To the One Who's Only Cold to Me - Chapter 97

“Tsk.”

After moving the chess pieces around for a while, the man finally clicked his tongue and jerked his head. At that signal, the man with dark brown hair quickly walked to the corner of the room and pulled off the cloth covering the face of the tied-up man.

“Ugh!”

A sharp breath escaped, and the bound man’s eyes bulged as if they would pop out. Without caring, the brown-haired man untied the ropes binding the man’s arms and legs and then threw him like a sack in front of the duke.

“Th-that’s all I told you earlier.”

“He begged me to pretend I saw nothing and said he’d give me gold if I boarded a ship to a foreign country”

The man tied up was Wilkins, who had worked as a coachman for the Lloyd Marquess family fifteen years ago. No one asked, but as soon as he was thrown in front of the duke, he dropped his head to the floor and confessed everything.

“It’s true! Ugh that’s really all I know!”

It made sense. The only thing the duke had asked before choking him while he was tied up was about what happened that day.

The duke looked down at the trembling Wilkins with a blank expression. He didn’t scowl or glare, but Wilkins was more terrified than when he had been tortured.

“So it wasn’t a lie.”

After drinking some red tea, the duke finally spoke in a calm tone. Still lying flat on the floor, Wilkins let out a sigh of relief without meaning to. The duke looked at him as if he were a bug, set his teacup down, and muttered to himself.

“This is ridiculous. I thought this was long-awaited luck but this might be a loss instead.”

“In the end, that merchant didn’t do anything. It’s absurd. Was this all for nothing?”

When the duke had accidentally learned Wilkins’ location through a spy planted in the temple, he had laughed aloud, which was rare for him. He had hoped that Wilkins would reveal the truth about that day fifteen years ago, and that truth would deal a fatal blow to Count Parden. But the story Wilkins told pointed to a truth very different from what the duke had hoped for.

The duke angrily knocked over the chess pieces. Each time the marble pieces toppled over, not just Wilkins but even the brown-haired man flinched.

“One more thing. How did the count get there so quickly? How was he the first to witness the accident?”

The duke, who had been knocking over pieces, sighed deeply and asked Wilkins. Thinking of his past torture, Wilkins sincerely wanted to answer. But he knew nothing.

“I-I don’t know.”

“I really don’t know. After the accident I opened my eyes, and the count was just there.”

“Completely useless. Tsk.”

The duke raised his hand with a displeased look. The brown-haired man then shouted toward the door to have him taken away. Soon, some lightly armed soldiers entered and grabbed Wilkins by both arms. As he was dragged away, Wilkins shouted desperately to be spared.

“Wouldn’t it be better to make him lie and completely fool the marquess?”

Once the door closed and Wilkins’ voice faded, the brown-haired man carefully spoke to the duke. The duke looked at him with disappointment and shook his head.

“We pushed for two years, but the marquess is still torn by emotions. And now, the man we brought as the ‘key’ ends up saying that.”

“Besides, the marquess doesn’t trust me. If we hand him over, they’ll make him take a truth serum and interrogate him. Threatening him is useless. We worked hard to provoke him for two years. If he hears this man’s story, it won’t fuel his anger it’ll just confuse him. Worst case, we’ll be exposed.”

The brown-haired man looked puzzled. Unlike him, who still couldn’t put the pieces together, his master seemed to have already completed most of the puzzle.

“Do you know what happened?”

“Cliff is mentally weak. I had doubts, but hearing that idiot today, I’m almost sure. If my guess is right, what happened that day doesn’t benefit us at all.”

The duke frowned at the question, answering in what sounded like a mutter. The man couldn’t understand and lowered his head.

The duke clicked his tongue, annoyed, and swept all the chess pieces off the board. The marble pieces clattered noisily across the table.

The duke gathered the fallen pieces and placed them slowly back in their starting positions. Then he gave an order.

“Now that it’s come to this, we’ll have to make use of a corpse that can’t speak. Tell them to make it look like he died in a random attack.”

“Ian.”

“Ian!”

