Extra: Yandere Milfs Obsessed with me!-Chapter 40: Dark Past

(Jessica’s Point of View)

He left the gallery first, and I followed him. His shoulders were straight, his gait calm. I could still feel the light warmth of his hand where he had touched my forearm. It was just a brush, but it resonated within me. No one touched me like that, with that precise intention that was neither possession nor roughness.

We walked side by side in a secondary corridor, more silent. The sounds of mourning and politeness seemed to belong to another world. Here, there was only the rustling of my dress and the muffled sound of our steps on the carpet.

He told me that I mattered.

The words spun in my head, too beautiful to be fully believed, yet so sweet to hear. I knew the danger of fine words. My entire life had been a tragedy of them. But Kaiser... Kaiser was different. He didn’t smile too much. He didn’t promise too much. He said things with a simplicity that made them sound true.

I looked at him from the corner of my eye, his serious profile, his neatly combed hair. He resembled none of the young nobles who had courted or despised me. He especially didn’t resemble Hugo, my ex-fiancé, whose compliments always rang false and whose eyes shone more for the potential dowry than for me.

My life hadn’t been made for receiving sincere attention. I am the daughter of Viscount Karlton, but my mother was a servant. A gentle woman with worn hands, who died of a cough when I was twelve.

I remember the smell of the servants’ infirmary, a sharp odor of disinfectant and fever. I remember her hands, so thin on the coarse sheet, caressing my cheek one last time. My father came to see her only once, standing on the threshold, looking as if he were inspecting a sick horse that needed to be gotten rid of.

After that, I was officially recognized, pulled from the servants’ quarters to be installed in a child’s room that was too cold. An illegitimate daughter legitimized out of necessity, since my father then had no other heiress than Melissa, born from his deceased wife.

Melissa, my half-sister, who hated me with a pure and constant fury. To her, I was the filth, the living proof of our father’s weakness, the stain on the Karlton honor.

My father, for his part, tolerated me, dressed me properly, gave me an education sufficient not to shame the family. But his gaze passed through me, as if I were transparent. He didn’t see Jessica. He saw the servant’s daughter, a useful accident that could perhaps be married off to an old baron or an ambitious knight to seal a minor alliance.

Then there was Hugo. The engagement was arranged when I was seventeen. Hugo, heir to a declining count family, smooth talker, always laughing a bit too loudly. At first, I wanted to believe in luck. Perhaps it was an escape.

But quickly, I understood. He was only interested in the money he thought he could extract from my father. He would squeeze my waist in public, give me memorized compliments, but his eyes were empty. And when he realized that my father was keeping him at a distance, that he wouldn’t loosen the purse strings so easily, his interest evaporated.

He started criticizing me: my reserve was coldness, my caution a lack of wit, my attempts at conversation on serious topics an impropriety. He broke off the engagement six months later, citing insurmountable differences.

I spent the following months in an even thicker shadow.Melissa jubilated. My father looked at me with irritation, as if I had wasted a worthless but still useful asset.

So, when Kaiser Paragon approached me today, in that room full of pitying or indifferent gazes, it was as if a door was cracking open in a very dark wall. He didn’t look at me with pity. He didn’t look at me as a missed opportunity. He looked at me, not the failure that was despised.

"Don’t worry, you have the right to feel weak for a moment, but the important thing is to always get back up... you deserve much better than that, Jessica."

He had uttered those words with such clarity, as if he were reading aloud a text written deep within me. It was frightening and exhilarating. No one had ever spoken to me like that.

No one had ever attributed that kind of desire, that kind of will to me. People assumed I had simple desires: a good marriage, jewelry, a stable position. No one imagined that I could want power. Real power. The kind that lets you decide.

"You... do you really like me?" I asked him.

"More than you think."

A light warmth rose to my cheeks. Hearing such sincere words made my heart pound wildly, but I tried to control my emotions.

I stayed one step away, my hands clenched on the fabric of my skirt, my fingers digging into the dark wool.

"Jessica, look at me."

he called to me. He wasn’t smiling, but his gaze was so gentle that it took my breath away.

"You’ve spent your life waiting to finally be seen, haven’t you?" he continued, his voice low. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

He stepped forward, reducing the space between us to nothing. The warmth of his hand brushed my cheek, with the tips of his fingers.

"You don’t have to be afraid of who you are," he murmured. "Not with me."

My heart was pounding so hard that I thought he could hear it. I was trembling. For the first time, I wasn’t being asked to make myself smaller, more discreet, to apologize for taking up space. I was being offered, without apparent condition, the possibility of being someone.

"Come," he suggested. "Let’s go somewhere no one can disturb us."

Before my conscience could even analyze the gesture, my hand had already detached from the fabric of my skirt and moved toward his. It was an almost autonomous movement, guided by an impulse deeper than reason. In that precise moment, I desired only one thing: to stay by his side.

"Okay," I breathed, the word barely audible.

Thus, we left the gallery, gradually leaving behind the murmurs of the guests. We walked side by side, and the sound of our steps on the pavement gradually replaced the clamor of my own confusion.

....

The secondary corridor we were advancing in was lined with worn velvet. I let my gaze slide over the delicate moldings of the ceiling.

Next to Kaiser, everything seemed different. The air I breathed, usually heavy, had become lighter. The slight rustling of my mourning clothes, that sound that had always reminded me of constraints and appearances to maintain, now blended into the calm rhythm of our steps.