Chapter 180
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 180
Bella pressed Terry to hurry as they sped toward the Fellon Estate. She calculated that Harriet would be more than willing to see her.
She’ll want to see me weeping and begging. How delightful that must be for her.
She had even prepared an excuse to lower the Fellon family’s guard.
“I’ll be leaving for the convent soon. Before I go, I’ve come to apologize to Harriet. If she refuses, there’s nothing I can do, but could you at least relay my message?”
Sure enough, the butler returned with Harriet’s consent. He escorted Bella to the drawing room.
She put on a show of being pathetic and fragile for the servants, but as she walked through the mansion's corridors, a cold smirk played on her lips. She hadn't come to meet Harriet to beg for forgiveness or seek salvation. She was there to claw at her one last time—to inflict a wound Harriet would never be able to overcome.
It’s not fair if I’m the only one crying. While I’m rotting in that convent, I’ll make sure you lose your mind as well.
In the heart of enemy territory, Bella straightened her back, summoning the sheer malice that made her want to rush forward and kill Harriet on the spot.
“Welcome. I’ll skip the pleasantries,” Harriet said.
The Harriet who greeted her had also cast aside any pretense of kindness. Bella didn't even bother with a polite greeting, offering only a scoff and a sneer.
“Just how did you ensnare Duke Kailas? Was it that brooch you picked up in a drug den? That’s it, isn’t it? It has to be. Otherwise, none of this makes sense.”
She added a condescending gaze, sweeping Harriet up and down for good measure. But Harriet merely shrugged, unfazed.
“To love, one does not need the title of High Society’s greatest beauty, nor an aphrodisiac, nor something to trade. You need sincerity.”
“What? Sincerity?”
“It’s something you don’t possess, so explaining it would be pointless.”
At Harriet’s sharp retort, Bella burst into a cackling laugh.
“Did that ‘sincerity’ buy you a position as a mistress for a couple of months? Or perhaps just one? The clock is ticking even now. Tick-tock, tick-tock. What a waste, isn't it?”
“This isn’t the time to worry about me, Bella. Why fret over someone whose situation is so much better than yours?”
At those words, Bella’s expression instantly turned vicious.
“You goddamn bitch.”
“At least pretend to have some dignity. Have you already given up completely?”
“Don’t act so high and mighty. You’re no better than me. Do you think your parents were such great people? Don’t delude yourself. They were trash.”
In that moment, Harriet read the raw malice reflected in Bella’s eyes. But before she could rebuke her, Bella’s tongue began to move again.
“Was it when we were seven? You and I once tumbled down the stairs. There weren’t many steps, and we weren’t badly hurt, but we cried because we were scared and in pain. We were just children, after all.”
A brief chuckle escaped her, but she didn't stop.
“But your parents, who rushed over immediately, quickly scooped you up and only checked how badly you were hurt. Even though I was lying on the floor, crying right next to you.”
Bella reveled in Harriet’s silence. She had always wanted to disparage her respected uncle, who was constantly compared to her own parents, and now she was doing it right in front of his daughter. It felt like the climax of a play—that heightened atmosphere right before the villain is punished.
“In the end, you and your parents only cared about yourselves. So don’t you dare point fingers at me or my family!”
Looking at the strangely triumphant Bella, Harriet finally asked the question she had suppressed for so long.
“So, did you kill my mother and father?”
A heavy silence fell over the drawing room.
The words were stolen from Bella’s mouth. She blinked her wide eyes and answered involuntarily.
“How did you know that?”
She had come to Harriet specifically to reveal that her parents hadn’t died in an accident. She wasn’t worried about past crimes being exposed; who would believe Harriet if she tried to claim murder based on a private conversation? It had been over ten years, and there were no witnesses or evidence.
She had imagined Harriet, knowing her parents were murdered but unable to prove it, being driven to madness by rage and a sense of injustice. She hoped Harriet might even do something foolish and ruin her reputation again.
I came here with that calculation in mind…
But Harriet was speaking as if she already knew the truth. Bella had even planned to pretend to beg for forgiveness and frame Harriet as a villainess if Harriet lost her temper and lunged at her, but now the fun was gone.
Still, Bella didn’t give up. She tried to provoke Harriet further.
“Since it’s come up, your parents were so foolish they lost the family’s money this way and that. My father would have clearly done a much better job as Viscount Listerwell.”
“How could you? How good were my parents to you and your father!”
“That’s your opinion. It wasn’t enough for me.”
