed up. "You can't just decide on your own and cancel projects you already signed contracts for. Do you know what a breach penalty means?"
"I didn't cancel them!" Calin snapped. "I rescheduled. I was hospitalized and just got discharged. Does the company want me dead from overwork? Don't you have any compassion?"
Saeki fell silent, thrown off. This was news to him.
"You were hospitalized? Who did you tell? Your agent didn't report anything."
Calin paused, suspicion flickering. So Saeki Jie truly didn't know… or was he fishing for details?
Either way, Shin Keir wasn't the type to leak rumors or stir malicious publicity. And even if Saeki Jie found out, with her being the talent who brought the most profit to the company, he would probably pretend he knew nothing.
"Calin?" Saeki called again. "Why were you admitted? Also, there's another issue online about you being Shin Keir's fiancée. Was that from you?"
Calin's irritation flared instantly. "What do you mean? I don't like that man anymore!"
Saeki again fell silent.
Wasn't it just recently she had acted like a love-struck fool and begged him to help her get close to Shin Keir?
"…Ah. Then that's good," he finally said awkwardly. At least she wouldn't drag the company into another scandal. "Report your situation to the company. If clients misunderstand and withdraw cooperation, it'll be a problem."
"Brother Saeki," Calin suddenly softened, slipping back into her practiced, gentle tone. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to vent at you. My health hasn't been well, and my family situation has been terrible lately. I'm just under so much stress and pressure."
Saeki understood the implication: Madam Ricci's slander against Shin Keir had strained the Keir–Ricci relationship.
Still… that shouldn't be reason enough for Calin to suddenly dislike Shin Keir, right?
"By the way," Calin continued lightly, though hatred simmered beneath her tone, "do you know anything about his fiancée? I heard she's from a third-tier family. Yeri Zhi, was it?"
This was the information the attendant at the establishment had told him.
Saeki, assuming she was simply curious, replied, "Yeah, I met her. She's nice and easy to get along with."
Calin nearly crushed her phone.
Nice. Easy to get along with.
A nobody who stole the position that should've been hers.
She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, every muscle in her face twitching with suppressed fury.
"I see. For the Keir elders to choose her, there must be something outstanding about her, right?"
Saeki immediately understood what Calin was implying. It wasn't that she had stopped liking Shin Keir; it was simply that with the Keir elders now involved, she felt powerless and that powerlessness twisted itself into blame aimed at Shin Keir.
Also, as the CEO of a prominent entertainment company, how could Saeki not understand Calin's roundabout way of digging for information?
He sighed lightly. "Yeah, they must have their reasons. You know how it is with old families. I'm not a Keir, so I don't know the inner rules."
When the call ended, Calin wasn't even sure how she ended up inside her car. She just found herself sitting in the driver's seat, staring ahead, fingers frozen around the steering wheel.
She couldn't understand. No matter how many times she went through the possibilities, she simply couldn't understand.
Just like the baffled Nafplions who couldn't figure out Shin Keir's relationship with Yeri Zhi, Calin felt the same. But the difference was Calin had done her homework.
She had someone investigate Yeri Zhi the moment her brother relayed that Shin Keir had been present at that vixen's debut banquet. And afterwards, when Lucia Hera's accusations went viral, she had Yeri investigated thoroughly again.
For families like the Keirs, choosing a partner was straightforward: someone who could bring benefits to both the company and the household.
Someone with equal status, or at least close.
Someone with an impeccable reputation.
Yeri Zhi had neither status nor prominence. So the elders definitely didn't choose her based on that.
Then why?
What reason could possibly outrank status and reputation?
Appearance? Absolutely not. The man she loved wasn't shallow. If looks alone could win him over, she would have succeeded years ago.
The more Calin thought about it, the more frustration tightened around her chest.
There was also the matter of how the two supposedly met.
Before, she didn't doubt it. But now… did they really meet for the first time at that vixen's debut banquet?
What if they had known each other earlier?
But Yeri Zhi had just turned eighteen this year, so either they truly met at the banquet… or Shin Keir was into minors?
This was exactly why Calin believed there were no real feelings between them. How could someone like Shin Keir develop genuine emotion in such a short time?
But deep inside, Calin denied it as well, quietly, stubbornly, almost instinctively.
She simply couldn't accept that her years of silent devotion had led nowhere, while some nobody appeared out of nowhere and, within a blink, stepped over all her efforts and stole the life she had dreamed of.
After all, sometimes living inside a lie was far kinder than facing reality. A lie could cradle pride, soothe bruised ego, and wrap heartbreak in comforting illusions. Reality, on the other hand, was merciless. It stripped people bare.
And Calin Ricci had never handled being stripped of anything.