Jeremiah quickly scanned the documents in front of him.
In fact, he also knew to some extent that Caroline was embezzling money by doing other things behind his back.
However, the reason he couldn’t immediately condemn Caroline was because she was his only remaining family.
‘Jeremiah. When you grow up, you must take good care of your sister.’
After his father died suddenly in an accident, those words became Jeremiah’s will.
‘Whew.’
Jeremiah’s sigh deepened.
All his efforts to keep his father’s will had become meaningless.
It was all Caroline’s own doing. Caroline could not take on administrative duties in the first place.
In addition, she could not see the future and prepare for danger.
That’s why he excluded Caroline from the administration and all important tasks in the North. He couldn’t entrust important tasks in the North to someone who didn’t have the ability.
But he couldn’t refuse his sister’s request to trust her just once, saying that she would help the Grand Duchess who didn’t know much about the North.
‘But who would have thought that she would touch the Grand Duchess’s dowry?’
Most of the money that Caroline had used as investment money was the dowry that Karina had brought when she got married.
In addition, there were living expenses such as dignity maintenance expenses, social expenses, and banquet fees that were allocated to the Grand Duchess.
Jeremiah sighed inwardly and rubbed his forehead.
He didn’t know that Caroline would be so foolish and thoughtless.
He had been filling the empty space left by Caroline’s embezzlement with his own money.
But this was already way beyond the line.
Jeremiah let out a hollow laugh.
The same was true of those leeches who clung to Caroline and tried to eat anything.
“The fearless ones made fun of me.”
Jeremiah ordered with his eyes sparkling with murder.
“Investigate everything thoroughly. Find and report all those involved. Arrest anyone with even the slightest connection.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The investigators and tax collectors nodded vigorously as they answered.
They all left and Jansen came into the office.
“Your Highness.”
“What is it?”
Jansen was holding a familiar jewelry box.
“That is... I found this emerald necklace and other jewelry in Lady Caroline’s room.”
Jeremiah lowered his gaze and looked at the jewelry box Jansen was holding.
When Jansen opened it, he saw the jewelry he had purchased from Paulo’s Jewelry Shop the other day.
Jeremiah’s brow furrowed.
“This was in her room?”
“Yes.”
Jeremiah remembered Caroline coming to visit him just before the charity event with this jewelry box.
‘Jeremiah. You gave Karina some jewelry to wear at the charity event? But what should we do? Karina doesn’t like the necklace. Is the design too simple? '
Caroline shook her head and continued.
'Karina grew up in the capital, so she doesn't seem to notice anything that isn't fancy and flashy. You told me to take it, didn't you? Since it's something you gave her, I thought you should know about it.'
Hearing Karina's unexpected reaction made him feel a little upset.
So he unconsciously insisted on something strange.
'It doesn't matter whether the Grand Duchess likes it or not. Even if she doesn't like it, just keep it.'
That's what he had said.
'And then you didn't give it back?'
Jeremiah sighed with a frown.
'Or maybe that was all a lie in the first place.'
His mood sank.
Then, out of the blue, a question occurred to him.
"Jansen."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"When I asked to bring the necklace to Grand Duchess, you said you met my sister, right?"
Jansen answered Jeremiah's question, searching his memory.
"Yes, that's right. On the way up to the Grand Duchess’s room, I ran into Lady Caroline. When I received the jewelry, she said it would be better if someone else looked at it, and offered to give it to Grand Duchess instead.”
Jeremiah had also been informed of this that day.
At the time, he had dismissed it as nothing serious, but now he was suspicious.
Did Caroline really give the necklace to Karina?
He had a reasonable suspicion.
Knock knock.
At that time, Ron came to the office to ask about Genon’s treatment.
“Your Highness, what should we do with Genan Pegyson now?”
“..."
Jeremiah interrogated Genon himself and received a confession.
In fact, it wasn’t really an interrogation.
Rather, it was more like Genon begging Jeremiah to listen to him because he would tell the truth.
