Chapter 152
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 152
“It is you, Count, who should show me proper respect,” Oscar said, his voice dangerously low. “I couldn’t care less about your relationship with my mother, but there is a clear hierarchy between us, is there not? Surely you aren’t trying to play stepfather to me. Or am I mistaken?”
Oscar tilted his head, letting the insult hang in the air.
“I’m a bit too old to need one, after all.”
Unable to bear it any longer, Charlotte swung her hand at him. But Oscar had no intention of letting her strike him.
With a sharp snap, his large hand caught her slender wrist. Bound by blood, mother and son stared at each other, their eyes filled with mutual hatred.
“Where is Barbara Wald?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“…”
“How dare you treat me this way over a worthless creature like her!”
“And who, exactly, are you?”
Charlotte was left speechless by his blunt question. Oscar sneered.
“Giving birth to me? Is that supposed to be some grand achievement?”
“What?”
“Did I ever beg you to bring me into this world?”
“Brother, how can you say such a thing!”
“I asked,” he repeated, his voice like ice, “if I ever begged you to give birth to me.”
The scattered raindrops that had been falling one by one began to coalesce, finally drenching the earth in a sudden downpour.
Oscar smiled as he released Charlotte’s hand. Then, just as he had in the pouring rain all those years ago, he spoke to his mother.
“You told me back then, didn’t you? That you would never return to those ruins. So why are you acting like this now?”
“…!”
Charlotte gasped.
“You… you heard that?”
Oscar let out a genuine laugh of sheer disbelief.
“You said it for me to hear. And now you ask if I heard it?”
“…”
“So imagine how absurd this is for me. The bond between us was severed the moment you told me you wouldn’t return. No, actually…”
Oscar took a step closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “It was severed even before that. The moment you betrayed my father…”
At her son’s words, Charlotte recoiled violently.
“What on earth are you saying, Oscar!”
“We are already finished.”
“The only reason I left was because of your father, and because of that detestable creature, Barbara Wald! What do you know? What could you possibly know! You were only six years old! Your memories must have been twisted by her whispers…!”
“Exactly. I was only six years old.”
“…”
“You abandoned a six-year-old child, and now you have the audacity to claim this manor isn’t enough to repay you for giving birth to me.”
Oscar laughed, the sound swallowed by the pouring rain. He leaned in closer to Charlotte, his whisper a venomous hiss in her ear. “I don’t care if you keep a second household or what other games you play. But if you had even a shred of conscience, you shouldn’t have behaved like that in this manor, of all places.”
He let the words sink in. In the very hall where Ernst von Reinhardt once lived.
“At the very least, you shouldn’t have pretended to be married to another man here.”
In this hall, where the soul of that foolish man—who must have wandered through hell clutching those wretched letters—might still linger, she had been kissing another man.
“I take back what I said about letting you have this manor. My debt of birth is paid.”
Charlotte’s eyes wavered. Oscar stared piercingly into their violet depths. Just as his mother had abandoned him in the rain all those years ago, he would now abandon her.
“Do not even think about getting anything else from me. Ever.”
I owe you absolutely nothing.
“And you will have to take responsibility for that bizarre contract you made with Margaret Rose von Franz on your own.”
The dreadful rain began to pour down in torrents.
*
“She’s tough. Unbelievably tough,” Peter’s subordinate muttered, an involuntary chill running down his spine. “Fuck, she’s disgustingly tough.”
Her hair was a disheveled mess and her appearance was a wreck, but as Barbara Wald exhaled ragged, blood-scented breaths, the light in her eyes refused to fade. She had sustained injuries that should have killed her, or at least rendered her unconscious, yet the fire in the old wolf’s eyes showed no sign of dying out.
Even in this state, it was obvious she was still calculating.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just kill her?” the other subordinate asked, his voice laced with intimidation. Her fierce, unyielding aura screamed that she wouldn’t die even if they killed her.
Peter’s subordinate shook his head. “He ordered us to keep her alive. She can’t move anyway. Besides, the Royal Guard is posted outside.”
He recalled Peter’s brief orders as he boarded the King’s carriage. With a tense expression, he parted the thick curtains just enough to check the situation. The road was completely congested as dozens of carriages tried to leave at once. Powerful nobles rode in each one, and the Royal Guard lined the entire path.
