I Just Needed Someone to Hate - Episode 5.2

There was no problem since she already had something to say to the underworld boss in that situation. He, too, would gain concrete evidence that the legal and criminal worlds were colluding by seeing Ludwig’s fiancée being kidnapped. But to think of using it as soon as she showed her feelings was too cruel.

It was even more merciless if he knew she was afraid of her fiancé.

“Vivianne.”

As his voice lowered, Vivianne forgot what she was thinking and looked down at the floor.

Why did I do that? Like a child.

There was a strange power in his admonishing, low voice. Besides, it seemed he had called her name. Edmund, who had been looking ahead, said,

“Didn’t you say that we would stay like this until Don Becallone comes?”

“……”

“Fortunately, the Lady’s family is quiet, and regrettably, we sent Miss Eastwell home like that, so the media won’t know. We can’t just sit here and wait for Don Becallone’s side to come.”

“Their informants must be terrible. I have to advertise myself for them to know. Why can’t you catch such an incompetent underworld boss?”

“It was the Lady who suggested that we could end this quietly. Why would I bother?”

“Easy for you to say.”

Vivianne turned her head and looked out the window.

“…So, that’s why you asked if I spent money?”

Vivianne, who had been staring blankly at the scenery outside for a while, asked.

“For my life.”

Her voice was slightly weak. Edmund almost explained that the small amount of money left on the desk wouldn’t even cover the appetizer here, but he stopped himself.

If he said he was worried that she had been shivering in the cold for three days, rummaging through trash cans, Vivianne would have expectations again.

She was a woman he would have to get rid of someday. When the time came to admit that, he would have to say goodbye to her. That’s why, even while acknowledging that he felt sorry for her, he couldn’t express his feelings.

She was just a twenty-two-year-old kid and a toy for his underlings to play with. He knew that she couldn’t handle what he wanted, taking her away and manipulating her as he pleased.

Even holding her hand made it all too obvious on her face. So, it might be better to be cruel so that she would get tired of this game and run away.

He knew everything he needed to know. She had a keen sense that would allow her to know his true identity someday. Then he would have to kill her.

Was it because he liked her face that he couldn’t act according to principle, Edmund wondered. Killing hope instead was also a way.

“I want to relieve my sense of obligation as much as the Lady does.”

He heard a deflated chuckle from beside him. It was the most instinctive reaction, so he knew what kind of wound he had inflicted.

But this was the most appropriate way to gain her trust while preventing her from expecting more from him.

“You’re really… a well-trained agent. You can keep your emotions out of your work.”

“I’m not a Sir.”

“Then, Count Colt.”

“……”

“It’s better than Agent, isn’t it?”

She was sulking, not calling him by name until the end.

“Edmund.”

The same name sounded different when she called it. He remembered the moment when her soft voice was overlaid on each syllable of his name.

“You know, if I…”

Vivianne hesitated for a long time before continuing.

“If I ask you to save me… will you help?”

“Anytime, as long as Don Becallone doesn’t get involved.”

“Okay.”

Vivianne replied.

“Thank you.”

“……”

“The Salenner Hotel. That would be an interesting surprise gift for my fiancé.”

Her voice was as dry as when they first met.

“My fiancé runs that place, you know? Do you know?”

“Is that so?”

The man replied. He knew nothing. The actions born of such ignorance and indifference stung.

“We met there for the first time, I thought you would remember that much and guess.”

“Then it would be difficult to appear in this form. Wouldn’t it?”

The words came out smoothly, as if he had been waiting for them.

“I’ll buy it. It’s for my life.”

Vivianne nodded without even having time to assert her pride.

“You can’t stand being in debt, can you?”

“Isn’t that the same for you, Miss?”

❖ ❖ ❖

A knock echoed. Soon, a leather file folder was placed on Ludwig’s office desk, and at the same time, a woman’s fingertips brushed against the solid man’s shoulder.

“This is a report on the progress of legalizing the Mirabolta Street Casino.”

Hanna Seiss looked dazzlingly beautiful that day. But Ludwig Rex didn’t even glance at his secretary.

Hanna continued.

“The Salenner Hotel luncheon that you postponed, it hasn’t been canceled yet. What should we do? Miss Cynthia replied this morning.”

“……”

“She said it was urgent and asked to be contacted as soon as Mr. Rex returned.”

“Tell her I’m still busy.”

“I was under the impression that she was waiting for your call.”

Ludwig Rex remembered being informed that Cynthia Eastwell had moved to the workers’ district to meet his fiancé.

“She was waiting.”

Ludwig Rex replied.

“Tell her not anymore.”

After all, Cynthia Eastwell was just a pawn in his game. The luncheon was just a price for moving as he wanted.

He had recently searched Hamilton School, hadn’t he? Seeing her suddenly wanting to show her face at the luncheon, she must have found something in the meantime, but it was outside his interest.