And Jeremiah became even more upset after hearing Genon’s confession.
As he had thought before, it seemed like Karina already knew that Caroline was behind this incident.
To be honest, the more he investigated, the more he felt that Karina couldn’t know.
In a way, the fact that Caroline was able to do this was because she had Karina’s dowry and the overall authority of the Grand Duchess.
In the first place, it was wrong to grant Caroline the authority to support various projects and the rights that the Grand Duchess should have had under the pretext of helping the Grand Duchess.
However, even so, it wouldn’t have been easy to do without Karina’s consent.
“I don’t know about anything else, but how could she have used the Grand Suchess’s dowry and living expenses? She couldn’t have done something like this without the Grand Duchess knowing?”
Jeremiah asked. Jansen, who had been standing quietly beside him, carefully opened his mouth.
“That... I heard that the Grand Duchess gave it to Caroline herself, saying that she wanted it to be used for the North right after the wedding.”
“Who told you that? Was it my sister?”
“Yes...”
Jansen answered with an apologetic expression.
Jeremiah swallowed a hollow laugh.
Now he began to suspect that everything Caroline had said might have been a lie.
‘My eyes were too clouded,’
Jeremiah scolded himself.
He realized that he had been too complacent about the fact that they were his only blood-related family.
Jansen asked the jewelry box in his hand.
“Your Highness, what should I do with this?”
“Give it to me.”
Jeremiah received the jewelry box containing the necklace from Jansen.
He felt that he should hear the whole story from Karina.
And if she wanted, he would hand over the right to punish Genon to her.
Jeremiah headed to Karina’s room.
“Revals. The Princess sent a letter.”
“Caroline?”
Revals’s expression frowned slightly.
“I heard that she was taken straight from the charity event and isolated in her room. How did she send the letter?”
Revals’ eyes narrowed as he glared at the letter his adjutant handed him.
“You’re being thoughtless in this situation. Check to see if there's not a tail.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Revals leaned back against the back of his chair with an annoyed expression. He pressed his temples with his hands and opened his mouth.
“We must make sure that we don’t suffer any damage during this large-scale audit that the Grand Duke has ordered. You’ve destroyed all the evidence, right?”
“I’ve taken care of everything, but it’s hard to make it seem like we’re completely unrelated because of the time constraints. However, I’ve kept all my business and work related to Lady Caroline completely separate so that we won’t be caught, so you won’t be affected by this investigation.”
Revals nervously opened the letter.
The letter was filled with slanderous remarks about how Karina and that arrogant person got her into trouble, along with urging him to do something quickly.
“Ha!”
He finally let out a hollow laugh.
“I thought you were smart, but you’re actually dumber than I thought. I thought you’d be useful, so I told you a good method, but you’re making things this much of a hassle.”
Revals clicked his tongue after reading the letter.
“I’m already annoyed because of the mine issue.”
He couldn’t attend the charity event held by the Grand Duke’s family because of the mine issue.
The day before the event, a part of the mine shaft owned by the Lamberda family collapsed.
Because of that, the mining schedule was delayed and the quota that had to be delivered to the distributor was not met. Revals was anxious that this would reach their ears.
So he kept quiet so that this would not leak out and kept the miners busy to meet their quota.
However, the situation did not resolve as easily as he had hoped.
The middle passage of the tunnel was blocked by a pile of collapsed earth and rocks.
The miners argued that if they just dug through the pile of earth in the blocked passage, the inner tunnel might collapse again at any moment.
Even though he ordered them to dig, the miners refused to continue mining, saying that it was dangerous.
In the end, Revals had to go and make the miners continue mining himself.
He brought mercenaries and made an example of them by beating up the leader who was leading the miners.
And when he threatened to break their limbs so that they would never work again if they failed to meet their mining quota, only then did the rest of the miners start working while crying.
“You have to be beaten to listen.”
Revals was maddened that he couldn’t participate in the charity event because of this.
But now that he thinks about it, it was for the best.
Thanks to that, he avoided the awkward situation of being involved in that place.
