Chapter 16
Paternity Test (4)
‘Oh, that, that’s right. Maybe madam Lysianthus.’
She was known for being picky and ill-tempered, but at the same time, she was a very cold and realistic person.
She knows how to squeeze her son like a mouse, and she’s sure to scold him with common sense about how unreasonable it is.
Dominic turned his gaze with such anticipation.
As expected, Madam Lysianthus was showing her displeasure as he thought.
“What are you talking about? Is drawing blood such a big deal, you idiot?”
“That, right? As expected of you, madam!”
Dominic quickly rubbed his palms together.
“I will be careful not to leave any traces, so don’t worry too much. I will disinfect it right away.”
Luke still looked displeased, but he didn’t object any longer.
He also understood that there was no other way to be unreasonable here.
Even though I knew it, I didn’t like it at all.
“Then I will pull it out now. Lady, put your arm here for a moment….”
While Dominic was completely distracting Bonita, Leo secretly prepared the needle on the side.
Leo, who wiped the needle with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol, felt very nervous inside.
‘She’s definitely going to cry, with this.’
It’s only natural for children to hate getting shots, but the problem was when she burst into tears.
What if that small, cute girl was really the Duke’s daughter and he was making that child cry…
‘Oh, I don’t know. He would never kill a priest in front of a child.’
Leo glanced at Dominic. Dominic was also looking this way.
The two nodded their heads in unspoken signals.
“Okay, then-”
“Oh my!”
However, contrary to their expectations, it wasn’t Bonita who screamed.
“No, how can such a thick needle go into such a thin, branch-like arm! We need to get a thinner one!”
“Ma-madam?”
“Didn’t you hear me?! He’ll poke her hard with this and bring us a less painful one!”
“Oh, no, this is a child’s needle-”
“A child?! Does this look like a child to you?!”
Leo rolled his eyes and broke out in a cold sweat at Catherine’s scolding.
“What, ma-madam, it’s not an adult…?”
“An adult?! Of course not!”
“Then a child…”
“What are you talking about!”
Catherine shouted.
“She’s a baby!”
“Pardon?”
“Yes?”
Dominic wasn’t the only one who questioned her this time. Bonita, suddenly treated like a newborn, blushed and protested.
“Madam, I’m not a baby.”
“What are you talking about? Luke was already this big when he was just a month old.”
“What?”
Whoosh.
Everyone in the room turned their gazes to Luke.
He was nearly 2m tall. On top of that, his shoulders and size made the chair he was sitting on look narrow.
Luke Lysianthus definitely looked more like a bear than a human. Aria muttered.
“That certainly makes sense.”
“What kind of nonsense are you talking about?”
Luke scolded her with an expression of disbelief.
“No matter how much I grow, I didn’t grow that much in just a month after being born. It’s ridiculous to believe something like that seriously.”
“Haha, I guess so?”
“Of course.”
Luke said with a hollow laugh.
“It took a year to grow that big.”
“Pardon?”
“Yes?”
“Yes?”
“What?”
This time, the two priests, Aria, and Bonita all asked questions at the same time. Luke didn’t pay much attention and gestured toward Leo, who was holding a needle.
“Anyway, that needle is definitely too thick. Since Bonita is too small, we should use a smaller needle.”
“What’s so thick about this…”
Leo shut his mouth at the menacing gaze.
But he really felt wronged.
‘These needles are even used by three-year-olds!’
He had heard that the child, presumed to be the princess, was very small, so he had deliberately prepared a needle used by children younger than her age.
And a needle thinner than this? There was nothing like that.
“Um… Then should I use a lancet?”
“A lancet?”
“Yes, a lancet.”
Dominic rummaged through his bag and pulled out a small needle. It was much thinner than a needle, without a hole in the center.
Luke eyed the needle nervously and came to a conclusion.
“That would be better. Use that.”
In the end, he used the needle to prick her hand, but every time she put the needle in, Catherine kept fussing, so it took an hour just to get Bonita’s blood.
Bonita completely lost it and crawled into Aria’s arms. The old woman got angry again when she saw this.
“You guys are the ones who got the baby like this! What on earth did you do to the needle?”
Luke was the same.
“If you did something suspicious, I won’t let you off.”
The two priests, Dominic and Leo, were speechless. They shouted with aggrieved expressions.
‘It’s because of you guys!’
