Talia caught sight of Merkel's furrowed brow from the corner of her eye. Dissatisfaction was written all over the butler's face, and Talia knew exactly what he was unhappy about.
This was an exceedingly luxurious estate, every decoration stamped with the name of high society. Yet she had leaped down from the roof and landed in the garden like this. Any estate butler would have had every right to grab a shotgun and put a bullet in such an uninvited guest.
Yet Schiller had opened the door to welcome her. He had even offered her wine and food, choosing a polite topic common among high society: someone they both knew.
In this setting, everything Schiller had done was perfectly normal, even generous and patient. But every one of Talia's actions made her seem insane, like the sort of madness born from paranoid delusions, baseless suspicion of others, and furious malicious conjecture.
No matter how loudly Talia's intuition sounded the alarm, no matter how dangerous her assassin's instincts told her Schiller was, no matter how many ways she imagined Schiller killing her, in the real world, Schiller had done nothing, hadn't he?
That made all of Talia's excessive emotions seem deeply inappropriate, terribly undignified, even utterly rude and discourteous—worthy of criticism.
Talia made the greatest effort she could to suppress her rage, but even so, she could not bring herself to smile and apologize to Schiller.
Schiller had been the one ignoring her. Why should she apologize?
Talia sat there with a cold expression, ignoring the red wine stains on the back of her hand and the table. She picked up her glass and took several gulps of the chilled wine, which cleared her mind a little.
"Are you going to accept my father's recruitment?" Even Talia could hear how stiff