“What should we do?”
Revals answered his adjutant’s question calmly.
“The dead don’t talk. If you’re in prison, fake it as suicide and kill them. Or, you can mix poison in their food and kill them.”
Revals’ expression was not even a little bit different as he spoke, telling them to kill someone.
His adjutant, who heard the order, also looked unimpressed.
Instead, he asked back as if he was used to it.
“He’ll be released soon anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to deal with him after he gets out of prison?”
Revals refuted the adjutant’s words.
“Originally, it would have been like that, but look at Caroline’s current situation. It doesn’t seem like things will be resolved that easily.”
Revals rubbed the tip of his chin with an expression of discontent.
Through the investigation, he knew that Jeremiah wasn’t very interested in his wife, Karina.
In fact, he had been convinced that the investigation was true after seeing them at the banquet.
So when he heard about what had happened at the charity event, he was more concerned about Jeremiah’s unexpected reaction, apart from the mess that had occurred.
“Certainly... I didn’t expect Caroline to be isolated in her room before the charity event was even over.”
“Yes. I thought the punishment would be confiscated for a few months’ worth of living expenses, or maybe a week or two of superficial probation...”
Revals frowned, his words trailing off.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Revals returned to his expressionless face, crumpled up the letter he was holding, and threw it into the fireplace.
Then, with a firm expression as if he had made up his mind, he opened his mouth again.
“It would be better to kill him as quickly as possible. And if he dies while he’s imprisoned in the Grand Duke’s prison, the Grand Duke won’t be free from responsibility for Lord Genon's death.”
Upon hearing that, the adjutant brought up a few problematic issues.
In fact, he also knew to some extent that Caroline was embezzling money by doing other things behind his back.
However, the reason he couldn’t immediately condemn Caroline was because she was his only remaining family.
‘Jeremiah. When you grow up, you must take good care of your sister.’
After his father died suddenly in an accident, those words became Jeremiah’s will.
‘Whew.’
Jeremiah’s sigh deepened.
All his efforts to keep his father’s will had become meaningless.
It was all Caroline’s own doing. Caroline could not take on administrative duties in the first place.
In addition, she could not see the future and prepare for danger.
That’s why he excluded Caroline from the administration and all important tasks in the North. He couldn’t entrust important tasks in the North to someone who didn’t have the ability.
But he couldn’t refuse his sister’s request to trust her just once, saying that she would help the Grand Duchess who didn’t know much about the North.
‘But who would have thought that she would touch the Grand Duchess’s dowry?’
Most of the money that Caroline had used as investment money was the dowry that Karina had brought when she got married.
In addition, there were living expenses such as dignity maintenance expenses, social expenses, and banquet fees that were allocated to the Grand Duchess.
Jeremiah sighed inwardly and rubbed his forehead.
He didn’t know that Caroline would be so foolish and thoughtless.
He had been filling the empty space left by Caroline’s embezzlement with his own money.
But this was already way beyond the line.
Jeremiah let out a hollow laugh.
The same was true of those leeches who clung to Caroline and tried to eat anything.
“The fearless ones made fun of me.”
Jeremiah ordered with his eyes sparkling with murder.
“Investigate everything thoroughly. Find and report all those involved. Arrest anyone with even the slightest connection.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
The investigators and tax collectors nodded vigorously as they answered.
They all left and Jansen came into the office.
“Your Highness.”
“What is it?”
Jansen was holding a familiar jewelry box.
“That is... I found this emerald necklace and other jewelry in Lady Caroline’s room.”
Jeremiah lowered his gaze and looked at the jewelry box Jansen was holding.
When Jansen opened it, he saw the jewelry he had purchased from Paulo’s Jewelry Shop the other day.
Jeremiah’s brow furrowed.
“This was in her room?”
“Yes.”
Jeremiah remembered Caroline coming to visit him just before the charity event with this jewelry box.
‘Jeremiah. You gave Karina some jewelry to wear at the charity event? But what should we do? Karina doesn’t like the necklace. Is the design too simple? '
Caroline shook her head and continued.
