Chapter 46

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter: 46

Chapter Title: The Person Who Should Fall into Hell

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"You drove Madam Lauren away."

Annblin, at a complete loss for words, flushed from her eyes down to her cheeks.

"Surely you haven't forgotten."

His faint smile carried an unmistakable look of blatant contempt.

Annblin's pale neck flushed bright red.

"Is there more? I'm a bit busy."

The sunset painted the world in crimson, even tinting the face of the impeccably smiling man. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

"I... I did everything wrong, Ed. So forgive me just this once... You loved me once."

Ha, Edgar let out a low sneer like a sigh. His mood soured.

It wasn't something a woman who had wrecked their relationship out of greed for the title of princess consort—no, crown princess consort—should say.

At least if she had any conscience.

"I'll admit your body wasn't bad."

Edgar finally rose to his feet. Fatigue washed over him. The princess's theatrics today had felt especially drawn out.

"How can you say that..."

Annblin's voice trembled, her face drained of color.

How can you.

It was the moment the fever of first love cooled to ice.

A sound like thin glass shattering rang out as the blindfold that had clouded her vision like a fantasy crumbled away.

At last, the world came into sharp focus.

It was never love to begin with.

Her racing heart and emotion-numbed mind grew cold.

Annblin slowly closed her eyes, then opened them again, shaking off the tears gathered at the corners.

Her small, tear-streaked face burned redder under the intensifying sunlight.

I won't forgive you. Never.

She dabbed her face with a cream-colored handkerchief from her handbag.

The way she slowly lifted her half-lowered eyelids was the epitome of grace.

Annblin had returned to being the epitome of a poised princess.

"You'll regret this."

"If that's what you want."

Edgar flashed a refreshing smile at the woman who remained shameless to the end.

"Be my guest."

The sunset spread across the face of the woman who had once brought him satisfaction.

Like a river one could never cross back over, the red twilight flowed between them like water.

The solitary cell, where only a palm-sized window let in light, was dim even in broad daylight.

The deeply inhaled air was thick with dampness.

How did it come to this?

Diane lay on the worn mattress, staring blankly at the sliver of sunlight on the stone floor.

A rusted spring poked through the frayed fabric into her side, but she felt nothing.

She had stopped counting the days. She had given up on bribing the guards. It was pointless, she realized.

Without Johann Leopold's mercy, no scheme would free her from this pit.

"Diane Brooke. Forward."

The guard unlocked the door with a jangle of keys and shouted.

Diane lay motionless like the dead. The guard entered and roughly yanked her arm.

Her gaunt legs dangled limply inside the gray pants.

They were resuming the sleepless interrogations—torture, in other words.

The guard knocked, and the interrogation room door opened.

Diane stood trembling like a beast dragged to the slaughterhouse. The guard shoved her back haphazardly.

Stumbling inside, she halted her swaying body with her head bowed low.

That was when she saw the black shoes in her vision. Along with a familiar scent at the tip of her nose.

"!"

Diane's gaze fixed on the shoe tips gleaming under the hanging bulb.

Her heart began to race. She slowly lifted her face.

Johann Leopold.

The man she hadn't seen since that day was still impeccably perfect.

Seeing him with arms crossed, eyes serenely closed, and an aloof expression almost made her mistake this place for the study at Great Hill.

If only she could turn back time...

"We've brought her, Your Grace."

At the guard's report, gray eyes slowly revealed themselves under the light.

Johann gave a curt nod, and the guard dragged Diane over, seating her before him. The sound of the chair scraping echoed loudly in the silence.

"...D-Duke."

Johann's crisp skin scent, lingering in the dank air, shattered Diane's composure.

A hoarse sound escaped her parched mouth.

"Aside from tampering with the reports... that's all. I swear."

She didn't dare hope for forgiveness. She knew such a word didn't exist for this man.

Just paying for her crimes would suffice.

"I swear on the honor of House Brooke. That's everything I handed to the fence. Please believe me."

She knew this was her last chance, so she confessed her sins plainly. Embezzlement alone wouldn't put her neck on the line.

"Nothing more, you say."

Diane's lips clamped shut reflexively. His piercing gaze felt like it gripped her throat.

"Just a poor choice amid a failing house... nothing else."

She still wore an expression of injustice and pity.

