I Just Needed Someone to Hate - Episode 2.3

“It’s like someone took a bite out of it.”

Eyes that were perfectly composed momentarily crinkle with a mischievous light. It’s just an impolite remark, unbecoming of a gentleman.

For a moment, Vivianne unconsciously failed to close her eyes. Then, realizing that their eyes were meeting, Vivianne quickly lowered her head. She looked at his shoes, took a breath, and walked outside.

Luckily, she wasn’t shot. Perhaps not even saying hello wasn’t very ladylike. To think such a man existed in the Empire… Why hadn’t anyone told me sooner? Just as she thought that, a familiar hell ensnared her.

He was her fiancé.

Vivianne was helplessly dragged away by his grip and thrown into an empty room. A shadow, different from the clear winter light she had seen on the terrace, covered her.

“What should I do with you?”

He opened his mouth after a long while. Having heard the news and cleaned up his affairs, he still reeked of lust.

Slowly raising her head, she saw his white three-piece suit, his flamboyant blond hair even in the shadows, and his endlessly cold crimson eyes.

Such pretty trash I’ve been holding onto for so long.

“You got a gift of birth control pills, and you wanted to use them so soon, I see.”

“……”

He leaned in, meeting Vivianne’s gaze. His rough hand lifted Vivianne’s chin.

An endlessly rebellious gaze. And on the opposite side, crimson eyes whose emotions were unreadable fiercely engaged in a chase, until the man let out a snort.

“How much did you blab to the Prime Minister’s son?”

With a voice that showed no effort, as if the battle of nerves just moments ago was meaningless, he whispered in Vivianne’s ear.

Prime Minister’s son? Vivianne’s heart beat rapidly.

“I’m asking how much Nikolaus Colt, the Prime Minister’s son, knows. Huh? Vivianne.”

So, the man from earlier was the Prime Minister of the Daatro Empire – the head of the Lower House, and the only son of the ruling party leader.

“Names.”

As he said that, he grabbed Vivianne’s hair. Eyes gleaming with madness were right in front of her nose.

“How many names of people you know, either your father or people around me, did you tell him?”

Vivianne replayed the words she had said on the terrace.

“I know all the faces of those around my father or my fiancé.”

‘His underlings must have overheard the whole conversation.’

And Vivianne knew exactly what situation this man was worried about. And how she could use it as a weapon.

This man has a secret that the Prime Minister of the Empire, or the Prime Minister’s son, must not know. That secret is….

“…I’ll talk in the lobby.”

Vivianne composed herself and spoke to her fiancé. Steeling her heart, she organized what she wanted to say to him.

Click.

The moment the light flashed and the filament of the bulb burned was still unfamiliar. Vivianne’s shoulders flinched, but no one cared. Not even her fiancé.

“Mr. Ludwig Rex, what do you think about Don Becallone, presumed to be the boss of the Daatro underworld, receiving only a three-year sentence?”

“Social critics say that the aristocratic forces of the Empire are involved in making the Daatro underworld the most powerful threat to the Empire today. Do you agree?”

“Mr. Ludwig Rex! Mr. Ludwig Rex! Please answer the question. Who do you think is the aristocratic strategist who made the Daatro underworld so prosperous in six years?”

“Do you disagree with people calling the Rex family dogs of the underworld? Mr. Ludwig Rex!”

Vivianne thought she would never get used to this atmosphere. Seeing so many people gathered like this made her feel breathless.

The most attention Vivianne had ever received was when she was the cover model for a pretty brochure for a social gathering.

Soon, she would be free from all of this.

Vivianne swallowed an unspeakable tension. Then, her fiancé, who had been silent, politely opened the door of the Classic Langston. As Vivianne got into her fiancé’s Langston limousine, he followed and closed the door.

As the doorman, who had come out to provide the courtesy service, returned, the car began to move.

“Mergoville Manor.”

At Ludwig’s command, a short “As you wish” came from the driver’s seat. Her fiancé glanced at Vivianne and began to smoke, whether she was there or not. When Vivianne sneezed and lowered the car window, a voice came from the seat next to her.

“I told you, you should have calculated whether it was realistically possible to have a quiet conversation in the lobby.”

Vivianne, who had already done that calculation, didn’t feel wronged at all. She was planning to break off the engagement with him as quietly as possible.

The regret that she couldn’t expose how unfaithful he was would be compensated by the photos the reporters had just taken.

Those photos would at least prove that she wasn’t the one who was regretting the breakup, and that it was a matter of family interests.

It may have been his mistress who walked into the hotel with him, but it was none other than her who came out with him. It was something she thought was almost impossible. The reputation she had protected in this way would become an asset for her to meet a better man.

‘It’s a good thing.’

