[TWD x Resident Evil] — Chapter 779 - Only Today Will Know

Leon leaned back against the wide leather sofa, legs crossed.

Three women knelt on the carpet. The atmosphere was intimate and tense at the same time, like a wire pulled just short of snapping.

Amber bit her red lip and made the first move.

She extended two slender fingers, pinched the strap of her black silk dress, and slowly pulled it down.

The smooth fabric slid along pale skin, revealing a generous expanse of snow-white and deep shadow beneath.

Just as she was about to take the next step.

"Rub my temples."

Leon spoke without inflection, pressing two fingers to the side of his own head.

Then he pointed to his shoulders. Then his legs.

"Knead my shoulders. Beat my legs. Long day."

Amber's hands froze.

Her dress had slipped exactly to her chest and stopped there, caught at the most awkward position imaginable.

Too far down to put back. Not far enough to finish.

Frankie and Tania stared.

They looked at each other, eyes full of baffled disbelief.

They had washed up, dressed up, and come all the way here, for a leg massage?

Leon watched Amber flustered and crimson-cheeked, hands hovering uselessly at her sides, and felt a flicker of amusement.

"Relax. I'm not going to do anything to you."

He reached over and picked up the stemmed glass from the coffee table, taking a slow sip of red wine.

He glanced at Amber.

"And you, if you're feeling warm, go ahead and strip the rest of the way off before you start."

Amber blinked.

Then something seemed to click.

In this world, the people at the top always had their peculiar tastes.

Maybe this was just how a man like him set the mood.

Amber's face went red. She set her jaw.

She grabbed the hem with both hands and yanked it straight down, pulling the whole dress off in one motion and dropping it onto the carpet beside her.

A flawless body, nothing held back.

She shuffled forward on her knees, reached up with both soft hands, and began pressing his temples in slow, careful circles.

Frankie and Tania watched this for one second, then "understood" perfectly.

Frankie untied her wine-red deep-V robe. Tania slipped out of her purple gauze.

Three pale figures gathered around him, bare and candid about it.

Frankie knelt at his feet and began beating his calves with her hands, steady and light. Tania moved around behind the sofa, her chest barely grazing his back, her hands settling over his shoulders and working at a steady, measured pressure.

Now Leon was the one who froze.

His wine glass stopped halfway to his lips.

What was wrong with these women?

Had none of them understood that he was being sarcastic?

But then, the warm fingertips at his temples. The soft pressure at his back. The faint scent curling around him.

Leon exhaled slowly.

Fine.

This wasn't bad at all.

The room fell quiet. All that filled the silence was the women's slightly quickened breathing.

The red wine's warmth spread through him by degrees. The atmosphere thickened.

Tania kneaded away at his shoulders, and her courage built gradually.

Her hands drifted from his shoulders and began to slide down, gliding over the firm plane of his chest, moving lower.

"Mr. Leon."

She leaned close to his ear, her breath warm and sweet, her voice threaded with something deliberate.

"You seem a little... unsettled."

SMACK!

Leon reached back without looking and slapped her hand away.

Tania startled, snatched her hand back, and obediently resumed working his shoulders.

"Alright." Leon set the glass down on the coffee table and dropped the easy tone. "Jokes are jokes."

His gaze moved across the three women.

"In this world, nobody throws themselves at someone without a reason."

He looked directly at Amber.

"Tell me what you want. Your performance today — I'm satisfied."

All three pairs of hands went still at the same moment.

Amber's fingers, pressed against his temples, trembled slightly.

She bit her lip. Her eyes went red in an instant.

"Negan is a monster."

She was still kneeling on the carpet, but she tilted her head up and looked straight at him, and the hatred in her voice had nowhere left to hide.

"To force me to comply, he took a red-hot branding iron and pressed it against my boyfriend Mark's face. Right in front of me. Held it there."

Amber's tears slid down.

"I can still smell it. Even now. Burning skin and flesh. And I can still hear Mark screaming."

"I'm asking for your help."

She grabbed his pant leg with both hands, her eyes raw with pleading.

"Negan fears you enough to kneel in the dirt and beg. You've seen it yourself."

"One word from you, and he won't dare refuse."

"Please. Just say it. Give us our freedom back."

Frankie and Tania had gone still too, kneeling quietly to the side, their eyes dim.

"You want to know how Negan gets his wives?" Frankie let out a short, bitter laugh.

"Coercion. Survival extortion. High-pressure rule."

She pointed to herself, then to Tania.

"His terms are simple. Brutal, but simple."

"If a woman agrees to go with him — moves into the Sanctuary, becomes his plaything — he guarantees the safety of her family, her boyfriend, whoever she cares about on the outside. Enough food. Enough medicine."

"But if she refuses. If she tries to run."

Frankie shuddered.

"The people she loves get dragged to the plaza. In front of everyone. Skulls beaten in with that barbed-wire bat."

Tania drew a slow breath and picked up where she left off.

"And then there's Sherry Birkin."

"Negan was going to kill her husband Dwight. So Sherry Birkin signed her name onto his list. No other choice."

"Dwight lost half his face to that branding iron anyway."

"Every single day, we live inside fear and torment."

"We don't even dare die, because if we go, our families go with us."

Silence settled over the room.

This was Negan's law.

Cruel. Bloody. Entirely, unapologetically selfish.

Tania looked straight into Leon's eyes.

"Mr. Leon. We know what we are."

"We've been with Negan. That filth doesn't wash off."

"But if you can look past that, we'll serve you. Whatever you need."

She smiled, and there was nothing warm in it.

"Our looks are the only thing we have left. The only currency we've got."

Leon leaned back against the sofa and regarded the three of them in unhurried silence.

Negan had folded for now. But a man who'd spent years playing warlord didn't shed that defiance, it just went underground. Taking these women off his hands was a practical move. And a message. A reminder of exactly who owned the Sanctuary now.

"Getting your freedom back. That's doable."

Leon's voice was even.

"But one question first."

He leaned forward slightly and took hold of Amber's chin, tipping her face up.

"You're not going to come crawling back afterward, are you? Asking me for some kind of title, a place in my household, that sort of thing?"

Those words landed, and instead of humiliation, all three women's faces lit up.

Because they knew exactly what it meant. The fact that he was asking meant he was considering it. The deal was alive.

Amber wrapped her arms around his calf and pressed her cheek against it, her eyes gone soft and half-lidded.

"Mr. Leon. You're worried about nothing."

Her voice had shifted, smooth and low and honey-soaked.

"I have a boyfriend. I love him."

"Why would I ever ask you for something like that?"

She tilted her head up.

"What happens today, only the people in this room will ever know."

"And only today will know."

➤ Next: Sherry