It had been a misstep from the start. A cliff ahead, a chasm behind. No escape.

"I see."

Johann nodded briefly. Morris, standing beside him, placed a document from his bag on the table.

"Then you have no objections to accepting your death after seeing this."

"..."

Her specialty was never flinching, her face unchanging in any situation.

But now, Diane's facial muscles stiffened rigidly.

Her heart plummeted. She barely suppressed the trembling in her body.

"...What is this?"

Lacking the courage to meet his eyes, she only moved her lips while staring at the paper.

"That's what I want to know."

A prolonged silence followed his low tone.

The light from the bulb trickled between his faintly furrowed brows.

That sight was so merciless that Diane squeezed her eyes shut.

She had bribed the family physician.

The plan was perfect.

Turn Olivia Blanchett into a neurotic patient, then one with nervous exhaustion, and finally schizophrenic—enough to commit her to an asylum no different from a prison.

The problem was that Olivia was no pushover.

After enduring such humiliation, scorn, and scandal, most would have given up, but Olivia stubbornly clung to her position as duchess.

Tough one.

And then the lakeside incident ruined everything.

"I... I know nothing about it, Your Grace."

The paper Morris held out was densely listed with medications prescribed to the duchess over time.

Proof that dangerous drugs—ones causing hallucinations, headaches, and infertility as side effects—had been perilously mixed and fed into Olivia's body.

"Why would I?"

Diane looked up, meeting Johann's gaze.

"Why would I do such a thing?"

"To covet the duchess's position?"

Diane gasped. A chill ran through her as if beholding the sun blazing in the dead of winter.

The anger in his eyes burned quietly.

'She was ruining the young miss. That woman.'

The day Edgar sneaked in, Johann had summoned his wife's maid.

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'She threatened to frame me and kick me out. Then the young miss would be in trouble too...'

The maid had wept, spilling the truth like pent-up resentment pouring out layer by layer.

'Without me, the young miss... our poor young miss...'

Thinking of the woman he had brought into the house himself, the one who had damaged her, his emotions spiraled out of control.

He felt like snapping her neck right then.

"What you touched."

Johann narrowed his long eyes, staring straight at Diane.

"Was my pride. Diane Brooke."

His gaze lingered sharply on the woman. Then it happened—Diane burst into manic laughter.

Diane saw herself teetering on the cliff's edge, finally plummeting.

All that remained was tumbling into hell.

If only she hadn't been born to a poor baron's family. That fact stung bitterly.

"Come on, Your Grace. This is too much."

Diane seemed utterly deranged.

"It was that bastard who wanted the drugs. I didn't force them on her. She begged for them. It was that bitch who whined for more when they stopped working!"

She screamed.

"Guess why?"

Her cracked, chapped lips curled up as she glared at Johann.

"Provoking that bastard was too easy. Know why it was so easy?"

Like a madwoman, she shook her disheveled hair while laughing, then fixed a mirthless face on Johann.

"Because you made her that way. For a handful of your pathetic affection. You drove that bastard mad. Get it now?"

Her breathless, insane laughter shook the interrogation room.

Cracks began to form on the handsome man's face. Frustrated, he roughly tugged at his grayish tie.

Even this made her pulse race. Johann did that to her.

His Patek "New Watch" gleamed on his straight wrist under the light.

Despite owning many expensive timepieces, he insisted on his mother's heirloom. She recalled mocking the foolish bastard who ordered a watch as a gift for such a man.

You deceived that lowly wretch first, so if you're punishing me, pay for your own sins first.

"If anyone's falling into hell for this, it's not me—it's you, Your Grace himself."

Diane grinned widely. That chilling smile was her last.

A few days later, on a day of endless rain, the missing maid's body was found at the mountain's base.

"Diane Brooke pushed the madam into the lake. I saw it clearly. I swear on my honor before God. If I die, please clear my wrongful death."

That was the content of the suicide note hidden in the maid's pant pocket.

The maid had been blackmailing Diane.

It was the tired tale of a maid who tasted money once, her greed growing until it ended in death.

On the day of Diane Brooke's closed trial, the relentless rain continued.

The escort guard discovered her with a noose around her neck, limp. By the time the pale-faced guard opened the cage door, it was all over.

Diane Brooke was dead.

That was enough. Johann quietly closed the case.