Bella bared her teeth and laughed, looking delighted.
“For someone without any ability to be in charge of a family just because they were born first… that’s putting too many people into misery.”
“You and your father are the ones who took that position without any effort, all thanks to my parents’ deaths! And yet you act so superior?”
Seeing Harriet calmly refute her, Bella’s anger flared. She brought up something that should never have been spoken aloud.
“Nonsense! I haven’t gained a single thing without effort, Harriet. Discovering the faulty glue that dissolves in water was luck, but using it to kill your parents? That was my hard work.”
“Glue?”
“Pfft!”
Bella burst out laughing. Even thinking about it now, the plan for the accident had been perfect.
“I happened to read about how to make glue in a book, and it mentioned people making faulty batches with low-quality materials. That’s when a question popped into my head. If it was truly useless, why would people make it? Perhaps it had another use.”
While others might not know why people bought such glue, young Bella thought it would be the perfect tool for murder.
“If you apply that glue to the bottom of a boat and let it dry well, it looks like wood. But when it touches water, it gradually dissolves and eventually vanishes without a trace. Isn’t that the perfect method for an uncle who loves boating? Gurgle, gurgle. ‘John, save me!’ Ahahaha!”
Bella even mimicked a dying Arthur, taunting her.
Seeing Harriet’s fists trembling with rage, Bella felt a surge of delight. It reminded her that there was nothing in the world as entertaining as trampling Harriet.
“You’re going to say that to my face? You won’t regret it?”
“What difference does it make if you know? It happened over ten years ago. There’s no evidence anywhere, and I’ll just sob and swear I never said such a thing. Or are you going to whine to your fixed-term dating partner? No matter how powerful Duke Kailas is, it’ll be hard for him to conjure up non-existent evidence, won’t it?”
Harriet gritted her teeth, looking at the Bella who was revealing a side more hideous than ever before. Her head felt like it was boiling with rage, but she had to endure this moment.
“My parents weren’t angels. Of course not. But at least they tried to live virtuously. But you…”
You, who wear the most beautiful skin in the world and pretend to be an angel.
“You’re nothing but a lump of inferiority, jealousy, and a victim complex. A petty, pathetic creature who deludes herself into thinking she’s magnificent.”
“Ha! You’ve grown up a lot, Harriet. You used to just bawl your eyes out.”
“I will never forgive you. Don’t even hope for it.”
“Who are you to say that? I won’t ever let you be. Just you wait.”
Bella left, spewing venomous curses without a shred of remorse until the very end. She seemed to have taken no hit at all, but it was clear she was greatly annoyed by her failure to provoke Harriet. One could tell by the fact that she fired Terry on the spot just for being slow to open the carriage door.
Four days later, Bella, feigning illness, left for the convent, which also served as a sanatorium.
*
The day after Bella’s dramatic departure, Harriet kept her appointment with Cedric. They were to attend an event where members of the Imperial Family’s collateral branches gathered.
They stuck together like a couple in the first flush of romance, announcing their relationship while pretending to exchange sweet nothings—all while doing ‘work.’
“Bella came by yesterday. She said she’ll be entering the convent soon.”
“It seems the Listerwells prefer to leave the resolution of their problems to God,” Cedric remarked.
“I never imagined my uncle would take revenge on my behalf.”
Harriet smiled brightly, conscious of those around them. Of course, it was also something to smile about. The punishment of ‘convent confinement’ that had once been imposed on her was now bestowed upon Bella. Bella couldn't possibly have failed to realize that their situations had completely reversed.
Naturally, Harriet didn’t feel an ounce of pity for her.
“Bella, furious to her core, came and spewed curses. Then she confessed that they had killed my parents. She even detailed the method.”
“Did she think a prison would be better than a convent?”
“I think she wanted to see me go wild with rage. It was a long time ago, and there’s no evidence or witnesses.”
Having experienced it many times, Harriet knew. Confessing her misdeeds to someone powerless to act was Bella’s cruel hobby, one that had continued since their time in the Listerwell house.
Harriet sighed.
“She’s not wrong, either. I can’t accuse my uncle’s family based solely on her words. If I did, I’d be the one suffering the backlash.”
“So, her intention was to use your appeals for help as a pretext for a counterattack once you knew the truth.”
“That must be it.”
“For the first thing she thought of, even while being sent away to a convent, to be hurting you… that’s truly something.”
Cedric let out a hollow, dumbfounded laugh just as someone passing by offered them a greeting.