Chapter 83
First, I apologized to Marchioness Mayer and Prince Andrew before sending them off. After hearing my situation, they even encouraged me, saying they could help find the culprit.
I saw them off and went straight to Harold. When I arrived, I saw knights who had received orders from Harold leaving his office.
The knights nodded at me as they passed by.
I entered the office and closed the door. In my hurry, I didn’t control my strength, and the door slammed shut loudly.
“Harold, is it true you found the whereabouts of the coachman’s family?”
I asked as I approached him, and Harold nodded.
“They’re currently being held by the Assassin Guild. They were planning to hand them over to a human trafficking group the day after tomorrow.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
If they had already been handed over to the human traffickers, the coachman’s wife and young daughter could have been sold separately. It would have taken them even longer to reunite.
“We need to find the coachman’s family first.”
“I’ve already sent knights to bring them back.”
So the knights who had just left were on their way to rescue the coachman’s family.
That meant I didn’t need to worry about them for now. I finally gathered myself and asked about what had been pushed to the back of my mind.
“Who is the culprit?”
“They were wearing a hood, so we don’t know their exact appearance.”
“Ah…”
I sighed, hoping the assassin would have mentioned something about the culprit.
“Do we not have any clues?”
I thought back to what had happened in the mountains and gripped my bracelet tightly.
At that moment, Harold reached out and pressed his finger to my lips. Ah, I had been biting my lip.
I gently released my lip from my teeth. Harold seemed pleased as he smiled and asked me in return.
“Diana, do you know? Assassins, because of their profession, give attention to detail.”
Harold wouldn’t have said that for no reason.
“Could it be…?”
I hesitated, raising my head in hope, and Harold continued.
“They’re estimated to be a man between 175 and 178 cm tall, weighing about 85 to 88 kg. There was ash-colored and brown hair found where the man had been. One of those might have been a wig. His eye color is brown.”
Harold also mentioned other details like shoe size, hand size, and his manner of speaking.
As I listened, I suddenly thought of someone. This person matched the description, and if I remembered who this man was obsessively in love with, it would give him a strong motive.
“When the coachman’s family was handed over, the client had a bandage wrapped around his left wrist. He could have gotten injured during the kidnapping. But here’s the strange coincidence.”
He handed me one of the neatly organized documents from the desk.
“Since that day, the client has also had a bandage around his left wrist.”
Count Garcia’s residence. Jeffrey frowned, feeling an itch on his left wrist, which was wrapped in a bandage.
He had explained to others that he had twisted his ankle, but in reality, he had been injured while kidnapping the coachman’s family, and the scab had just started to form.
Jeffrey sighed deeply and opened his journal. Not being able to kill Diana, as his beloved Ella had begged, made his chest ache.
Diana, the one who had made Ella’s life miserable. The one who had separated him from Ella. The one whose eyes, brighter than the moon, had made her shed sorrowful tears. She deserved to die.
If Ella hears this news, how much more will she suffer and grieve?
Just the thought of it made Jeffrey tighten his grip on the pen. In his mind, he had already killed Diana cruelly a hundred, no, a thousand times over.
I can’t fail this time.
His brown eyes grew cold with determination.
What made this plan fail?
He had hired quite a few assassins, adding his own money to the money Ella gave him, to make sure Diana died.
He had used up all his wealth, except for what he planned to live on once he married Ella.
But despite all that, the failure still nagged at him. Frustrated, he messed up his brown hair.
But Jeffrey didn’t worry about getting caught this time.
Ella had been anxious, thinking Diana had hired people to ruin her life, and had given him a lot of warnings.
While her concern seemed excessive, Jeffrey liked that she cared for him. Plus, it didn’t hurt to be cautious, so he had followed her advice.
Just like usual, he acted normally and left in disguise in the early hours of the morning. He left early in the morning and attempted to commit the crime as soon as the coachman left for work, just like that he had captured the coachman’s family.
It had been a close call, but he managed to act like normal and return to his room without being caught.
Only Jeffrey and Ella knew what he had done in the early morning.
It was their secret, forever.
Jeffrey closed his journal and pushed his chair back, crawling under the desk.
As he examined the floor with his hand, his fingertips caught on a small gap. Jeffrey pressed it down.
There was a soft click, and the gap widened. He slipped his fingers into the space and lifted the floorboard, revealing a hidden compartment large enough to fit a 10-kilo bag of flour.
Inside, there was a gray wig, a hood, and a neatly arranged servant’s uniform used for disguise.
Ella had told him to quickly dispose of these things if everything failed.
Jeffrey would do anything for her—he’d even pretend to die if she asked—but he couldn’t bring himself to follow her request on this. He couldn’t forget the way she’d smiled so brightly when she said the wig suited her. He missed her terribly—the way she had whispered through her tears that she would miss him too, just before they parted.
He didn’t want to lose the few precious things that reminded him of her.
“Well, no one else knows about this space, so it should be fine.”
This was a storage area inside the medical room where sensitive supplies were kept. Jeffrey had always been the one to clean it since there were many delicate ingredients inside.
‘I’ve never seen anyone enter here when I was Garcia’s personal doctor.’
At that moment, an unpleasant old memory resurfaced, and Jeffrey frowned.
‘Diana, that bastard child, had been here.’
She had snuck in to steal some medicine when Vincent had refused to give it to her.
This was why he despised people of such lowly blood. Since then, he had never liked Diana, and he cursed her in his mind.
If the chance came, he would surely punish Diana. He clenched his fist with a fierce resolve.
Then, he heard a commotion outside. Jeffrey quickly returned the floorboard to its original position and stood up.
‘What’s going on to make such a racket?’
He left the medical room and followed the noise, walking toward the source.
As he descended the central staircase, he reached the landing and froze when he saw what was happening on the first floor.
He saw the crest of the Baisen Duke’s family: a shield with an eagle and a sword across it, engraved on the armor of the knights. And standing before them were Harold and Diana, facing off with Count Garcia.
‘Why are they here?’
Jeffrey’s body stiffened in shock.
Count Garcia, who had been talking to them, stepped aside, making way for them.
Harold and Diana were approaching the central staircase. Jeffrey instinctively took a step back.
Just then, Harold lifted his chin. His deep, ocean-like eyes narrowed as they fixed on him.
The once noisy mansion suddenly became eerily quiet.
“There he is.”
Harold’s low voice seemed so loud that it felt like it could shake the entire mansion.
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• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •By Freya• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •
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Advance chapters of this novel are available of my kofi channel
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