Chapter 126
“Don’t touch me! I’m pregnant! I told you—it’s definitely a boy!”
Countess Becker’s shocking declaration made the Countess freeze for a moment. She barely managed to shout, her face pale.
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
“Call a doctor. I’m telling you, I’m pregnant. Two months already! We’ve spent every night together without a single day off—how could I not get pregnant?”
“That’s a lie!”
The Countess reflexively refuted, but her eyes had already lost their spark.
“I’m sure I’m pregnant. I even started having morning sickness a few days ago!”
At Becker’s words, the Countess’ hands went limp.
Not just her hands—her entire body seemed to lose all strength, like a marionette with its strings cut.
“Ugh, how vulgar. How can you grab someone’s hair like that?”
Becker smoothed her own hair and adjusted her clothes. She snorted at the utterly stunned woman.
“Since you’re not alone, I guess I shouldn’t touch you, right?”
Then, with a triumphant voice, she drove the point home.
The Countess forced a hollow laugh and stared at Becker’s hand.
“The ring… give me that ring…”
Her voice trembled as she spoke her final words. She didn’t even understand why she was clinging to her wedding ring now. Perhaps it was only an obsessive compulsion to avoid losing anything else to that woman.
“Hah, seriously. Who even wants it?”
Becker removed the ring from her finger.
“You can have it. This stupid ring.”
She then threw it onto the filthy dock with a sharp clang! The ring bounced and rolled along the ground.
Bending to pick it up, the Countess felt a wave of emptiness and let out a hollow laugh.
She was reduced to this just to retrieve a meaningless wedding ring, which her husband didn’t even care about anymore.
What good would it do to retrieve it now? The Count had already placed another woman by his side.
“Damn bastard.”
Tears fell to the ground.
Betrayed by her son, her husband, her only maid. A ridiculous sight.
Reporters who had been brought here by her own actions were excitedly taking pictures of her pitiful state.
And while the reporters’ attention was momentarily distracted by Becker’s pregnancy, the Count finally managed to get into his carriage.
He gave orders to the footmen waiting outside.
“Lock Sasha back in the convent. Make sure she can never leave, perfectly secure her there.”
The raw, blatantly vile tone was so unlike him that the footmen stared in shock.
“…Yes?”
“Tell the reporters that Sasha has completely lost her mind. She caused a disturbance at the harbor because of her delusions—it was an unavoidable measure on my part.”
“Do you think the reporters will actually believe that…?”
The footman asked doubtfully. Though the Count was strict and cold at times, the footmen had always assumed that his anger was justified by the other party’s fault. Why else would a man of his character get angry?
“Repeat it until they believe. If that doesn’t work, buy them off with money.”
Even though the footmen knew the full context of the affair, they had no choice but to obey the Count.
They dragged the Countess, once their mistress, into a barred carriage and locked her inside. The Countess stared vacantly into the void the entire time.
But once the Count’s carriage left the harbor, she pressed her face against the bars and hurled curses at it.
“How dare you not use contraception?! Ulrich, are you even human? I will curse you for life—from the convent! In the name of God! You wretched man!”
“Ma’am, please calm down—”
“Vanessa! Your father sold you to pay off debts because you’re such a terrible human! Let’s see how a child born under a mistress grows up!”
She cried the entire way to the convent.
‘Father will definitely… kill Mother.’
Paula, who had been observing everything, bit her nails.
Gizela had been right. Even at the harbor, there was nothing she could do.
Paula had neither the strength to fight the footmen, nor the money or authority to retrieve her mother, nor any legitimate reason to protect her.
‘If I want to save Mother, I have to do as Gizela said.’
Gizela’s plan was as follows:
“Get your maternal grandfather involved to divorce your mother from the Count. Then bankrupt the Count with a lawsuit for alimony.”
Divorcing her mother from the Count shouldn’t be difficult.
If the Countess was confined to the convent and officially declared insane, she would have no authority to act alone without her husband. But there was one exception:
‘If the Countess formally expresses her desire to divorce and her father agrees.’
It was a legal safeguard against husbands falsely claiming their wives were insane. After all, the Count wasn’t the only nobleman in the empire’s history to try such a thing.
Shylock probably learned of the Countess’ convent-bound fate from this incident.
“Just promise me one thing. No matter what happens, don’t make my daughter a divorced woman or an insane woman locked in a convent. Treat my daughter only as a legitimate wife. Then I won’t suddenly withdraw this investment.”
He had once obtained such a promise from the Count and would gladly support his daughter’s divorce if needed.
The real challenge was finding a representative for the lawsuit.
Gizela had said that Count Quendel would willingly act as the representative, but… it wasn’t that easy.
How could anyone participate in another person’s divorce case without gossip spreading? People would speculate about Count Quendel’s relationship with the Countess. It would be hard to ask the Quendel family to do something that might harm their reputation.
‘I never thought I’d have to bring this up to a man I wanted to impress.’
It was humiliating, but Paula gritted her teeth thinking of her poor mother.
She asked passersby for directions and courageously headed to Count Quendel’s townhouse in the capital.
Paula had no idea.
‘Full house.’
The signal Odette had once sent to Demian.
That signal meant that the real Count Quendel had been successfully persuaded.
No matter how much wealth and glory someone had built, they couldn’t survive a month inside a gambling den.
The real Gustav Quendel, who had incurred massive debts at the Wolfgang Casino and lost his estate, staged a suicide attempt inside.
Goetz, who had been waiting for him to reach his breaking point, immediately persuaded him. If the real Quendel died, things would get complicated.
Convincing someone who wanted to die from debt was no easy task—but Goetz succeeded.
He allowed a “mysterious someone” to exercise all of Quendel’s authority for four months, even giving over his seal and identification.
During this time, the closed VIP room of the casino also accepted Goetz’s supervision.
Gustav Quendel had been chosen because his social connections were extremely limited. He had no family or close acquaintances beyond a few long-term servants, who had already been dismissed by the “real Quendel.”
At the townhouse, the “fake Quendel” waited impatiently for Paula, along with newly hired servants, unaware of anything.
The Countess’ curses faded with the sound of the carriage leaving.
After Becker and the reporters, who had been left at the harbor, all departed and the harbor grew quiet, Fernand decided to disembark.
“Odette, Father said he’d stop by the villa first. Let’s go separately.”
“Yes, brother.”
Even with her polite reply, Fernand frowned. Carl had taken a position by Odette’s side during this time.
Due to the Count’s caution, Carl had been bound in chains and confined in a narrow cell during the entire voyage.
Yet Carl showed no sign of fatigue.
“Hey, slave. Do you have to stick so close to Odette?”
Carl didn’t respond to Fernand’s words. He just cracked and popped his stiff neck from side to side.
Even though Carl was bound in chains, Fernand felt threatened, as if he had become small and insignificant.
‘Annoying. Why does that guy feel so imposing?’
Reflexively averting his gaze from the unpleasant sight, Fernand turned to look at Odette, who wore the pale blue lace dress he had recommended.
Immediately, Carl’s red eyes, which had ignored Fernand until now, fixed on him.
“Stand close to me, Odette, not as a slave.”
Just as Fernand tried to roughly pull Odette toward him by her arm,
Clang! The sound of chains breaking rang out, and Fernand’s arm was suddenly grabbed and twisted backward with fierce force.