The man’s secret that the Prime Minister of the Empire, or the Prime Minister’s son, must not know was obvious. As people suspected, it was confirmed that they were colluding with underworld forces.

“Names.”

All she knew were the names of his business partners who worked with him, or a few lawyers of foreign descent he knew.

She sometimes accompanied him to his business events to guarantee his identity as an aristocrat of the Empire, so she knew a few of his business secrets.

Vivianne didn’t know the value of that information, but she could tell from her fiancé’s overreaction today. The Prime Minister of the Empire must not know that information. Once she made that judgment, she immediately decided to sit at the negotiating table.

Even he, who seemed to have nothing to fear, was backing the head of the Daatro underworld and reacted violently to the leakage of that business secret.

So, there might be a chance.

“I wanted to tell you that I didn’t say anything.”

The story she had been worried about how to start came out easier than she thought.

Her fiancé was lowering his window and exhaling cigarette smoke. It was hard to tell whether what was coming out of his lips was breath or smoke.

“Why.”

“I didn’t even know who the person I met on the terrace was, and in the first place, it didn’t seem like that person wanted information from me.”

Vivianne said, shifting her gaze forward just as he was about to turn his head towards her.

“If what I know is such important information, I thought I could use my silence for something more helpful.”

Her voice was trembling slightly. Vivianne hoped he didn’t notice and continued.

“I want you to break off the engagement.”

The moment of silence that followed felt like an eternity.

“I wanted you to hear it first, rather than having it delivered through my parents. That I want to stop now.”

Because I’m tired of you. That much got stuck in my throat and didn’t come out. She didn’t even raise her head, but waited for his words at an awkward angle where she could see her own feet.

“Then you won’t have to worry about meeting women every time while being careful not to be exposed to the media, and I….”

What cut off her words was his low laughter. At the same time, Ludwig carelessly threw his cigarette butt out the window.

“A broken engagement. You must have thought it was a great honor for you to meet me.”

“……”

She felt like she had been seen through.

“Yeah. You should. Whose words are those? There’s nothing I can’t do, huh?”

He looked unusually happy.

“But if that’s the case, you have to go to your parents and get their permission first.”

His freed hand was grabbing Vivianne’s chin. His touch was like that of a man treating a woman, but his tone was treating her like a child. The face with the backlight blocking the light coming in through the window was as cruelly beautiful as it was disgusting.

“I will.”

She couldn’t even predict her parents’ reaction. They might get angry. They might scold her for being irresponsible, or they might raise their voices, saying that she should have consulted with an adult first.

But they were her parents.

They were her parents. Vivianne decided to believe that fact. Mergoville would always be her reliable fence and a paradise that would give her the most precious things, as it always had been.

That’s why she cherished it. That’s why she tried to cultivate that great reputation and is now trying to protect it.

“Wanna bet?”

He said to her, who was crossing her arms and looking elsewhere. Vivianne was silent, but she was listening.

“If you get permission by the New Year’s celebration, I’ll cleanly break off the engagement because you refused and I’m sorry.”

“…What if I don’t get it?”

Of course, she also kept in mind the possibility that her parents would be conservative and talk about procedures.

“Then you have to give me your title.”

Vivianne knew what that meant, so she couldn’t open her mouth rashly.

“That you will fulfill the contract.”

She didn’t want to be in his arms. The act of filling the place of the woman who was always watched from afar, who was under him. The traces left by that moment would follow her even if she tried to erase them.

“That will never happen.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Her fiancé spat out dryly. It was a tone that somehow felt like a sneer.

‘Until the New Year’s celebration.’

Vivianne took a deep breath.

❖ ❖ ❖

The New Year’s celebration of the Empire was a festival held on the first day of every year, and on that day, the Imperial Palace was opened and the nobles held debutante balls there. Now that a continental war had ended, it was an old custom that had almost disappeared.

However, some nobles still remembered that time and opened their mansions to hold parties. They greeted guests, asked about their well-being, and built relationships among themselves.

It was a kind of small banquet. Among them, the largest and most splendid party was held in Mergoville. The family’s banquet was Vivianne’s pride, and the scale of the mansion was different from others.

‘I heard that officials from the Kellerhill Staff College are coming to the mansion today.’

The day before Vivianne’s birthday, and on the day of the New Year’s celebration.

Mergoville Manor was on high alert. That’s because of her brother, Linus Mergoville, the eldest son of the Mergoville family.

It was very important for him, who had passed the police promotion exam at the top of his class, to be selected as a candidate for high-speed promotion in the Metropolitan Police Agency, and there should be no variables in it.

The game-changer in this precarious situation was the chairman of the House of Lords, the fiancé’s father. When he said that he was friends with officials from the Kellerhill Staff College and would bring them to Mergoville Manor, the Marquis and Marchioness were very happy.

