“Why on earth did you bring that black-haired bastard here when I’m here!”
Isabella screamed loudly. If Ariadne had been in front of her, she would have torn her to pieces.
No, it might not have been anger towards Ariadne, but resentment towards the Cardinal.
“You said I was the prettiest daughter. You said our Isabella was the best. Was that all a lie?!”
The Cardinal looked at his eldest daughter with cold eyes.
“Stop talking nonsense! You’re excited.”
“Do I look like I’m not excited?!”
Isabella cried.
“If I am the prettiest daughter, why did you bring her, a lowly thing born from that maid’s womb, and raise her in our house?”
It didn't matter if it was contradictory, since Ariadne was originally brought to the capital as a backup for Isabella.
Anger welled up in her without any order.
“She’s even swatting Prince Alfonso and stealing Duke Cesare from me, so why are you just sitting there doing nothing?”
“This is it!”
“What did Father do for me!”
Cardinal de Mare did so much for Isabella.
Not only was she raised with all his might, but as a daughter of a priest, he was also given extravagance beyond her means, the best education, and even friendship with the best ladies of San Carlo, which her father had pushed into her through his connections. Cardinal de Mare gave his eldest daughter everything.
But the one thing Isabella wanted most was never given.
It was unconditional parental love, where they were special and grateful just for her existence.
“I’m the prettiest! I’m the most lovable! I have a prettier face and a slimmer body, and I have the rare blonde hair while she has the common black hair of a maid. Why! Father! Are you only supporting her? Are you only favoring her?!”
What Isabella was arguing about was not, in fact, a simple matter of beauty or ugliness between Isabella and Ariadne.
It was a question of the various values that Isabella was asked to pursue.
She grew up believing that if she was pretty, she would be able to find a good husband and that if she married well, everything would be okay, and that the unforgivable was forgiven and the unacceptable was tolerated.
Isabella did as she was taught. She took the quickest and shortest route to secure the best match.
She deserves praise, not reprimand. But today the Cardinal was demanding more from Isabella.
“My life is ruined? I’ve been sentenced to social death? It was Father who ruined me!”
The Duke of Pisano will not take responsibility for her.
No man would desire her anymore, since Cesare had abandoned her so cruelly after digging her up as he pleased.
She was raised to be an object of desire, and so she only knew how to live by relying on the desires of others.
All the glory that was given to her was something that was handed over because others desired her.
Accomplishing something with one's own hands did not exist in Isabella's world.
So, her world ended as her life as an object of other people's, men's, desires ended.
And the ones who raised her like this were Cardinal de Mare and Lucrezia, who is now dead and free from responsibility.
With all doors closed in her life, Isabella let go of the last string of self-restraint she had held back her entire life and lashed out.
“I curse you!!”
Cardinal de Mare seemed to know and did not know what Isabella was talking about.
He was hesitant, but he couldn't quite figure out what was going on. But he was very angry that his young daughter had told him such an unfilial story.
And most of all, he didn't want to know.
No matter what anyone says, isn't Cardinal de Mare objectively the man who made the biggest investment in his daughter at San Carlo?
“You ungrateful thing!”
Ouch!
Cardinal de Mare slapped Isabella again.
Isabella, who had been shaking her shoulders in bewilderment after receiving the first slap, did not stay still after receiving the second slap.
She raised her voice and cursed in front of her father.
“What’s wrong with you, Father! What did Father do for me! What’s so great about ruining my life!”
Cardinal de Mare trembled with rage and shouted loudly.
“You’re a child who can’t be rehabilitated! You’ve become useless. Since you’ve come to this, you should just go to a convent!”
A convent. The most miserable place a daughter of a noble family can go.
Cardinal de Mare uttered the word 'convent' and shuddered for a moment at the fact that the word had come up onto the table.
It was the most terrible punishment that could be inflicted on a daughter of marriageable age.
If Lucrezia were alive, she would have immediately clung to the Cardinal's feet and begged him not to do that to her daughter.
Please don't ruin her daughter's life, she can't force her into that hell of royalty, the worst word for a girl born in a noble family and walking around with her head held high.
But Isabella was not her mother.
She was much more feisty, arrogant, and had an all-or-nothing mentality than her mother.
If she couldn't be the best, she'd rather die. Right now, she had nothing to fear in the world.
“Did you know that I wouldn’t be able to go if you told me to?”
Phew!
Isabella spat out the blood that had accumulated in her mouth. She acted as if she were a street urchin rather than a noble lady.
“Did you ever see me as your child?”
Isabella glared at Cardinal de Mare with bloodshot eyes.
"What?"
“No, have you ever seen me as a person?”
Cardinal de Mare could not understand Isabella at all.
He really did his best. He gave everything he had to his children.
Simon, an orphan boy from a fishing village, gave Isabella ten, no, a hundred, a thousand times more money than the orphanage's priest had given him.
Because that was the only kind of parent-child affection he could imagine.
It is very rare for someone to be able to give to someone else what they have never received.
