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Chapter 46
“It was you who drove Madam Loren away.”
Anblin was rendered speechless; her eyes and cheeks flushed crimson.
“You haven’t forgotten, surely?” Edgar asked, a faint smile masking clear contempt in his eyes.
Anblin’s pale neck turned bright red.
“Is there more to say? I’m a bit busy,” she spat, her words sharp.
The crimson sunset bathed Edgar’s composed face in its light—stunning yet suffocating.
“Everything… it’s all my fault, Ed. Please forgive me—just once. You loved me, after all…”
He sighed with cold cynicism, his voice low and dry. She, who had ended their relationship out of ambition for becoming crown princess, had no right to speak like that—unless conscience still stirred within her.
“I admit you weren’t bad to me,” Edgar rose wearily. The princess’s performance had dragged far too long today.
“How could you say that…” Anblin’s face whitened, her voice quivering.
How indeed?
In that moment, the feverish dreams of first love sharply cooled. Something luminous and blind shattered like thin glass, clarity finally piercing her mind—it had never been love.
Her racing heart stilled; the emotional fog long numbed.
Anblin closed her eyes, then opened them deliberately, brushing away the tears brimming at her lashes. Her pale features, bathed in the dying light, glowed with fierce dignity.
I won’t forgive you. Never.
She dabbed her face with a cream-colored handkerchief, raising her half-lowered eyelids with poised grace.
“You’ll regret this,” she declared.
“If you wish,” Edgar said, a crisp smile parting his lips.
“As much as you want,” he added, unfazed by her arrogance. The sunset spread across her face—two souls cleaved apart by an irrevocable river.
The cell was dark even in daylight, the only light entering through a small, palm-sized window.
Diane lay on a worn mattress, staring blankly at a patch of sunlight on the stone floor.
The rusty springs pricked through the frayed fabric, but she felt nothing.
She had stopped counting the days. Stopped trying to bribe the guards—pointless without the mercy of Johan Leopold.
“Diane Brook. Move forward,” the guard barked, unlocking the door with jangling keys.
She remained motionless until he seized her arm roughly and pulled her to the interrogation chamber. Her bony legs trembled in gray trousers.
They were preparing to continue questioning—torture in all but name.
At the knock, the door swung open. Diane trembled like a would-be sacrifice, pushed inside and forced to stand with head bowed.
Then she saw the gleam of polished shoes under the low ceiling light. A familiar scent reached her.
“!” Diane’s gaze fixed on Johan Leopold’s shoes. Her heart pounded, and she lifted her face.
He looked as flawless as ever, arms folded, eyes closed in that quiet elegance—reminding her of his office at Great Hill. If only time could turn back…
“I have brought her, Your Grace.” The guard’s voice broke the silence, and Johan slowly opened his silver-gray eyes.
With a nod, Diane was pulled before him and made to kneel. The scrape of chair legs filled the hush.
“Duke,” she managed to whisper as his cool presence washed over her.
“Other than forging a report… nothing. I swear it,” she said, her voice low.
She didn’t ask for forgiveness—she knew he would never grant it. She merely confessed, knowing it might be her last chance. She didn’t want to die over embezzlement.
“That’s it, then,” he said, voice crisp. Diane’s lips snapped shut, her eyes burning.
“I swear on the honor of House Brook—my only wrongdoing was giving those goods to a fence. That’s all. Please believe me.”
Her words fell in the stale air. It had all been a wrong step—no escape forward or back.
“Very well.” Johan nodded. Maurice placed a document on the table.
“If you see this, you’ll have no objections to accepting your death.”
Diane’s face remained frozen, heart thudding, body trembling.
“What is this?” she asked, eyes fixed on the papers.
He waited, cold silence filling the room.
The lamp’s light glinted between his furrowed brows as Diane squeezed her eyes shut again.
She had bribed House Brook’s physician—an almost perfect plan to discredit Olivia Blanchet, to brand her mentally unstable and commit her.
But Olivia was far from fragile; the woman’s mind resisted even the greatest humiliation.
And then, that lakeside incident shattered it all.
“I… didn’t know anything, Duke,” Diane said. Maurice’s document detailed the prescriptions given to the duchess—prescriptions for psychosis, migraine-inducing drugs, and infertility side effects, all evidence of poisoning.
“Why?” Diane demanded, meeting his gaze. “Why would I do that?”
“Did you covet the duchess’s position?” Johan asked, his voice icy.
Diane inhaled sharply, as if touching that brutal sun.
He glared at her: “You almost destroyed her—my duchess.”
Memories flooded—Edgar’s message, the maid’s cries in that hidden night, the confessions that filled the void.
Diane’s mind cracked. She saw herself plunging from the edge of a cliff into darkness.
“If this tragedy demands a soul… it’s not me. It’s you, Duke,” she hissed, voice dropping into maniacal laughter.
Polished features cracked. He tugged at his tie, angry yet composed.
Even that disturbed him. The glint of his Patek “New Watch” caught the light—he’d always insisted only on his mother’s heirloom.
She sneered inwardly—he deserved punishment first.
“If anyone deserves Hell for this—it’s you.”
Her mad laughter echoed, then stopped.
A few days later, on a rainy day—the missing maid’s body was found at the hillside.
“I, Diane Brook, pushed Madam by the lake, I swear on my honor… if I die, uncover the injustice.”
These were the words of the maid’s note—her final threat, her death.
Greed turned deadly.
The day of Diane Brook’s secret trial, the rain fell without pause. She was found hanged in her cell by a guard—dead upon discovery.
That was enough. Johan quietly brought the matter to an end.
