Chapter 25
That night Cassis had a dream. In his dream he was transported back to a day when he was eighteen years old.
That day, he had returned to the mansion after receiving an urgent telegram from the Academy. And what he saw was Julia, whose stomach was somewhat swollen.
“What’s happening?”
Unlike him, who was taken aback, Julia smiled. He gazed down at her belly.
Cassis tried not to show his surprise.
It was sudden news, but the pregnancy is definitely something to be blessed with. Even though the order was slightly changed, I was satisfied as long as Julia had a happy family.
“Who is the father…”
Cassis, who was about to ask calmly, found something and fell silent.
She tried to hide it, but there was a blue bruise on her arm, exposed through the sleeve.
Although he was trained to hide his emotions since childhood, Cassis was the only one who showed his emotions openly in front of Julia.
“Who did it?”
He asked in a low voice, not hiding his anger, but Julia only smiled faintly and said nothing.
“Did that bastard do it?”
He called Julia’s lover that, not even knowing who he was.
Julia immediately realized who ‘the bastard’ was referring to and shook her head.
“No.”
“Then…”
For a moment, someone passed through Cassis’ mind. The cold face of their father, who had always pressured and abused him.
“Did father do that?”
“……”
Julia looked away, neither confirming nor denying. Cassis got his answer from that silence.
“Since when?”
“…….”
“I asked since when did that happen?”
“What do you care about that?”
From Julia’s uncharacteristically reply, Cassis also noticed that this wasn’t the first time this had happened.
At that moment, anger dominated his mind. Their father had been abusing him as well as Julia.
He was comforted by Julia whenever he was hurt by their father without knowing it.
Julia, too, should have been comforted.
“Cassis!”
Cassis headed straight for their father’s office that way. When the enraged Cassis slammed the door open without knocking, his father, Duke Adelhard, frowned.
“What are you doing?”
Cassis smiled at his father as he stood up from his seat. During his years at the academy, he had grown more than anyone else and father had shrunk.
The man who had seemed endlessly terrifying when I was a child no longer seemed frightening.
“Why did you do that?”
“What do you mean? seeing your father and not saying hello?”
“I asked Julia why you did that.”
“Did you see Julia before you even greet your father?”
Duke Adelhard clicked his tongue.
“You and Julia are still pitiful.”
“I asked why did you abuse Julia? Was I not enough?”
The Duke laughed as if it were absurd.
“Abuse? I only disciplined her as a father because she was doing something pathetic.”
“Discipline? How is that discipline?”
Cassis slowly approached his father. A huge shadow fell over Duke Adelhard’s head.
Duke Adelhard’s arrogant expression hardened little by little when he saw Cassis’ face.
Cassis had a look he had never seen before. The small, fragile child was nowhere to be found.
What stood in front of him was the ‘heir to the Adelhard family’, that he desperately wanted.
However, the problem was that the target of Cassis’ anger was Duke Adelhard.
“How dare you look at me with those eyes!”
Duke Adelhard couldn’t admit that he was frightened by his son for a moment. His pride was hurt and he deliberately raised his voice.
The more he did, the more ferocious Cassis became.
Cassis, who had come close to him before he knew it, grabbed the Duke by the collar.
“If you do that to Julia one more time.”
“……”
“Then I will not stand still, father.”
Duke Adelhard’s eyes trembled slightly. What settled in his eyes was intense fear.
The fear that he might really die at the hands of his son.
Cassis was devastated seeing his father like that. The man he’d been terrified of for decades was like this. It was ridiculous.
For the first time that day, he broke out of the imprisoned that held him.
* * *
After learning that Julia was being abused like him, Cassis felt guilty for Julia.
He disobeyed his father’s orders to return to the academy and stayed by Julia’s side. He kept a close eye on her to make sure their father didn’t treat her badly.
Julia’s health deteriorated as she neared the end of her pregnancy. After giving birth, she suffered a severe fever.
In the end, when she passed away on the sunny day she loved so much, Cassis couldn’t hold back his tears.
He didn’t cry even when their mother died, but he couldn’t control his emotions and cried like a child.
Julia’s newborn baby also cried, as if knowing it had lost its mother.
The baby’s cries echoed through the Adelhard residence all day long, as he wouldn’t stop crying even when the nanny picked him up.
“You gave birth to something useless like this.”
Duke Adelhard clicked his tongue and ordered the child to be put out of sight.
Nanny tried to argue that it couldn’t be, but she couldn’t disobey the Duke’s orders.
In the end, the nanny and the nameless child had to go to the annex behind the main building as if they were being kicked out.
The Duke threatened that Julia’s child couldn’t be recognized as the Adelhard family, and that he wouldn’t provide any support for the child.
After Julia’s funeral, Cassis went to the annex, ignoring their father’s anger.
As soon as he stepped inside, he heard the baby’s cries. His cries were weak, as if he didn’t even have the energy to cry.
“Nanny.”
When Cassis entered the room, the nanny who had been soothing the baby greeted him. The eyes of the nanny who lost her dearest daughter also went red.
“The young master doesn’t stop crying.”
Cassis looked at the little child screaming in the nanny arms and reached out.
“I will hold him.”
“Master?”
“Yes.”
“It must be hard for you.”
The nanny hesitated, then carefully handed the baby over.
“Put his head on one hand like this, yes, like that.”
Cassis was clumsy, but cherished his nephew.
That was the moment. The crying baby opened his eyes slightly and looked up at him.
The baby, looking up at Cassis, stopped crying. The nanny was surprised.
“Oh my God, it seems that the young master recognized you. How happy the lady would have been to see this.”
The nanny wiped her tears with her sleeve. Cassis stared blankly down at the baby, trying to find a resemblance between the baby and Julia.
But despite her best efforts, he couldn’t find a single resemblance
Funny enough, the baby looked more like Cassis than Julia.
―If it’s a daughter, we’ll name it Lucia, and if it’s a son, we’ll name it Lucius. Isn’t it pretty? It was made by him.
Cassis muttered, remembering what Julia had said.
“Lucius Adelhard.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s name the child Lucius, Nanny.”
The nanny wiped away tears again.
“That’s a pretty name.”
“It’s the name Julia gave him.”
To be precise, it was the name given by the child’s father, but Cassis deliberately left that out.
When the name of ‘Julia’ was mentioned, the nanny cried out as if she couldn’t hold back her crying any longer.
“Poor girl. How can she die with such..”
Cassis looked at Ruth, who was staring at him, and was lost in thought.
His father said that he couldn’t recognize the child as Adelhard’s bloodline and wouldn’t support him, but Cassis had a different idea.
He wanted the child that Julia had risked her life to give birth to be a member of the Adelhard family and enjoy all that he had to offer.
However, he couldn’t appear in the world as ‘Julia’s son’. If so, the dead Julia would be dishonored as a ‘woman who died giving birth to a child whose father is unknown’.
I’d rather…
After making up his mind, Cassis gave Ruth back to the nanny and went to see his father.
“I will take Ruth as my child.”
“Ruth?”
“The child.”
Understanding his meaning, the Duke’s face turned red.
“What…!”
“Ruth will grow up to be my son and my heir.”