“You thought of me as a stallion in a stable, not a human being, and now you expect me to behave like a human being?!”
Isabella wrote a bad letter to her father.
“Sacrifice for the family?! That’s not my family!”
“This, this...”
The family was to be everyone's family. He assumed that this goal would naturally be shared by all his children.
Because when they are cold and hungry, the only fence that can take care of them is the family.
The life of a person who does not belong to a family, such as an orphan, is truly difficult.
“Father, you are such a pitiful person. That family that was so wealthy couldn’t even give anything to their son and was going to be taken over by some black-haired bastard. And you are asking me to protect that family?”
Clap, thump!
Isabella spat again. There was less blood in the spit than before, and it was thick with anger and disgust.
“The de Mare family, die!”
"What?"
“This family should be destroyed!”
Cardinal de Mare raised his hand again, trembling.
He was about to slap her a third time. But Isabella had no intention of taking anymore.
Boohoo!
Her father's hand cut through the air. Isabella pulled back her upper body to avoid the striking hand. Cardinal de Mare staggered back and forth, looking horrified at the miss.
“Hey, this is ungrateful kid!!!”
Isabella, avoiding the Cardinal's hand, hurled curses mixed with various insults.
“I will destroy this trashy family with my own hands! I will burn it down!”
The profanity she had honed outside of her textbooks while transcribing Ladies' Tales of the City was on full display.
It was mainly an insult to how much of a fool her father was and to Ariadne's terrible personality.
Cardinal de Mare trembled as he listened to Isabella's curse. It was a situation that he could not understand at all.
The daughter he had raised with love and care, the daughter who had been like a treasure in his arms, caused such a terrible scandal that the entire family could not even raise their heads in San Carlo.
The act was a betrayal that stabbed at the brotherhood and loyalty to family that he had so emphasized.
And that precious daughter doesn't even know what she did wrong.
“It’s all Father’s fault!!!”
Isabella's shrill voice struck Cardinal de Mare's ears.
“I feel horrible that I am your child!!!”
Clang!
The Cardinal could not stand it any longer and pushed the vase on the desk violently, causing it to fall down.
Isabella was startled by the sound of the glass breaking and closed her mouth for a moment.
Half of it was because she was threatened by her father's escalating violence, but the other half was because the sound of breaking pottery sounded terribly ominous.
The sound reminded her of the porcelain Leticia had pushed off the balcony of Villa Sortone.
It was the sound that announced the opening of the opera.
The sound of breaking pottery just now seemed to signal the opening of the second act.
The problem is that this second opera is not the one Isabella had prepared.
"...Isabella de Mare.”
Cardinal de Mare called Isabella by her full name in a low voice.
“Yes, if you are so dissatisfied with the fact that you are my child.”
He took a clerical knife from his desk, grabbed a piece of his hair the size of his little finger, and cut it off.
His fine, white hair was cut off limply.
“Let’s stop here.”
The Cardinal scattered his cut hair in Isabella's presence.
Isabella, who had been shouting excitedly just a moment ago, kept her mouth shut and let her father's hair fall.
“You are not the child born from my legal wife, so there is no separate birth certificate stored in the Holy Nation archives.”
To be exact, there was no name written under her parents' marriage certificate.
Since Cardinal de Mare cannot have a marriage certificate, neither Isabella nor Ippolito can be listed under it.
They were only allowed to have a birth certificate with their own name on it, without any of their parents' names.
“Go, to the Convent of Saint Angelo.”
The Convent of Saint Angelo was a notorious convent located on the northern outskirts of San Carlo.
The young ladies of noble families who had caused trouble in the capital were all exiled to Saint Angelo.
“I’ll just give you your first name and leave your last name behind, so just go.”
The Cardinal pulled the string.
The butler Niccolo and two servants under him, who had been anxiously listening to the situation inside, immediately rushed into the Cardinal's study.
“Did you call, Your Eminence?”
“You heard it here.”
Cardinal de Mare nodded toward Isabella.
"Take her out."
Isabella, sensing her fate at her father's words, tried to rush at the Cardinal, screaming like an animal.
But she was too thin and weak in her limbs to be a ferocious beast.
The butler Nicolo and the servants rushed in and stopped Isabella.
As the butler held Isabella against his torso, the servants each grabbed one arm and held her in an iron grip.
Isabella let out a horrible scream and twisted her whole body.
“Oh my, Miss, hold on, hold on...!”
“Who are you, Miss?”
Cardinal de Mare's journey filled his study.
“From today on, Isabella has no connection to our family! I don’t intend to have her stay in the mansion for even a single second, so put her in a carriage and send her to the Convent of Saint Angelo immediately!”
“Ah..."
Isabella's struggles grew more intense. Her arms, where the servants had held her tightly, were bruised red, but she paid no attention.
“I’ll curse you!! I’ll curse you, you filthy house!!!”
“Curse, do whatever you want outside my roof!”
The Cardinal rebuked her with cold eyes.
“Pull her out!”
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