Chapter 416 - You Who Will Fulfill My Desire

After being humiliated to the point of shame by Leo III, Rubina headed to Villa Sortone, her son's home.

“Useless thing!”

Ouch!

Cesare's head turned to the side. The tall man placed his white hand on his cheek, which was beginning to turn bright red.

Rubina screamed in agony.

“You idiot! You have no virtue!”

It was a repetition of the words Leo III had spoken to her. She shouted at the top of her lungs, the blood in her throat rising.

“How can you not know that the Alemand law of amnesty may not apply to you! Even if no one else does, you should know!”

She was furious and hit Cesare's chest with her fist.

“Why should I go to His Majesty and find out in such a ridiculous way?”

She was so angry that she couldn't stand being treated like that in front of Leo III. Every blow was accompanied by a word from her husband.

Chezare's slender upper body jerked and swayed in response to her mother's blow.

But Cesare kept his thin lips tightly shut and did not say a word.

“You ugly bastard! You foolish bastard! You incompetent bastard!”

The words Rubina poured out to Cesare were a more venomous version of what Leo III had said to her.

The anxiety and anger that had grown inside Rubina all this time were poured out onto her children.

Unrefined anger tends to look for someone to blame.

“This is all because you lost His Majesty the King’s favor! If you hadn’t led the guards into the Hall of the Sun to rescue that black-haired woman, this wouldn’t have happened!”

At the mention of 'black-haired woman', Cesare's eyes, which had been calmly enduring his mother's anger like a marble statue, flashed with light.

But Rubina didn't care. She wasn't even looking at her son in the first place.

“You destroyed the tower that this mother had worked so hard to build for thirty years, almost thirty years, because you were crazy about a woman in broad daylight! The thirty years I spent trying to make you a Prince, the King of this country! You turned it all into trash!”

Rubina hit Cesare with whatever she could reach, spewing curses and resentment at him.

“Why would you go crazy over a useless, lowly bitch! You have a right to the throne, and a father with an army?! A lowly bitch who crawled up from the bottom, and you turn around because she smells like shit and put a knife to your own father’s neck...!”

Cesare opened his mouth.

“...Do it that far.”

Her son stopped her.

Duchess Rubina, who had never even imagined such a situation, asked stupidly.

"What?"

Cesare's voice finally gained strength.

“Go that far!”

The young Duke slapped away his mother's hand, who was nearby.

He had always been seen as weak and delicate, but the strength in his striking hand was clearly that of a grown man. Rubina was once again shocked.

Cesare, who had stopped his mother, gritted his teeth and spoke each word clearly, one by one.

“She's not the kind of woman you would put down like that.”

However, Duchess Rubina did not simply accept it. Instead, her eyes turned bright red in anger at her son's unexpected retort.

“What the heck?!”

The Duchess, without even looking beside her, groped around and picked up the quill pen that was on the table.

It was called a quill pen, but it was made by selecting the largest and best peacock feathers from the Moorish Empire and soaking them in oil to harden them, so its strength and hardness were no less than that of a club.

“Is this your way of repaying the mother who raised you until now?”

Bam!

The Duchess struck the table with the quill she held in her hand. The shadow of the club danced along with the rhythmic movements of the quill.

To be exact, it was shaking along with Rubina's breathing. It was the exact same rhythm that had been used to scold the young and small Cesare.

“How dare you say that in front of your mother, who created everything for you?”

But Cesare did not cringe as he had when he was a child when he saw his mother preparing to beat him. Instead, he sneered coldly.

“You molded it, like clay. In the shape you wanted.”

The eldest son, smarter than the King's heir, was the most beautiful and sophisticated young man in the palace. A jewel of Palazzo Carlo, his every move smooth and perfect as if wrought by art.

Rubina blinked, not understanding why it was a bad thing to 'make it what you want'.

Only after her son's subsequent questioning did she vaguely realize what Cesare was talking about.

“Have you ever loved me?”

She didn't understand everything, but whatever her son meant, she absolutely did not agree.

“Why don’t I love you? Of course I did, so I gave it my all!”

As far as Rubina was concerned, she had done nothing wrong. All she wanted was good.

There was nothing bad that Rubina wished for her son.

The greatest power, the greatest beauty, the splendid Duke of the capital that catches everyone's eye.

How is that bad? It was the life everyone wanted. It was absolutely good. She was right.

Cesare, who would never be understood, looked at his mother with sorrowful eyes.

“She is the only one I love.”

He muttered quietly, as if humming.

“She was the only one who loved me.”

Rubina laughed loudly at her son's monologue.

“It’s so funny and you're falling over.”

Rubina was born a scorpion.

Not only was she unable to control her desire to stab, but she also had an uncanny knack for knowing exactly where to stab.

“Put aside your feelings of triumph. Is the only way you can repay the woman who has ever loved you, betrayal?”

Cesare flinched. Rubina knew she had hit the nail on the head.