Of course, they were scared, so they only said it in their hearts.
*****
Unlike Bonita’s blood draw that had drained all of her energy, Luke’s blood draw was incredibly fast.
There was a slight delay, though.
“Huh!”
“T-the needle won’t go in?”
The needle wouldn’t go into Luke’s thick forearm.
Dominic swallowed hard as he tried to insert the needle into his arm, his brown eyes fluttering wildly.
‘No matter how thick it is, it’s a human forearm… How could a metal needle not go in?’
Luke, who was looking at the bewildered priests, lifted his knife and cut his own arm with an expressionless expression.
Aria was understandably horrified by the gush of blood.
“What are you doing in front of a child!”
“… Ah.”
Luke’s face turned pale as he belatedly noticed Bonita’s gaze.
Whoosh.
His head turned. His scary red eyes glared at the two priests with an intense light.
“Treat them immediately. This is an order.”
“Yes…!”
That was how it was.
Luke, who had finished taking care of everything, relaxed his expression and approached Bonita.
“I’m sorry for showing you such a rough appearance. Were you very scared?”
“That….”
Bonita hesitated to answer.
To be honest, there were quite a few gangsters wielding knives in the back alleys of the street she used to live on.
She had never been directly involved in one, but she had occasionally seen corpses after a fight had run through them.
Above all, Bonita herself had often bled.
‘I shouldn’t say that.’
Bonita was quite smart for a child. She had a vague sense that the more she revealed the fact that she had grown up in a bad environment, the more trouble Aria would have.
“Bonita….”
The atmosphere became heavy as Bonita remained silent. Luke was now almost feeling self-loathing.
‘Was I this thoughtless?’
When Elodie was alive, he always wanted to be a sweet lover in front of her, so he restrained his violent nature.
However, during the seven years without her, he acted as he pleased because he had no need to be affectionate to anyone.
It became a habit, and sometimes he acted like a fool in front of Bonita.
‘Idiot.’
Luke was now in the stage of self-deprecation.
Bonita, who had no idea about this fact, just rolled her eyes here and there.
Unable to stand it any longer, Catherine slapped her stupid son on the head.
“Tsk! Don’t do something useless. How will he answer when you ask her with that expression? Go look in the mirror!”
“… This is all because of mother.”
“What?”
“Isn’t the reason I look so scary because I look like mother?”
Catherine was speechless at those words.
It was true. Catherine’s eldest son looked exactly like her.
The reason Catherine didn’t look as scary as Luke was because she was a woman.
Catherine was tall by women’s standards, but of course, she was shorter than the average adult male.
On the other hand, what about Luke?
He was over 2m tall.
He was so big that he resembled his father, the former Duke, and he was born with a monster body that couldn’t be helped.
On the other hand, the second son, who resembled the Duke’s face and Catherine’s normal physique, was a gentle-looking handsome man.
Unlike Luke, who was ridiculously tall, he was also reasonably good-looking.
I didn’t really care about that fact when I was young.
However, before they started dating, when I heard that Elodie’s ideal type was a man with a warm and gentle face, I thought the sky was falling.
Of course, in the end, it was him who was chosen, and it was true that this appearance helped him a lot in becoming the ruler of the South…
It was still unfair.
“It’s all because of my mother.”
He completely drove the wedge in.
Catherine opened her mouth in shock at the resentful tone.
“Um, when will the results come out?”
It was Aria who broke the heavy silence.
She asked the priests who looked flustered while holding Bonita tightly in her arms.
The one who answered was Dominic.
He was more sociable than Leo.
“It used to take over a month, but these days, technology has advanced so it’s faster. It should come out in a few hours.”
“How many hours?”
Catherine recovered from her shock after hearing Dominic’s story. She originally didn’t care about what other people thought, so she recovered quickly.
“How many hours exactly?”
“Huh? Well, there can be changes, so I can’t be completely sure….”
“When is the earliest?”
“Well, that’s also fluid-”
Dominic muttered, sweating profusely. Catherine glared at him fiercely.
“Say it correctly.”
“Three, three hours!”
“Okay.”
It was almost like she was ripping off an answer.
Catherine grinned, then quickly aimed her cane at Dominic.
“Bring it back within three hours. You know my temper, right?”
Dominic swallowed his tears and rubbed his hands.
“… Haha, if that’s the case…”
The priest was having a hard time today too.
