Conquering His Cold Heart

And Lorenzo was right to be scared.

Regulus turned his face to look at one of his men and ordered, “Imprison him in the basement.”

Lorenzo felt as though he was falling down from an unending cliff when he heard that. He wanted to protest that since he had done the task that was assigned to him, he should be allowed to take his leave. It was the Lord who couldn’t digest the truth, which was not his fault.

However, he couldn’t even breathe properly when two of the men came to grab him, let alone produce any words from his mouth in protest. But some things did cross his mind.

‘I guess this is my punishment for not being completely transparent with the King. I deserve this for I have unintentionally hurt a lot of people in my life. Although I was just merely following the orders, I cannot deny the fact that my words changed the fate of a lot of people.’

Lorenzo’s legs stumbled when the two men tried to take him away and he got screamed at.

“Either you walk yourself or we are going to drag you there!”

Lorenzo simply left control of his body and allowed the men to drag him towards the basement as they had threatened.

.....

‘This is the personal hell I brought upon myself,’ he thought.

Those men who dragged Lorenzo away threw him inside an individual cell in the dungeon and locked him up.

And one of the men even had the audacity to spit on Lorenzo.

Lorenzo flinched when the spit landed on his hand. He clenched his jaw and his fist in disgust but said or did nothing about it.

The one who spat didn’t just stop there. He also shouted at Lorenzo, “Disloyal people like you should have been killed, not locked.”

“Hey, come on!” Another man grabbed a hold of his arm and tried to calm him down. “Don’t waste your words on someone like this.”

However, that man glared down at Lorenzo and growled, “He dared to openly take the side of someone from another clan instead of supporting our master. And yet our master is benevolent enough to let him live. He should know that he is lucky to be still breathing.”

Lorenzo couldn’t stay silent anymore. He scoffed and mumbled in a nonchalant manner, “Don’t forget that that ‘someone from another clan’ is our King. He is above all clans, and he belongs to everyone.”

He even lifted his gaze and further said while glaring back at that angry man, “And just to clarify, I said nothing wrong about him. It’s not my fault that Lord Regulus doesn’t want to see the truth.”

As Lorenzo was already behind the bars now, he wasn’t afraid to speak anymore. He didn’t have anything to lose, except his life of course.

That angry man couldn’t digest what Lorenzo said. He took it as an insult to his master and to himself. “How dare you speak like that?”

He began patting his pockets as if he was looking for something. “Where’s the key?” He looked at his friend and snarled, “Give me the key! I am going to kill this disloyal fuck right here and do our master a favor.”

“Stop the madness! Just ignore the prisoner!” The other man shouted, now a bit agitated, and then tightly gripped the angry man’s arm. “You will get into deep trouble if you do that.”

This time, he was successful in dragging the unreasonably angry friend who was getting easily provoked by the prisoner.

After both the men left, Lorenzo finally drew in a deep breath and wiped his arm against his trouser. He then crawled away from the bars and sat on the cold floor while resting his back on the equally cold wall.

Inevitably, he soon began thinking about all the bad things that had happened to him. And he wondered if anything would have been different if Everard hadn’t lost consciousness that evening.

But he sighed and whispered under his breath, “What is happening to me right now is not His Majesty’s fault. It was my fault for choosing to work for the alpha in search of more power. But in the end, all I got in return was suffering. I chose wrong.”

While he was lost deep in his thoughts, he heard someone opening the door of the adjacent cell and turned his head. However, there was a wall in between the cells and he couldn’t see what was happening.

He heard someone shouting and crying though.

“Why isn’t anyone telling me why I am being imprisoned? What did I do? Don’t tell me you all think that I am the murderer! I am not! Let me talk to Lord Regulus. I demand answers!”

It didn’t take a genius to recognize that voice. ‘Miss Ruby!’ Lorenzo exclaimed in his mind.

Ruby didn’t get any answer as she had demanded. Her captors simply locked the door to her cell and walked away.

And when everything settled down, Lorenzo got up and went to stand very close to the other cell. He grabbed the bars and spoke, “Miss Ruby? Is that you?”

“Mr. Lorenzo!” Ruby instantly jumped up with a slight sense of relief when she heard a familiar voice. And she immediately came to stand next to the wall. “They locked you too? What is happening? Why are we here?” she shot multiple questions at Lorenzo.

Lorenzo looked at the empty cell in front of him and mumbled, “I believe that Cillian overheard some of our conversations. Lord Regulus knows about your relationship with the King. And he believes that I lied to him regarding the matters with the King.”

There was an absolute silence for a moment.

Ruby sniffled and then muttered while feeling betrayed, “Cillian should have come to me first… I treated him like my brother. But he…” Her voice got stuck in her throat and she couldn’t do anything except shed tears in silence.

And Lorenzo didn’t have any words of consolation for Ruby since they were both in a similar situation. He was slowly trying to let it sink in his mind that the two of them would probably never see the light of the day ever again.