♡ TL: Khadija SK
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“Everyone in this empire knows that Annette loves Crown Prince Hugo. I really want to know when this child, who blindly followed the Crown Prince until just a few months ago, fell in love with you, Grand Duke.”
“Annette realized it was time to change her mind because she couldn’t waste her life chasing someone who didn’t love her just because she had fallen for him. So she decided to accept my love, which had been one-sided.”
Theodore skillfully dodged Casselia’s interrogation.
Judging by her expression, Casselia’s heart was in turmoil. Theodore’s answer was logical, leaving her with nothing to counter.
Besides, Theodore wasn’t the type to do something senseless.
The fact that he met two members of the Cherringan family in a public place like this salon meant he had evidence that they had harmed Annette, but Casselia couldn’t even begin to guess what that evidence might be.
Theodore was adept at hiding what he held in his hand, whether it was a weapon or a weakness, so no one could touch him carelessly.
However, Casselia couldn’t simply admit that she was the one who had hidden Annette in that distant asylum.
“Annette and I love each other deeply, and I will do everything in my power to protect my legal wife.”
Theodore looked at the necklace as if to say it was obvious there was nothing he couldn’t do.
Why was a man as important as Theodore interested in Annette, for the love of hell?
Rather…
Didn’t Theodore despise Annette?
Casselia pondered the true nature of the relationship between Annette and Theodore but couldn’t come to a convincing conclusion.
As she was thinking, her foolish younger brother poured fuel on the fire.
“If you have evidence that I imprisoned Annette, you should present it first. Who knows if you’re trying to deceive us or not?”
“Do you mind if I reveal it here?”
Theodore’s eyes pointed to the people who were paying keen attention, their eyes and ears open.
The people around them were indeed paying attention while pretending not to.
“I’m not afraid of anyone.”
Casselia wanted to shut her brother’s big mouth, but it was already too late.
“As you wish.”
Theodore began to take out the contents of the bag he was carrying, one by one.
Several documents emerged from an envelope bearing the large letters “Elysia Asylum,” containing patient records, including one for a woman named “Anita,” detailing her symptoms and a hospitalization agreement signed by the hospital director and the guardian.
There were also forged identity cards and documents that had been created to admit Annette to the hospital, with two familiar signatures listed as Anita’s guardians.
Those signatures belonged to none other than Bjorn and Casselia.
“Anita. Couldn’t you have been more sincere in changing her name?”
Theodore spoke as if pitying them.
Bjorn began to sweat as he looked at his signature, with its habitual scribble at the end of his name.
He felt his head start to turn blank, but he tried to come up with an excuse somehow.
Immediately after Marquis Cherringan’s death, they had been in a hurry to lock Annette away in Elysia Asylum, so they had chosen the fastest possible way, not the safest.
Bjorn hadn’t intended for it to be this obvious, but he hadn’t expected it to be uncovered so quickly either.
“You’re misunderstanding something. This was for the treatment of a child under our care, Anita is—”
“Stop it.”
Casselia ground her teeth and cut her brother off.
The documents Theodore presented had been created by slipping money into the hands of Mr. Walter, the director of Elysia Asylum.
If these documents, which should have disappeared immediately, were laid out on the table, it meant that Walter’s mouth had already been opened.
That useless man.
Casselia had given him money, but it seemed he had no talent and was just a fool who didn’t even know that keeping that secret would have kept his life.
Realizing there was no way out, Casselia decided that instead of denying the situation, she had to act shrewdly.
“Annette killed her father. That wasn’t a sane act, anyway. It was said that she committed a crime deserving of the death penalty, but she was still my niece, so I wanted to protect her. I did it because I couldn’t bear to see a child like my daughter put her head on the guillotine.”
Casselia decided instead to cover the situation with the excuse of love for her family.
It’s a sentiment no one would believe, but it’s hard to deny the intentions of someone who confesses the truth after being caught.
If the situation couldn’t be resolved by reason, it had to be wrapped in the most irrational way—love.
Didn’t Theodore also insist on the unbelievable words that he loved Annette madly?
If Theodore wanted to claim love, he would have to acknowledge Casselia’s affection for her niece as well.
But the results she expected weren’t good.
“How dare you…”
Theodore growled with a terrifying voice.
“How dare you treat the Grand Duchess as a murderer? And you even insult my wife, Annette, in front of me!”
Theodore pretended as if he couldn’t restrain his anger. The thick papers in his hands began to crumple helplessly under his grip. That deadly force was directed toward Casselia and her brother, but his eyes instilled fear in those around them.