He knew that Vivianne was going around with someone who might or might not be an intelligence agent.

Now it was the opposition’s turn to wait for his reply. After all, unlike that woman, he wasn’t desperate either.

“I understand.”

Hanna Seiss, who left his office with those words, heard the phone ring and soon returned.

“…Mr. Rex, I’m sorry to disturb you. I’ve received a call from above.”

‘Above’ referred to the forces of the underworld boss that Ludwig Rex served.

“They said you need to cancel the reservation for the top floor restaurant of the hotel.”

Ludwig had been trading with them for about five years, but he didn’t know the other party directly. Other than that foreign lawyer who worked in the legal field, everyone who contacted him was a different person from a different profession.

But some vain gangster got interested in playing aristocrat, and got caught like this.

“They must have arrived by now. Find out the names of the guys who snatched the restaurant reservation.”

“It’s Miss Vivianne Mergoville and Count Edmund Colt.”

When Hanna Seiss returned after making another call, Ludwig’s expression was not the same as before.

Ah, that fake son of the Prime Minister.

As their eyes met, Ludwig’s expression softened. He got up from his seat and said leisurely.

“Tell them to prepare my car.”

“I understand.”

“And.”

Hanna, who was about to leave the office, looked at Ludwig.

“If there’s a luncheon appointment, clear about four hours.”

He heard that his fiancé and the intelligence agent had entered like emperors. All the employees lined up to greet them, and the doorman was extremely courteous. Vivianne enjoyed what he had never properly given her as a matter of course.

How dare she. It was the act of a fake who was just pretending to be the Prime Minister’s son. It was an overreach of authority.

‘What on earth is the higher-up thinking?’

Why would they give up their own hotel restaurant to announce the Prime Minister’s intelligence activities? According to his calculations, the scenario that the underworld boss would dislike the most was the re-election of Prime Minister Colt.

Prime Minister Almer Dalesworth, the predecessor of Prime Minister Colt, was half-crazed in ending the war. He didn’t care how rotten the inside of Daatro was.

As long as the underworld forces didn’t distribute guns to enemies outside the country, the cabinet was endlessly lenient to the underworld forces.

The Senate was one of the forces that enjoyed the boom and made money by joining hands with the underworld forces.

War meant taxes. Those who were rich and complained about the principle that they had to pay more, while pretending to be decent, accepted the black money of the underworld forces who reached out to become their subordinates.

The underworld forces gladly enjoyed the large and small loopholes in the law that they created. Those who grew in size became the new Prime Minister’s enemies after the war ended.

Since the former Prime Minister Almer Dalesworth could not personally defeat the forces he had condoned, a clean successor took over.

As soon as Councilor Nikolaus Colt became the head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, he continued to take unconventional steps.

First, he placed the Criminal Intelligence Bureau, whose legal status was ambiguous under customary law, under the Minister of the Interior to give it legal status.

Not only that, but he made it his direct agency and solidified that he would carry out the tasks left by his predecessor. The intercontinental war was over, and the era of those who had benefited from it was over.

A new bloodbath would begin. The best-case scenario that his father, the Speaker of the Senate, wanted was for the Shadow Cabinet (the opposition party) to become the majority party in the next House of Representatives. The underworld forces also wanted a change of government.

But.

‘What on earth is the higher-up thinking, trying to promote the Prime Minister’s peaceful intelligence operations?’

Not a threat to create a shootout in the streets or to arrest innocent citizens under the pretext of cracking down on crime, but intelligence operations. It was an extremely gentlemanly response, befitting the Prime Minister of Daatro.

But to promote this great farce at the empire’s top hotel?

‘Has the higher-up finally gone crazy?’

Well, he should start by asking himself if he had ever understood the thoughts of those abnormal underworld monsters.

❖ ❖ ❖

A beautiful monster.

Vivianne swept through this wealthy neighborhood with Edmund, who had once banished her, and named him that. He took off her coat and gloves and even unbuckled her belt.

He mercilessly threw them away and instead put on things that were too expensive for her to handle.

“Didn’t Miss Cynthia already say? That it’s ready-made.”

Vivianne was embarrassed when she grabbed the end of the coat that he had given to the clerk to throw away. It was meaningful to her, even if it wasn’t just the price.

But he mercilessly took her hand away, as if he were making her expect and then abandon her expectations, and said.

“Are you going to appear in front of your fiancé wearing ready-made clothes?”

Vivianne hid her miserable inner feelings while trembling at the amount he was spending. If that man spent money so easily, she might be able to repay all the debts her mother was talking about. But he wouldn’t spend it for her.

He would only be willing to give it to achieve his own purpose, that is, to create the most beautiful bait to offer to Don Becallone.

The difference between favors bought with a price and sincerity may seem like a thin piece of paper on the surface, but it hits her so hard.