“But while they couldn’t search us inside Reinhardt Manor, they’ll tail us the moment we step outside…”
“Even if they tail us, Reinhardt won’t wage war against the entire nobility of Vies. They won’t dare stop a moving carriage without cause. How would they even know which one she’s in? Any search will only begin after the carriages reach their destinations, so don’t worry.”
Since there were so many carriages, the number of pursuers assigned to each one would be limited. The forces lying in wait at their destination could easily eliminate such a small search party.
“We just need to keep driving until the Wolves tailing us are far enough from their pack, then we head for our destination.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I am.”
Barbara Wald twisted her body. A cloth was stuffed in her mouth as a gag, muffling her groans. Her hands and legs were bound so tightly she couldn’t even squirm. All she could do was blink.
Peter’s subordinate clicked his tongue at the sight of her, as helpless as a pinned insect. “Seriously, those Reinhardt bastards are downright creepy.”
As he shook his head, the carriage ground to a halt once more.
“This traffic is fucking terrible. So annoying.”
He parted the curtain a fraction to peer outside again. The subordinate sitting opposite him, also watching the road, muttered, “Just a bit further and we’ll reach the main gates of the Marquisate Residence.”
“Yeah, not much longer.”
“…It’s raining.”
Raindrops struck the windowpane, leaving long streaks before the skies opened up completely. The downpour grew heavy, its roar filling the Wolf’s Forest.
The carriage passed through the forest, where a misty haze was beginning to rise. And finally, the moment they crossed the wide-open black iron gates…
Through the window, his eyes met a figure lurking past the pitch-black gates like an illusion.
“…!”
A giant of a man, towering like a mountain, stood guard before the manor like a stone statue. Incongruously, he was holding an umbrella. No… he was holding it over someone else.
His gaze drifted to the person beneath the umbrella. Standing under the black canopy was a woman barely half the size of the menacingly large man. Her neat, delicate features, exceptionally pale in the darkness, contrasted so sharply with the man beside her that she seemed almost unreal, an ethereal presence.
But right at that moment.
The ethereal woman looked directly at him. Startled by the sharp, clear gaze meeting his through the window, he instinctively recoiled. Yet, her eyes tracked the carriage as it moved, following it with absolute precision, as if she were seeing right through to something hidden within.
Peter’s subordinate hastily drew the curtain shut. The man holding Barbara down looked up and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing.”
But even as he said it, his heart hammered with a strange, unsettling rhythm.
Meanwhile, near the main gates where the carriages were filing out, the Wolves were stamping their feet in anxiety.
“Senior, we won’t get off with just a beating this time.”
“Do you have a death wish or something?”
“If you want to die, please do it alone…”
The members of Combat Team 1, every one of them looking utterly battered, were practically begging their team leader.
If it had been just Thebes Venok standing there, it wouldn’t have been an issue. Even if he had stood stark naked in the rain, the Wolves would have just snickered at the free show.
“Shut the hell up! Whining like a bunch of lapdogs is getting on my nerves. You’re distracting our lady.”
“That’s why we’re asking! Why on earth are you making ‘our lady’ stand out in this rain!”
“What if His Excellency sees this?!”
Team 1 paced anxiously, terrified of the wrath that might fall upon them, but Thebes didn’t care in the slightest.
After Oscar had left with Simon, Thebes had heard about the situation from Karl.
“The problem is securing Barbara Wald. Dead or alive, securing her is the key.”
Karl had muttered it in a low voice, but Seo-ah, who had been sitting alone in her carriage, immediately opened her window and asked, “Has something happened to Lady Barbara?”
The moment Thebes saw her face, a sharp intuition pierced his mind. Hearing that the Search Team had been ordered to covertly search every carriage leaving the manor, he had immediately called Seo-ah out.
He positioned her near the main gates and asked her to do something only she could. Regardless of how much the Wolves threw a fit, Thebes stood firmly by her side, helping her focus.
“Is there something wrong with that carriage?”
Amidst the slowly moving procession, Seo-ah was staring intently at a brown carriage that had just passed them.
As Thebes leaned down close to her, Abel Sting, standing beside her, shoved him back, silently warning him not to get any closer. Thebes’s thick eyebrows shot up in irritation, but fortunately, Seo-ah spoke before he could react.
“The smell of blood… and groans…”