“How dare you accuse the Grand Duchess of being a murderer?”
“This is not an accusation; it’s a fact. She had a gun in her hand when she shot my brother. Otherwise, why did she flee without attending her father’s funeral?”
On the day Marquis Cherringan died, the sound of a gunshot was heard from the Marquis’s room.
The startled servants rushed in to find the master dead, his eyes wide open, with Annette beside him holding a gun and drenched in blood.
No one saw Annette pull the trigger, but everyone assumed she was the culprit.
“She was holding a gun. Why would a noblewoman possess such a dangerous weapon?”
“The gun belongs to me.”
“What did you say?”
“Annette anticipated that Marquis Cherringan was in danger and consulted with me, so I gave her a gun out of concern. Annette didn’t kill the Marquis; she was trying to protect him.”
“No… That’s impossible.”
“Why are you so adamant that it’s impossible? Sir, you’re acting as if Annette had a reason to be the culprit.”
“That’s not…”
As Bjorn stammered, Casselia intervened.
“Is that weapon really yours?”
“If you take it to the workshop where I keep my guns, you’ll discover that immediately. I gave it to her because I anticipated this kind of danger, but I didn’t know it would become evidence against my wife.”
“If you anticipated the assassination, you should have informed the Cherringan family and stopped it instead of giving Annette a gun.”
“I would have been treated as a madman if I told you that without clear evidence. It remains the same even now.”
Subtle glances were exchanged between Theodore and Casselia.
Even if it was forced logic, it had to be acknowledged as true, and if there was a gap in the truth, it would be dismissed as a lie.
“Perhaps my poor wife acted a bit strangely because she was terrified by the sight of her father’s death, but that’s due to the trauma of losing her father, not madness. Rather… If she had behaved normally in such a situation as you two did, that would have been far more suspicious. Don’t you agree?”
Theodore looked directly into Casselia’s eyes.
Even as he sat calmly, his eyes looked down on Casselia—a middle-aged woman—with a haughty and arrogant gaze.
It was a warning for her to back off at this point.
“Don’t make me put another gun in the Grand Duchess’s hand. The next gun I give her may not be for self-defense but for offense.”
Casselia admitted that her plan to hide Annette had completely failed, and the results were catastrophic.
“Now the legal guardian of Annette is me, her husband. If she needs a guardian, I’ll play that role, so don’t try to approach Annette in the future.”
Theodore stood up from his seat with a final warning.
***
Theodore stepped into the carriage that was waiting for him outside the salon.
At that moment, Hans, who had been asleep inside for a while, woke up.
He looked particularly tired.
“I was the one dealing with those dark-hearted people, so why do you look so exhausted?”
Hans looked at Theodore with resentful eyes.
“Clearing the name of a guilty person is much harder than condemning an innocent one. I’m doing all the hard work here.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money to do it.”
Hans had been running day and night trying to figure out who had placed Annette in the mental asylum.
No one in the Cherringan family stood by Annette, and with so many enemies, it was difficult for him to pinpoint the mastermind.
Of course, Bjorn and Casselia were the likely ringleaders, so they were the focus of the investigation.
Bjorn wanted to take the position of Marquis for himself instead of his deceased brother, and Casselia saw an opportunity to bring her son into the Cherringan family.
Hans tracked down all of Annette’s enemies and identified the culprit, while at the same time, he searched for evidence of her innocence.
It was his responsibility to forge the evidence that would condemn Annette as a murderer, including silencing the servants who witnessed the incident.
Hans threatened Walter by dangling the revocation of the hospital’s license as bait and went to great lengths to uncover the truth behind the documents that had imprisoned Annette.
But his master, as always, didn’t appreciate his hard work. Hans sighed as he touched the dark circles under his eyes.
“I still haven’t taken that money yet. And this lady Annette, what in the world did she do to earn the position of Grand Duchess?”
“I am the one who earned her.”
“And so what?”
Hans felt frustrated and wanted to beat his chest.
This was the first time since he’d worked with Theodore that his master had done something like this without giving any reason.
He wanted to hear a reasonable explanation that justified why he had to risk his life for Annette Cherringan.
It was clear that it wasn’t an ordinary reason, but Theodore didn’t open his mouth at all. Instead, his strange demands only increased.
“What about the matter I asked you to investigate?”
“Here it is.”
Hans’s tired eyes suddenly lit up.
“It was just as you said. Where did you get this information? If you found someone other than me to bring you information, please let me know quickly.”
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