'Karina grew up in the capital, so she doesn't seem to notice anything that isn't fancy and flashy. You told me to take it, didn't you? Since it's something you gave her, I thought you should know about it.'
Hearing Karina's unexpected reaction made him feel a little upset.
So he unconsciously insisted on something strange.
'It doesn't matter whether the Grand Duchess likes it or not. Even if she doesn't like it, just keep it.'
That's what he had said.
'And then you didn't give it back?'
Jeremiah sighed with a frown.
'Or maybe that was all a lie in the first place.'
His mood sank.
Then, out of the blue, a question occurred to him.
"Jansen."
"Yes, Your Highness."
"When I asked to bring the necklace to Grand Duchess, you said you met my sister, right?"
Jansen answered Jeremiah's question, searching his memory.
"Yes, that's right. On the way up to the Grand Duchess’s room, I ran into Lady Caroline. When I received the jewelry, she said it would be better if someone else looked at it, and offered to give it to Grand Duchess instead.”
Jeremiah had also been informed of this that day.
At the time, he had dismissed it as nothing serious, but now he was suspicious.
Did Caroline really give the necklace to Karina?
He had a reasonable suspicion.
Knock knock.
At that time, Ron came to the office to ask about Genon’s treatment.
“Your Highness, what should we do with Genan Pegyson now?”
“..."
Jeremiah interrogated Genon himself and received a confession.
In fact, it wasn’t really an interrogation.
Rather, it was more like Genon begging Jeremiah to listen to him because he would tell the truth.
And Jeremiah became even more upset after hearing Genon’s confession.
As he had thought before, it seemed like Karina already knew that Caroline was behind this incident.
To be honest, the more he investigated, the more he felt that Karina couldn’t know.
In a way, the fact that Caroline was able to do this was because she had Karina’s dowry and the overall authority of the Grand Duchess.
In the first place, it was wrong to grant Caroline the authority to support various projects and the rights that the Grand Duchess should have had under the pretext of helping the Grand Duchess.
However, even so, it wouldn’t have been easy to do without Karina’s consent.
“I don’t know about anything else, but how could she have used the Grand Suchess’s dowry and living expenses? She couldn’t have done something like this without the Grand Duchess knowing?”
Jeremiah asked. Jansen, who had been standing quietly beside him, carefully opened his mouth.
“That... I heard that the Grand Duchess gave it to Caroline herself, saying that she wanted it to be used for the North right after the wedding.”
“Who told you that? Was it my sister?”
“Yes...”
Jansen answered with an apologetic expression.
Jeremiah swallowed a hollow laugh.
Now he began to suspect that everything Caroline had said might have been a lie.
‘My eyes were too clouded,’
Jeremiah scolded himself.
He realized that he had been too complacent about the fact that they were his only blood-related family.
Jansen asked the jewelry box in his hand.
“Your Highness, what should I do with this?”
“Give it to me.”
Jeremiah received the jewelry box containing the necklace from Jansen.
He felt that he should hear the whole story from Karina.
And if she wanted, he would hand over the right to punish Genon to her.
Jeremiah headed to Karina’s room.
***
“Revals. The Princess sent a letter.”
“Caroline?”
Revals’s expression frowned slightly.
“I heard that she was taken straight from the charity event and isolated in her room. How did she send the letter?”
Revals’ eyes narrowed as he glared at the letter his adjutant handed him.
“You’re being thoughtless in this situation. Check to see if there's not a tail.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Revals leaned back against the back of his chair with an annoyed expression. He pressed his temples with his hands and opened his mouth.
“We must make sure that we don’t suffer any damage during this large-scale audit that the Grand Duke has ordered. You’ve destroyed all the evidence, right?”
“I’ve taken care of everything, but it’s hard to make it seem like we’re completely unrelated because of the time constraints. However, I’ve kept all my business and work related to Lady Caroline completely separate so that we won’t be caught, so you won’t be affected by this investigation.”
