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Chapter 5
“You came back alone? I clearly told you to return with Claude.”
Canis’s fist twitched.
The Duke was quite pleased with that reaction. Surely, she must have been intimidated by him.
His daughter, trying hard to hide her fear, answered with a stiff expression.
“Claude told me to go ahead first. He said he wanted to spend time with his friends.”
“Hm.”
The Duke thought of his son.
Black hair and black eyes, just like his beloved Helena. And his strikingly handsome looks, reminiscent of the Duke’s own youth.
A bright young man from a good family spending time with peers of his level was no flaw at all.
‘He must be enjoying some healthy social riding at a club or something.’
The Duke never could have imagined that Claude, thoroughly humiliated by Canis, was actually sulking at a tavern at this very moment.
He set aside thoughts of his son, and his expression hardened once again. The disapproval on his face as he looked at Canis was all too clear.
“Very well. That aside—”
“But why did you summon me in such a rush?”
“…Did you just interrupt me?”
The Duke’s voice turned icy.
“That wasn’t my intent—”
“Silence! How dare a child talk back to her father when he is speaking!”
He grabbed an inkwell from his desk and hurled it.
“Silence! How dare a child talk back to her father when he is speaking!”
With a dull thud, the glass inkwell struck her right temple.
Thankfully, it was a glancing hit, so the impact wasn’t severe. But sticky ink trickled down, slowly running past her eye.
‘Wow…’
The reaction was so utterly beyond expectation that I was too dumbfounded to speak.
Just where, exactly, did he decide to go off the rails like this?
Whatever he thought of my silence, the Duke’s voice grew even more overbearing.
“And what on earth is this report card? When I attended the Academy, not once did I rank below second. Even your younger brother has never dropped beneath runner-up!”
He waved a sheet of paper in his hand.
It was Canis’s report card, littered entirely with D’s and F’s.
“If you have no talent, you should at least try! And if you can’t do even that, then stay out of my sight! If you weren’t my legitimate daughter, I would have cast you out of this family long ago!”
“Father—”
“Utterly useless, good-for-nothing wretch! Begone at once!”
“…What?”
As I wiped ink from my face, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand, clearly uninterested in hearing more.
“Do not even think of leaving your room for the time being. Should you dare come down to the dining hall, I will inflict a punishment far worse.”
And with that, I was driven out of his study.
“?”
What the hell just happened?
At first, I could only feel baffled. But that feeling soon deepened.
‘So this is what Canis had to endure her whole life—constant insults and humiliation.’
I had momentarily forgotten, distracted by the whirlpool of events since the story began.
But yes—this ducal family really was trash.
‘I was wrong.’
I crumpled up my first plan—to win the Duke’s favor—and tossed it into the mental garbage bin.
Besides, if I thought about it carefully, the novel I Became the Neglected Noble Daughter was a possession story.
Which meant that in the original original, the real Canis was eventually murdered by the Duke.
I searched my memory and recalled a scene from the heroine’s flashback.
“Father, please spare me! Father!”
“Lock the door. Not a drop of water shall she be given.”
In the original timeline, Canis was locked in a one-cell basement. Driven mad by thirst and hunger, she eventually took her own life with a knife left at her side.
The Duke concealed the fact that he had imprisoned his daughter and shed crocodile tears at the funeral, claiming the young lady took her own life.
And before the vassals—who had long opposed Claude’s succession on grounds of bloodline—he declared:
“The legitimate daughter is dead. I have no choice. Though it goes against noble law, I shall name my blood, Claude, as heir.”
So yes—he starved his own flesh-and-blood daughter to death, just to install the son he favored as successor.
“Shit.”
It was practically the Western version of Crown Prince Sado!
And the heroine who was supposed to possess Canis originally accepted this family?
‘She must’ve been a saint.’
I could never.
I collapsed onto my bed once I returned to my room.
At least, one bit of good news: the room was in decent shape. Compared to my old shoebox apartment, where I paid a million won deposit plus monthly rent, this was paradise.
‘No cockroaches!’
That alone was the best part.
I could handle centipedes, but cockroaches or silverfish? Never.
‘If the room had been a mess, I would have flipped the place upside down, but that’s not necessary.’
In truly awful cases, mistreated daughters were sometimes shoved into attics worse than a servant’s quarters. At least that wasn’t my fate.