“Is sticking with that older sister and revealing it to the world the way you repay her love?!”

A triumphant smile appeared on Rubina's lips as she struck the vital point again. She glared at her son and lashed out without mercy.

At this point, it didn't matter whether the opponent was her son or not. All that mattered was winning the battle of tongues.

“Yes, you drove a nail into your mother’s heart like this, and you drove a nail into the heart of the woman you love like this. You are the greatest traitor to San Carlo, you human scum, Judas Iscariot!”

Cesare's expression collapsed. Gon's most beloved disciple, who had become synonymous with a traitor. San Carlo's number one human trash. There was nothing he could say in rebuttal.

Rubina was a woman who hated losing, but she always had to bow down obediently in front of Leo III.

It had to be won somewhere. This was that 'somewhere.'

After confirming that the knife was going in, the stabbing sensation was too good. She became intoxicated with her own verbal abuse and went further and further over the line.

“Yes, you are an incompetent and useless piece of human garbage! No one loves you! How can you love someone who betrays you every day? You keep stabbing people in the back with a knife, and that’s how you ended up like this!”

His mother's words really pierced his heart like a nail.

Yes. He stabbed Ariadne in the back.

He had turned away from the woman who had freed him from the darkness and had fallen to his knees to a brief, sweet temptation.

No, it was sweet. The thought of Isabella's porcelain skin and smooth flesh made him feel more and more miserable.

It wasn't worth it, it really wasn't worth it.

Isabella, or any woman, even if she were the most beautiful in San Carlo or on the Continent, no matter how hot or playful she was, could not be exchanged for one little smile of Ariadne.

“It’s so cool, your love can’t be real, but if it is, it’s even better!”

Rubina lashed out at Cesare.

“Because of what you did, you are now finished with that woman forever! When Alfonso becomes King, he will make that woman his Queen no matter what anyone in the country says, and you will have to watch it all while sucking your thumb!”

Alfonso's words came to mind at his mother's words. Alfonso said that he was going to marry Ariadne and asked the Duke to keep a respectful distance.

No, Alfonso's love was two-sided. No matter how hard Cesare tried to close his eyes, he could not help but know that.

The two of them, who kept exchanging glances at the dinner with Pope Ludovico. Her smile as she looked at Alfonso. Her small nose that winked every time she smiled. Her rabbit-like front teeth were slightly visible. Her suffocatingly piercing lines, even when they were revealed for a moment through her collar.

It was all his once. He threw it into the trash can with his own hands. Cesare's head started to hurt.

“Don’t blame others, it’s all your own stupid behavior!”

Her mother was right. Four seasons had passed three times since she had kissed his forehead and bid him eternal farewell.

He tried to deny the fact by staying in the Pisano estate.

He tried to convince himself that he could somehow change her mind, and then somehow change the situation itself and win her over by force.

Now he had to admit it. Maybe Ariadne really had left him, and it was entirely because of what he had done.

A teardrop fell from Cesare's watery eyes.

“Are you crying? What did you do right that you’re crying?”

Duchess Rubina threw the quill she was holding. She aimed for her son and threw it forward, but the pen, hit by air resistance, flew to the side without any strength.

Then, the Duchess, who was still angry even after pouring out all that, threw the document onto the table and onto the floor.

Boom!

An expensive paperweight made of elephant ivory with elaborate relief patterns and decorated with gold leaf was placed on a marble floor.

Although the door was cracked, the bigger problem was the marble floor.

A vertical crack appeared in the floor of Duke Cesare's reception room, which was made of a single slab of marble as wide as a man.

This was going to cost a lot of money to repair.

Duchess Rubina, realizing that she had made a big mistake, glanced up at Cesare. He was standing there without moving.

In the late afternoon, the early winter sunlight slowly crept through the window pane, casting precarious shadows.

Whatever happened in front, Cesare was now in another world.

Duchess Rubina, confident that her son would not say anything to her, snorted loudly.

"Huh!"

She strode briskly towards the door, but did not forget to leave a trace of a scolding behind.

“You useless bastard!”

Duchess Rubina did not stay long in Cesare's drawing room that day. She came for a moment like a summer squall, made a scene, and left immediately.

But the regret, the mother's reproach, and the heart that felt like it was going to break hung there for a long time, warming the broken sunlight and the window.

***

Rubina's curse that if Alfonso becomes King, he will make Ariadne his Queen and he will just suck his thumb and watch forever was half right and half wrong.

Alfonso certainly had such intentions, but he was not yet King, and the decision was left to someone else.

Alfonso's father, Leo III, who had the authority to approve his marriage, was looking for a better match for his son.

To be exact, he was looking for an in-law who he could suck up to more properly.

While he was waiting, his aide, Sir Delpiano, arrived with good news.

“Your Majesty, I have something to report.”

"Hmm?"

“A positive response has arrived from the Marquisate of Sinadenos.”

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