ITIWAFRBIAHS Chapter 24

"Honestly, when my fiancé said 'I'll handle it well,' I thought he meant something like sneaking in through the back door to find a working phone and contact the police. So I was thinking along the lines of 'In that case, I should inform Jeril of this news first. He might not know how to call all the staff together, so it would be helpful for everyone to escape together if necessary.'"

But that wasn't it. It was "I'll handle it well (physically)."

First, my fiancé moved towards the window I had come out of. Then he examined the room door through the window.

"The room door is still locked. It doesn't seem like she came out this way."

Then, before I could stop him, he immediately climbed over the window and entered the room. When I tried to follow him in, he asked me to wait a moment, opened the door I had locked, and quickly went out to the corridor.

I thought my fiancé planned to scout ahead first and then enter together, but what came back was news that he had restrained my stepmother.

That is to say, my fiancé literally restrained my stepmother's entire body and tied her up in the entrance hall.

"...Huh?"

Is... is this even possible? What kind of deus ex machina is this? It felt like less than five minutes since he went in? I stared at my fiancé with shaking pupils, but Moore just wore a troubled smile.

"I attempted to contact the police after subduing her, but as you said, the phone is dead. She probably cut the phone lines."

He even tried contacting them by phone in the midst of all that......? No matter how competence is supposedly an optional trait for romance novel male leads, isn't this a bit much? By what means did he manage to resolve everything so quickly and without bloodshed?

"She wasn't carrying any weapons either, and her condition wasn't good to begin with. As soon as I attempted to subdue her, she lost consciousness."

My fiancé answered matter-of-factly. It seems my stepmother had already exhausted considerable mental strength while fleeing. My stepmother's face, having lost consciousness, was pale and haggard. She must have suffered a lot mentally.

Hmm, she certainly seemed very calculated when attempting the poisoning. If my stepmother really is the culprit, wouldn't she have planned her escape more carefully too?

I secretly surveyed my fiancé's appearance, who was perfectly fine without a drop of sweat.

A scheming male lead...... I should keep my stepmother's strongly advocated "teaspoon fabrication theory" on my list of hypotheses for now rather than discarding it. I asked my fiancé for his understanding and headed straight to the study where I had met Jeril, both to find a working phone and to see him.

The path to the study was peacefully quiet, but honestly, I was a bit worried. He must already feel bad about his mother being taken away, and now seeing that she tried to escape but was restrained again might be too shocking.

However, that complex feeling turned to confusion the moment I opened the study door. The inside was truly a complete mess. Crumpled papers and notes, pens scattered everywhere without even space to step, making it difficult to find an empty spot to walk.

Sigh, in the end, I called out loudly to Jeril from in front of the door.

"Hey! Something's happened!"

"Not now!"

"This is an emergency!!"

Jeril was in the middle of scribbling something among the books and documents piled in the centre of the study floor. My stepbrother, who had been buried nose-first in paper without even looking back, finally got up from his seat at my repeated calls, roughly kicking documents aside as he approached. His eyes were bloodshot when we met.

He must have been working too hard on translation...

"What the hell is it?!"

"Ahem, well..."

As soon as I conveyed the gist that your mother escaped from the police station and is now restrained in the entrance hall, Jeril's expression hardened. Then he picked up the phone in the study once, and soon put it down roughly. It doesn't work, I suppose.

"The phone hasn't been working anyway, so it's chaos. Is there anyone in the mansion who manages the phone lines?"

"Wait a moment."

Jeril leaned towards the phone for a moment and quietly closed his eyes. He seemed to be pondering something. But not many seconds passed before he seemed to have sorted it out and straightened up abruptly.

Then he hurriedly stuffed the paper he had been writing on into his inner pocket and continued in a stiff tone.

"Let's go to the entrance hall first."

It seems there's no personnel in this mansion capable of restoring phone lines. Then do we have to carry my stepmother to the front gate...? I felt dizzy at the anticipated workload for today. I hope my stepmother doesn't wake up and struggle in the middle.