Revals nervously opened the letter.
The letter was filled with slanderous remarks about how Karina and that arrogant person got her into trouble, along with urging him to do something quickly.
“Ha!”
He finally let out a hollow laugh.
“I thought you were smart, but you’re actually dumber than I thought. I thought you’d be useful, so I told you a good method, but you’re making things this much of a hassle.”
Revals clicked his tongue after reading the letter.
“I’m already annoyed because of the mine issue.”
He couldn’t attend the charity event held by the Grand Duke’s family because of the mine issue.
The day before the event, a part of the mine shaft owned by the Lamberda family collapsed.
Because of that, the mining schedule was delayed and the quota that had to be delivered to the distributor was not met. Revals was anxious that this would reach their ears.
So he kept quiet so that this would not leak out and kept the miners busy to meet their quota.
However, the situation did not resolve as easily as he had hoped.
The middle passage of the tunnel was blocked by a pile of collapsed earth and rocks.
The miners argued that if they just dug through the pile of earth in the blocked passage, the inner tunnel might collapse again at any moment.
Even though he ordered them to dig, the miners refused to continue mining, saying that it was dangerous.
In the end, Revals had to go and make the miners continue mining himself.
He brought mercenaries and made an example of them by beating up the leader who was leading the miners.
And when he threatened to break their limbs so that they would never work again if they failed to meet their mining quota, only then did the rest of the miners start working while crying.
“You have to be beaten to listen.”
Revals was maddened that he couldn’t participate in the charity event because of this.
But now that he thinks about it, it was for the best.
Thanks to that, he avoided the awkward situation of being involved in that place.
“What should we do?”
Revals answered his adjutant’s question calmly.
“The dead don’t talk. If you’re in prison, fake it as suicide and kill them. Or, you can mix poison in their food and kill them.”
Revals’ expression was not even a little bit different as he spoke, telling them to kill someone.
His adjutant, who heard the order, also looked unimpressed.
Instead, he asked back as if he was used to it.
“He’ll be released soon anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to deal with him after he gets out of prison?”
Revals refuted the adjutant’s words.
“Originally, it would have been like that, but look at Caroline’s current situation. It doesn’t seem like things will be resolved that easily.”
Revals rubbed the tip of his chin with an expression of discontent.
Through the investigation, he knew that Jeremiah wasn’t very interested in his wife, Karina.
In fact, he had been convinced that the investigation was true after seeing them at the banquet.
So when he heard about what had happened at the charity event, he was more concerned about Jeremiah’s unexpected reaction, apart from the mess that had occurred.
“Certainly... I didn’t expect Caroline to be isolated in her room before the charity event was even over.”
“Yes. I thought the punishment would be confiscated for a few months’ worth of living expenses, or maybe a week or two of superficial probation...”
Revals frowned, his words trailing off.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
Revals returned to his expressionless face, crumpled up the letter he was holding, and threw it into the fireplace.
Then, with a firm expression as if he had made up his mind, he opened his mouth again.
“It would be better to kill him as quickly as possible. And if he dies while he’s imprisoned in the Grand Duke’s prison, the Grand Duke won’t be free from responsibility for Lord Genon's death.”
Upon hearing that, the adjutant brought up a few problematic issues.
“It’s impossible to kill him completely secretly while he’s imprisoned in the Grand Duke’s prison. Not only is the prison under strict surveillance, but if you use something like poison, it’ll leave traces and you’ll definitely get caught.”
Revals snickered at the adjutant’s words.
“Of course, you’ll get caught. Just pretend that Caroline made that up. When the situation became unfavorable for her, she did something reckless to keep Genon’s mouth shut.”
Revals laughed viciously.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes. I’ll handle it without a hitch.”
Revals snickered at the adjutant’s words.
“Of course, you’ll get caught. Just pretend that Caroline made that up. When the situation became unfavorable for her, she did something reckless to keep Genon’s mouth shut.”
Revals laughed viciously.
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes. I’ll handle it without a hitch.”
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