“Brother!”

Sophia called out to her brother again, who was staring blankly at his teacup. Ian, lost in thought, only came to his senses when Sophia raised her voice and waved a hand in front of his face.

“What is it? What are you thinking so deeply about?”

“It’s nothing.”

“That’s not fair. You’re only spending an hour with me”

Ian gave a meaningless smile to his complaining sister and tried to focus on their conversation. But his mind kept returning to what happened yesterday.

‘Ian, I don’t want to see you. I don’t even want to think about you!’

There was no trace of past emotion in those gray-blue eyes that had once looked at him so warmly. Even when he tried to recall, all that remained in her gaze was disgust. Thinking of Aisha again, Ian trembled, forgetting Sophia was sitting in front of him.

“How’s the tea? Is it good?”

“It’s not bad.”

“I knew you’d like it.”

No matter what her brother was feeling, Sophia was just happy to be spending time with him. She didn’t even notice that his face had turned pale after drinking the tea she served. She shrugged and poured herself a cup.

“It’s rare stuff. Hard to get. Grandma and I…”

Sophia, excited to chat, suddenly stopped talking. Unlike her, who loved their grandmother dearly, her brother still treated their grandmother like a stranger or even an enemy.

‘Just keep your distance from that woman.’

Remembering her brother’s warning from not long ago, Sophia carefully looked at Ian. Only then did she realize his expression didn’t look good.

“I-I went out of my way to buy that tea myself. It’s really popular, you know. Even if you have money, it’s hard to find.”

Feeling uneasy about Ian’s dark expression, Sophia quickly changed the subject. But Ian, lost in thoughts of Aisha, showed no reaction.

“Here, have another cup. It’s supposed to clear your mind.”

Sophia poured him another cup. The fragrant tea glowed with a faint violet hue, and it seemed harmless.

“Alright.”

Ian brought the tea to his lips without hesitation. As he drank, the tips of his fingers, both on the cup and under the table, briefly shimmered with the same violet hue as the tea.

But the change was so brief and subtle that neither Ian nor Sophia noticed.

“And about yesterday”

Knock knock.

Just as Sophia began to speak and Ian set down his cup, a knock interrupted their conversation.

“Who is it? I said not to disturb us!”

“Come in.”

Unlike irritated Sophia, Ian calmly gave permission with a blank face. The door opened, and James entered quickly. He handed Ian a letter sealed with an emblem of two hawks staring at each other.

“It’s urgent.”

At the word urgent, Ian immediately opened the letter. His expression stiffened.

“Ian?”

Sophia looked at her brother with concern as he suddenly stood up. Her worried eyes silently begged him not to leave.

But without answering, Ian turned and walked quickly toward the door. Sophia’s annoyed voice chased after him, but he didn’t look back.

“Wilkins is dead. There was an ambush.”

The urgent message from Duke Levantus said that Wilkins, the coachman they were secretly bringing in, had been killed in an attack. Ian, who had waited eagerly for him, rushed to the duke’s estate as soon as he heard.

“They were ambushed right after arriving in the capital. I don’t know how the information leaked”

The duke, who greeted Ian, stood next to Wilkins’ cold corpse. The man had small wounds, and a clean cut pierced through his neck. As soon as Ian saw the body, he asked:

“Why?”

“Why was he attacked? Who knew he was coming?”

“If you’re blaming me for the ambush, I have nothing to say. It’s true I failed to manage the situation.”

“But one thing’s clear now. Someone out there had a reason to keep his mouth shut.”

The duke gave a vague apology, then narrowed his eyes. At the sound of his soft voice, Ian recalled Edward’s words he had tried to ignore because of Aisha.

‘You ungrateful brat’

Ian had frozen up when he heard that unexpected accusation. It didn’t sound like something said out of anger over Aisha. There was something off about it. Since Ian had done many things behind the scenes, it had hit a nerve.

‘Did the count figure it out?’

And now, Wilkins was dead. Ian bit his lip and furrowed his brow.

‘Since when? No how much does he know?’

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