I threw myself into the oversized bed, rolling left and right.
But then, I heard a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
To my surprise, more people than expected filed into the room.
At the front stood a young woman in a dress of fine fabric.
She must have been Canis’s personal maid.
‘And that one…’
Her name was Larisa, wasn’t it?
“M-My lady. I thought I had not properly greeted you earlier, so I came now.”
She stammered nervously. The people behind her all bowed deeply.
And then I realized.
‘They’re not cowed by my intimidation skill.’
These were Canis’s closest attendants.
So why were they so frightened?
‘Because Canis used to take out her anger on them.’
Abused by her father and ignored by the Duke’s haughty household staff, she vented her frustrations on the very people who cared for her.
“M-My lady? Is there something that displeases you…?”
“No, nothing.”
I pressed my fingers to my temple, dizzy.
My goal was to oust the Duke and seize real power in this household.
But that wasn’t something brute force alone could achieve. What use was it to be stronger than the Duke if I had no allies within this ducal estate?
‘To seize power, I need people of my own.’
Which meant I had to start by winning over those closest to me.
“Everyone but Larisa, leave us for now.”
“Yes, my lady.”
The rest withdrew. I sat Larisa down on a chair, the girl looking uneasy.
“M-My lady…?”
“Larisa.”
Larisa Rememberal.
With her lovely pink hair and blue eyes, she was the second daughter of Count Rememberal.
The Rememberal family were vassals under the Duke. Traditionally, the first son or daughter of that house always served as aide to the Escliff heir of the same gender.
So why had Canis been given the second daughter instead?
‘The Duke’s doing, of course.’
He was desperate to belittle Canis. He would never assign Rememberal’s brilliant eldest daughter—who had graduated at the top of the Academy and secured a professorship—to someone like Canis.
‘But actually, that works in my favor.’
I had read how capable Larisa was in financial management.
I already had plenty of strength. What I needed was someone competent to carry out my orders.
But first, I had to win her loyalty.
“I must have treated you poorly until now. I want to apologize for that.”
“…What? Apologize? But, my lady, you have no reason to—”
“No.”
I clasped her startled hands firmly.
Then I spoke in a gentle tone.
“Is it right to vent anger on subordinates without cause? Especially when, simply because you attend to me, other servants might treat you with disdain?”
At that, Larisa’s eyes trembled.
In truth, as both a vassal’s daughter and the Count’s child, she should have held significant authority in this estate.
But in the original story’s early chapters, Larisa never truly found her footing.
Because the Duke’s aide, the butler, and other noble-born attendants all worked to suppress her.
It was absurd, given her position.
“To make amends, I want to show a little sincerity to you all.”
By sincerity, I meant money.
‘Of course, I don’t plan to hold them with money alone.’
To win hearts, more than gold was required.
But what I was about to do wasn’t bribery—it was grace, shown by a true master.
At my words, Larisa’s face brightened slightly.
“In fact, many of the servants under your ladyship are struggling financially.”
“Oh? Is the pay insufficient?”
“Well…”
She explained.
The butler had been quietly discriminating against my assigned staff, even cutting their wages under flimsy pretexts.
What’s worse, many of the maids working under me were burdened with sick family members or debts, leaving them in dire straits.
After hearing that, I thought:
‘This might actually work out well.’
Money given to the wealthy is a bribe, but money given to the desperate is salvation.
If I took this chance to look after them, I could gain allies within the household itself.
“Very well. Then the deducted wages will be restored to their rightful amounts, and the unpaid sums will be doubled and distributed.”
“Ah, then—”
Larisa hesitated, then asked cautiously:
“Shall I convey your wishes to Lady Helena?”
“Ah.”
I sighed.
Right, of course. Unless I reached the point where I held enough sway to overrule others, there was no way I could simply dip into the ducal budget as I pleased.
‘Though I do have a pretext…’
Traditionally, household finances were managed by the Duchess.
And though in this Empire, taking a concubine was rare and frowned upon, Helena was at least nominally treated as the lady of the house.
Nominally only, of course. Normally, in the absence of the legal wife, the Duke himself or the heir would oversee the budget.
But would the Duke ever hand over financial control to the daughter he despised? Not a chance.
‘Should I just seize it by force?’
Maybe it was time to blow this household apart.