The strange thing was that the man didn’t buy clothes. Vivianne realized after scanning him that it was because he didn’t need to.

She had been so blinded by the man’s face that she didn’t even know the value of the clothes he was wearing, she thought she had been temporarily blinded.

The three-day gap he had created was enough time to beautify him as she had imagined. That man was fake not only in his identity but also in his heart.

Instead of choosing anything, the man bought a cane at the last most expensive store. He stroked the shaft of the cane with the palm of his hand and tapped it a few times on his calloused palm. Soon after, he checked the jewelry of the beautiful handle.

Vivianne, who had inadvertently acquired all kinds of new products from the luxury street, thought indifferently that he was even buying such things now that he had nothing else to buy, but she was shocked when she heard the price of the cane.

Did she have a grudge against the Criminal Intelligence Bureau?

❖ ❖ ❖

To be honest, Vivianne didn’t expect this meal. The reporters and their lights were crowded in the narrow alley leading to the main entrance of the Hotel Salenner.

The way in was always quiet, but the countless flashes of light she heard on the way out were even scary. Ludwig Rex wrapped his arm around her and smiled at her, a smile he didn’t show her.

She thought she wouldn’t feel anything because it was a place with only bad memories. Besides, Edmund Colt was a man whose accent from Mirabolta Street was evident in his words.

What could she expect from a man who couldn’t even read a menu card placed on a round porcelain plate?

The names of the course dishes written in a foreign language would be unfamiliar to him, and he would be easily looked down upon because he wouldn’t know the dining etiquette, let alone read the menu card.

Considering this, the person named Don Becallone who gave up the hotel restaurant was truly vicious.

This man, who was going to walk into the heart of the enemy without knowing where this was so that she could be kidnapped efficiently, and the underworld boss who opened the gates and gave an excessive welcome, saying, “Come and show me the bottom of that undignified human being.”

Both were so uninteresting to Vivianne that she was disillusioned.

‘But it’s strange.’

Vivianne looked at Edmund Colt, who was sitting across from her. When he pointed at the menu card and said something to the head chef and the head chef, the head chef nodded and went back to the kitchen to bring out a different appetizer.

Besides, he was better at Champenois than she was.

That is, the language that was once popular throughout the continent and that cultured people in society could use, and that still dominates even the food culture of the nobles. Here, too, all the menu cards were written in Champenois.

‘Is it because he’s a trained agent that even his manners are like that?’

Soon, caviar canapés and top-quality wine were placed in front of her dining table.

‘It’s not the appetizer written on the menu card, did they change it arbitrarily?’

Vivianne couldn’t bring herself to touch it because she thought it was all state money and a way to repay her life. She raised her head and looked at Edmund with a face that said, “Can’t we just get rid of this ridiculous play?”

Strangely, as soon as he started eating, he became a bored young nobleman who was tired of the world as soon as he picked up the knife. All the movements and expressions of ennui were the kind of behavior that would make people believe that he was the Prime Minister’s son.

It was even more amazing that such things could be acquired, not learned. Rather, she felt ridiculous for adorning herself with all sorts of fancy things to hide her essence.

Wondering when the bottom of that acting would be revealed and hungry, Vivianne started eating and admitted it when the fourth course was placed.

If all those minor details were his acting, he deserved to be called the best actor or agent.

He was like someone who had lived in the same world as her.

Vivianne put down her knife and fork when the fifth course was placed.

“It’s quite generous for the price of calling an underworld boss.”

There was a limit to sticking to the attitude that you wouldn’t write a report.

“Wasn’t just the meal written on the menu card enough?”

“Even if you spend that much, only low-ranking people come.”

Edmund looked at the entrance of the hotel restaurant. Ludwig Rex, whose clothes were flowing, was walking in with his secretary.

“Shouldn’t we say that the money was far from enough?”

What did that man just say? Vivianne looked at Edmund with a dazed face.

“You must be wondering if the rumors are true?”

He had certainly said that he was curious if her fiancé was a subordinate of the underworld boss.

“I think I would have been curious even if I wasn’t my father’s son.”

He had even agreed to use her as a means to confirm the truth. But how could he speak with such confidence that her fiancé was a low-ranking member of the underworld?

‘Besides, I assumed that Ludwig was the closest aide to the underworld, but I never said that he was a low-ranking member.’

She had only said that this hotel was her fiancé’s, but she hadn’t mentioned exactly whose it was.

The thought didn’t last long. Before she could feel a sense of reality by seeing Ludwig approaching her, pain overwhelmed her. She was lucky that she didn’t have to pinch her cheek. The man grabbed Vivianne’s wrist as if he would crush it and pulled her, sneering inwardly.

Vivianne turned her head without answering. Her face was pale. She was breathing heavily, though she wasn’t aware of it. Yes. She was afraid of this man.

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