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Chapter 28
“Keheuk, haha, uahahaha…!”
Royhem was in a rare good mood.
Laughing loudly, he slapped the dining table with his palm. The impact made the silverware and porcelain plates on the table rattle and shake.
“So you reported Rianel, is that it?”
“It was nothing, Uncle. Rianel was wearing a dress that didn’t suit her station at all, and when I wondered where she could’ve gotten it from, an idea just came to me.”
Dinner was in full swing at Royhem’s mansion.
Beside Vanesha sat Rupert, who, as always, wore a blank expression.
He was merely seated next to Vanesha, mechanically eating his meal.
He neither savored the taste of the food nor questioned where he was. That was how he had been instructed.
It was Vanesha who had brought Rupert to Royhem’s mansion.
There was no source of money to pay lodging fees, so staying at an inn was out of the question. And staying at the hotel she owned would have meant going all the way down to the provinces.
I haven’t even properly met Father yet!
After weighing everything, she ended up choosing to live off the hospitality of her blood relative, Royhem.
If you’re going to impose yourself in someone else’s home, you have to pay your way somehow. Vanesha’s report was part of that arrangement.
And, incidentally, it also served to drag Rianel down a notch.
“Well done. Very well done! Such a clever girl! Now then, while you’re staying here, is there anything else you need? Any inconveniences?”
Royhem looked over Vanesha with a warm smile, like a kindly older relative.
“No. You’ve already done more than enough for me, Uncle.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
However, his smile was just a mask. Inside Royhem’s head, calculations were racing.
With this, I should be able to thoroughly shake down the Special Taxation Bureau.
No matter which department prepares the ledgers, there are always flaws.
There’s no way nothing will come up in those Special Taxation Bureau bastards’ books.
After that, Royhem planned either to pin those flaws on Rianel or to force the Special Taxation Bureau themselves to sell her out to save their own skins.
After all, every problem started when Rianel moved to the Special Taxation Bureau.
The solution to a problem is, of course, to eliminate the cause.
Royhem firmly believed that if Rianel alone disappeared, everything would be resolved.
Unlike Vanesha, who was smiling brightly, grumbling could be heard from one side of the table.
“When I needed you, you weren’t even on my side…”
It was Royhem’s son, Evan.
He still hadn’t shaken off the humiliation of having been grabbed by the collar by the Duke of Vincenheim, and he believed the reason was that Vanesha hadn’t taken his side.
“Well… back then, I had no choice. If I’d stepped in the wrong way, the Duke of Vincenheim might have gotten even angrier…”
Vanesha soothed Evan and offered her excuse.
Since even Royhem himself hadn’t dared to step in at that moment, her words sounded plausible.
“But I did take proper revenge on your behalf, didn’t I?”
“Really?”
Life returned to Evan’s eyes.
Unlike his father, the simple-minded Evan was already softening at the word “revenge.”
“Of course. In a way, you played a huge role in this. Thanks to you, I was able to get close to Rianel.”
After all, without getting close, how else could she have known in detail what kind of dress Rianel was wearing?
“That’s right! I did help.”
Having grown up always being told by his father that he was a useless son, Evan perked up and puffed out his chest when someone finally acknowledged him.
“In any case, let’s just wait and see.”
Royhem raised his glass.
He, too, was curious about how the people from the Taxation Bureau would respond.
And as for the people of the Special Taxation Bureau—
“The Ministry of Finance has raised suspicions that this matter may involve the embezzlement of the Special Taxation Bureau’s internal budget, and they are demanding a full audit of the bureau.”
“At this point, what’s even the point of keeping the informant anonymous?”
They were appalled by Royhem’s conduct, which was more transparent than a plate of dipping sauce.
With things like this, there was no protection of the informant’s identity whatsoever.
“I object.”
Rianel spoke up.
“Yes, yes. A rookie suspected of embezzling our department’s tiny little budget. You do realize the situation is unfavorable for you right now, don’t you?”
“I always face reality head-on, Senior Wilbrin.”
“Honestly, I’m worried you’ll say something bizarre again, but I’ll give you the floor.”
Sighing, Wilbrin nonetheless waited nervously for Rianel to speak.
“There’s one fact I’d like to correct. The accuser is not the Minister of Finance, but Lady Vanesha Violent.”
“How you figured that out aside, isn’t knowing that completely meaningless…?”
“You didn’t know until now, did you?”
“You know now, don’t you, you idiot?”
“Walnuts, salmon, and blueberries are foods that are good for memory. I recommend that you avoid them from now on.”
In other words, forget it on purpose.
Wilbrin’s eyebrow twitched.
Is that supposed to be a solution right now?
Of course, the real solution lay elsewhere.
“All we need to do is clearly establish that it was a private gift unrelated to official duties.”
Asil said.
“That’s right. Submit the receipt proving the item was purchased with personal funds, and prove that the gift had no influence whatsoever on official work. That should settle it.”
Bribery is a crime because it involves using money or goods to achieve illegal ends.
Coincidentally, at the time Rianel received the dress, no new policies had been proposed nor reports submitted by the Special Taxation Bureau. That made it all the easier to prove.
“…Wait, was this really something that could end so easily?”
Mel gaped in disbelief, and Till explained.
“Well, what they took issue with was the rookie’s dress. So all we have to do is prove it wasn’t a bribe.”
“Ah…?”
Mel seemed to understand, yet still felt puzzled and asked again.
“Then why did they even file a report in the first place?”
Didn’t they know it could end so anticlimactically?
“They wanted to look through our books.”
This time, Wilbrin stepped in.
“Since the former empress passed away, there hasn’t been a large-scale internal audit. They probably thought a lot of shady issues had piled up in our department.”
The former empress was known for showing up unannounced at various ministries and cutting out long-festering problems.
From an imperial standpoint, it raised the integrity of public officials, which was a good thing—but for the officials involved, nothing was more troublesome.
Never knowing when the auditors’ hands might reach them, they lived in constant tension, holding their breath.
But it had already been three years since the former empress died.
So the Ministry of Finance bastards must have decided that discipline in the Special Taxation Bureau had grown lax.
“What a joke. Do they really think we’re like them?”
Wilbrin snorted.
“Exactly. With someone right next to us always looking for an excuse to tear into us, why would we hand them one?”
Till scoffed with his arms crossed.
“We’ve been handling nothing but grunt work all this time, so we’ve completely mastered this kind of administrative task.”
Mel held up the perfectly organized accounting ledgers.
The very existence of the Special Taxation Bureau was a miracle.
Because they could be wiped out at any moment if even a small flaw was found, they had prepared themselves thoroughly in this regard.
“Besides, we don’t have anyone caught for tax evasion, and while the rookie is accused of bribery, it’s an accusation that’ll be cleared soon.”
Therefore—
“We’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, so since they’re opening books anyway, why don’t we have them open the Ministry of Finance’s books too?”
As Wilbrin said this, Till chimed in.
“That’s a great idea. The Finance Ministry guys already got hit with collective discipline over tax evasion—that’s a separate issue from this, right? If things go well, we might be able to send them packing for good this time.”
The upper authorities had yet to finalize the level of punishment for the Ministry of Finance.
More precisely, they were still investigating whether there were additional charges. If internal corruption were to surface at a time like this, harsher punishment would naturally follow.
“Wow, the Finance Ministry guys are really going to love this.”
And so—
“Why is the fallout coming back to us?”
The stone Royhem had thrown came right back to strike Royhem himself.