Emma Sawyer was dreaming. The past events she had experienced were randomly spliced together, becoming a long, serpentine, and cunning monster of impressive form.

What was attached to the head was her dead husband. A man who had also majored in archaeology, like her. With his slick face and smooth talk, he would bring in good projects, but would also make Emma's achievements seem like joint achievements with himself using the same tricks.

Was it that he couldn't bear the implicit academic standing that came from their obvious difference in ability? Or had his conceit over his overrated reputation swelled? It was impossible to know at this point.

In any case, the man began dabbling in traditions that others had abandoned due to ominous signs and unclear sources.

It was a superstition about an abandoned mine that had been passed down like folklore in the northern regions of Kalyeva. The mine had been closed not due to poor yields, but because of continuous horrific accidents. A gloomy song still drifted through the region, hinting that those unnatural disasters had actually been caused by some ancient disease that spread during the mining process.

Her husband decided to explore that region with Emma.

Actually, Emma wanted to investigate rumours about mermaid and dolphin ruins that circulated among northern sailors rather than the mine. However, her husband was adamant, and until then Emma sympathised with her husband's mental anguish, so she reluctantly accompanied him.

And her husband never apologized until the day he died.

How horrible and self-centred a person he was! How desperate must he have been to push his pregnant wife aside and try to flee outside the mine? Emma had to interpret the horrific inscriptions left in that place all by herself to avoid going mad in the collapsed mine! No one came to rescue her for over two weeks.

Escape. The person who escaped. The man who ran away.

Emma's thoughts continued.

The second thing attached to the serpent's lumpy body was also a man who had escaped. Russell Aubert. A human so stupid he wasn't even pitiable. When he suddenly became wealthy, did he have the delusion that this fortune was due to his own ability? He made an absurd choice.

Buying this mansion! Did he want to confirm the great deeds of his ancestors and console his impoverished childhood?

Emma still remembered the contents of the diary that man had left behind—a diary that began with questions and youthful impulses about his ancestors, only to end up filled with resentment and fear towards them. So the man had dumped everything on his daughter and fled this mansion, all to avoid facing the hell that awaited him.

Of course, to escape from the mansion, he would have had to escape from this world and his own flesh as well.

If that damned bastard hadn't run away, Emma would have had it so much easier. So much more... so much more.

These indescribable mystical and strange arrangements of words that bind and cling—the incantations from that mine awakening and speaking in her head day and night...

If she could offer two Auberts, Emma's suffering would disappear anyway!

"Wake up."

The serpent disappeared in an instant.

Emma opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling full of noble patterns. Noble? No, why would they be noble? They're just cones. What about them could possibly feel noble?

"Look at me."

Emma turned her head. There was a man with a bewitching face before her eyes.

Probably the man who would have been attached to the end of Emma's serpent. The man who should have escaped according to Emma's plan. But instead, the illegitimate son of the Moore family who had driven Emma from this mansion.

"Illegitimate son."

"A word that will soon disappear from your head."

The man looked pleased. And at the same time, he looked impatient. He felt surprisingly human.

Emma burst into laughter.

"Hahahahahaha!!!"

"Shut up."

Emma couldn't stop laughing and sobbed.

"You poor bastard. You're going to fail. What were you thinking with such an absurd... You stupid thing."

"Completely possessed. I definitely removed the spectre."

The man looked at Emma with disinterested eyes.

"It doesn't matter. Now then..."

"Step back ten paces."

The man looked back at the man and woman who had burst through the entrance hall. The two seemed to have been running from the front gate, covered in sweat, but their eyes shone brightly.

Among them, the woman who had been a servant of this mansion aimed a shotgun at the man without trembling.

He couldn't help but keep looking back at the stairs, but more than that, he couldn't bear this situation. That girl would return soon. He had to sort all this out before then.

Sort it out and... I...

"What is this..."

That girl's voice.

Too late. For the first time since becoming Lucas Moore, the man clenched his fists so hard his hands turned pale at the dizzying sensation he was experiencing. It was the sensation of a fatal mistake.

It's fine.

It's fine. He can make it as if it never happened.