‘Well, the Kellerhill Staff College is an institution for training police officers of the Empire.’

The people Linus Mergoville would want to meet the most right now would be the people from the Kellerhill Staff College. Vivianne had her place as the main character stolen so easily on her stage. It was only natural that she couldn’t easily bring up the story of breaking off the engagement with her parents.

To make matters worse, her fiancé did not appear at the New Year’s celebration. Voices from the hall below the stairs, admiring that it was like moving an old mansion from an old fairy tale. Eyes that seemed to be counting the number of chandeliers.

The men who were glancing at the railing on the second floor where she was didn’t please Vivianne at all.

‘…….’

Vivianne looked for her mother.

Surrounded by several noble ladies and the wives of important people, she was smiling, patting her grown-up son on the shoulder. It was the complete opposite of how she had been pressing her about where her fiancé was just a moment ago.

If this continued until midnight, Ludwig would win the bet.

If he got the title, he no longer needed to take Vivianne to business events to show off his credit. The families couldn’t ruin their faces, so they would get married, but it would be like being passed on with a lower price due to premarital pregnancy.

Vivianne knew how miserable it would be to become his legal wife, recorded as his property under Imperial law, from his nominal fiancée. When she recalled how terribly the woman who had insulted her at the hotel last time had been injured and became prey for the yellow press, she still had trouble breathing.

To become such a man’s woman.

Ludwig Rex could arbitrarily hold a woman to satisfy his lust, but if she offended him, he could mercilessly ruin her.

‘I have to, I have to get permission to break off the engagement….’

Vivianne was thus able to take a step into the crowd. She went down the stairs and nodded to the faces she knew. Everyone seemed curious about her fiancé’s whereabouts.

While avoiding the awkward gazes, Vivianne’s eyes widened as she found an unexpected person.

Was he the Prime Minister’s son? He was turning his back on where she was and talking among men in black suits.

‘It doesn’t seem like he’s really the Prime Minister’s son, like Ludwig said… How can he get along with those people without feeling out of place?’

The man was talking to officials from the Kellerhill Staff College. It wasn’t just her who thought his appearance was outstanding, as he was stealing the attention of everyone in the hall from Linus.

Vivianne only watched the women approach him before looking for her mother again. Before her gaze, which was searching the air, could reach somewhere, a group of noble ladies approached.

“Oh my, another protagonist of today is here.”

“How lovely. The dress suits you so well.”

“As you all know, this is my daughter, Vivianne. Vivianne, say hello to Mrs. Linebridge. She’s the one who will broaden your knowledge of horse racing. To have a conversation with your fiancé even after you get married….”

From tomorrow, can I be happy without being Ludwig’s fiancée? Can I be okay just being Vivianne Mergoville?

Vivianne took courage, repeating her family name contained in those words.

“Mother.”

As if Vivianne’s intervention was unexpected, Marchioness Olivia Mergoville looked at her daughter.

“I have something to tell you.”

Anything done for the first time was difficult. In Vivianne’s case, it was putting down her great pride. But she wasn’t nervous at all because she trusted her parents.

“What is it that you have to say?”

The Marchioness didn’t seem to be in a good mood about moving her seat in the midst of her busy schedule. Vivianne was a little upset, but she knew she had to concede that much.

Even from afar, her mother was leading the ladies in that place and was at the center of their attention. It was Vivianne who broke the flow. It was a problem that could be understood well enough.

“Why isn’t your fiancé coming yet?”

“That’s….”

The Marchioness waited without showing any signs of frustration. Vivianne let go of her bitten lower lip and looked at her mother.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you, Mother. About my fiancé.”

“…….”

“Mother.”

“…….”

“That man has a woman. It wasn’t just one person, and it was always like that. Even when the story of the engagement first came up, and for the entire two years since then.”

Vivianne felt her eyes getting red, but she didn’t cry. That’s because she had thought about this moment over and over again when she couldn’t sleep.

She calmly imagined herself telling this story like a mature daughter who had now become an adult. And that image became a reality.

“Even on the day you sent me to deliver the New Year’s party invitation to Mergoville Manor, that man had a woman.”

Just admitting it made her feel like her heart was sinking. Seeing that, breaking off the engagement with him might have been a great decision.

How bitter and painful would it be to regret it when it’s too late? Hiding a festering heart from your family would be a sin.

Just by repeatedly lying that you’re happy in front of them, you would be disqualified as a child.

“I knew it was wrong to upset you, but I stayed by that man’s side because of my greed. I just wanted to be a really good daughter.”

“…….”

“I wanted to tell you before it was too late. That I want to break off the engagement with that man.”

“…….”

“Mother.”

“…Ludwig Rex not coming to the New Year’s party today, then.”

“It’s because I brought up the story of breaking off the engagement….”

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