TSWJ 4

Chapter 4

Sparks practically flew from Rena’s eyes.

“Hey, you!”

“Me? What.”

“There are things you should and shouldn’t say…!”

“Then was what you said appropriate? Why don’t you go conduct a survey in the town square?”

Rena tightened her grip on the edge of the door. Even I could clearly see her slender shoulders trembling.

Rashak, however, didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

“Quit spouting pointless bullshit and get lost. Don’t come back, either.”

“…….”

“Your sister is about to do something far more productive than helping a younger sister who’d be better off not existing.”

Rena looked at me.

“…Is that how you feel, too, Unni?”

Rashak looked at me as well.

I gathered my courage and nodded.

“That’s right. I don’t have time to help you. We have servants, too, so I don’t see why I’d need to cook there.”

“Unni!”

“Or are you planning to use the food I make to claim that your sister also blessed this marriage? Is that what you really want?”

Rena glared at me, her eyes burning with fury. She looked like someone who’d been struck right where it hurt.

But Rashak was standing between us.

Rena was smaller than the average woman, and she was pregnant. What could she possibly do against him?

“…I’ll come back another time.”

Her voice was weak, but the force behind her glare hadn’t wavered.

With that, Rena spun around and stormed off. Her angry footsteps seemed to pound against the ground with every step.

As I watched her retreating figure, a thought suddenly occurred to me.

“Boss, there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now….”

“What?”

“You’re quite good at giving long speeches.”

He looked at me as though I were talking nonsense.

“Is that what’s important right now?”

“No, it’s just that yesterday, you only spoke in short sentences….”

I remembered that chillingly low voice of his when he’d ordered someone to bring him a knife. He’d genuinely frightened me back then.

“I heard you threw that sexual harasser over your shoulder. What about your younger sister? Did you just let her get away with it?”

“How could I hit a pregnant woman?”

“What about your fiancé?”

“…….”

“So you didn’t beat him up, either.”

I didn’t try to defend myself.

I was disappointed enough in myself already.

I’d wondered what cruel thing he’d say next, but, unexpectedly, Rashak offered no further comment. He simply walked farther into the house.

“I thought you were going to insult me….”

“I don’t insult people I don’t know well.”

“You just insulted my parents, though….”

Rashak turned to look at me sharply, and I hurriedly covered my mouth to hide my laughter.

Oops. Sorry.

“It’s fine. I’m not offended at all, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

After enduring the awkward atmosphere for a little while, I was relieved when the carriage finally arrived in front of the house.

“Um, Boss!”

I stopped him just as he was about to climb into the carriage.

His golden eyes held a cold gleam. But they weren’t quite as frightening as they had been yesterday.

…That didn’t mean he wasn’t scary at all. Perhaps he’d become just a little less frightening. A very, very little.

“Thank you for today. For driving her away on my behalf….”

“…….”

“But please don’t come here again. It would be troublesome if something like today happened again.”

I bowed my head to him.

“Have a safe trip home.”

Rashak didn’t answer. Still, feeling grateful, I continued watching him leave from the entrance until his carriage disappeared.

After finishing his bath, Rashak was greeted by his secretary, Pierce.

“I’ve brought what you requested.”

It was a dossier containing information about that woman, Hiel Caveron.

The documents he’d shown Hiel earlier that day had covered the story of her life. This new file, however, contained detailed information about the people around her who had appeared in that story.

As Rashak read through the documents, Pierce remarked casually,

“As you can see, there isn’t a single person among them who’s got their head screwed on straight.”

Her former classmates, her colleagues and juniors at the merchant company, and even the people who could be considered her acquaintances were all strange.

But the worst offenders were undoubtedly her parents.

“Apparently, she dated that fiancé for five years. Which means her parents must have watched the whole thing unfold, yet they took the younger daughter’s side.”

“…They probably thought it didn’t matter which daughter married into that family, as long as one of them did.”

“From a practical standpoint, I suppose that makes sense, but… there’s also the emotional side of things, you know?”

Rashak looked at the former fiancé’s name.

Allen Brent.

He was the only grandson left behind by the son and daughter-in-law of Count Brent, who had died in an accident.

“Are you acquainted with Count Brent?”

“I met him by chance a few years ago.”

He’d heard that Count Brent had once been a central figure in the capital’s political scene. But when Rashak actually met him, the count had seemed like an ordinary, listless old man from next door. The contrast had caught him off guard.

“Now he’s withdrawn from politics and rarely leaves his territory, but I’ve heard there are still plenty of nobles who seek his advice.”

The Caveron couple had been Count Brent’s personal physicians.

According to the records, both Hiel and Rena had been born and raised in the Brent territory. It wasn’t hard to imagine just how close all of them must have been.

“Apparently, Count Brent was very fond of Miss Caveron. He was delighted when he heard that she and Allen Brent were dating.”

The Brents were a count’s family with their own territory. No matter how close they were, allowing a commoner to marry into their family had been an extraordinarily unconventional decision.

However…

“If he’d genuinely cared about her, he wouldn’t have approved of her younger sister marrying Allen.”

“Well… I suppose his own grandson was bound to matter more to him. Especially now that she’s pregnant.”

In the end, not a single person had taken Hiel Caveron’s side.

Rashak recalled the woman he’d met earlier that day.

To be honest, she hadn’t seemed particularly fragile. Even when dealing with Rena, she’d maintained an remarkably calm expression.

But that very composure gave him a strange feeling. She reminded him of a rock that had weathered years upon years of wind and rain.

A rock that had endured everything all alone, in utter solitude…

Rashak pressed firmly against the side of his forehead. Those weren’t particularly useful thoughts to be having right now.

He deliberately redirected his attention to the matter of the spy, only to find himself thinking about Hiel Caveron again.

Yesterday, she’d truly been…

“…She was more than just memorable.”

Pierce’s eyes widened at the words Rashak had muttered without thinking. He quickly chimed in.

“That’s true! I also thought she was quite beautiful….”

“I’m not talking about her face. I’m talking about her stance.”

“Pardon?”

Rashak revisited the events of the previous day.

The moment she’d clenched her fist, the surprise he’d felt, and the clean, satisfying impact of her punch.

Even when he’d watched fights at the arena as a child, he’d never experienced that level of vicarious satisfaction.

“For something she did purely on reflex, her form was remarkably precise.”

“Pardon?”

“I heard her shoulder throw was a work of art, too.”

The shoulder throw was the technique Hiel Caveron had used to send her sexually harassing superior flying.

Witnesses had spread the story far and wide, and the merchant company, worried that the scandal would grow even louder, had fired both of them.

“Finding out who taught her that would be… difficult, wouldn’t it? None of the men have any free time.”

More precisely, none of the trustworthy men had any free time.

Every member of the intelligence unit he could confidently trust was busy trying to identify the spy.

It couldn’t be helped.

Rashak put his thoughts about Hiel aside and headed for his desk.

He picked up his pen and began reviewing the documents submitted by the intelligence unit, but Pierce approached and spoke cautiously.

“As I’ve mentioned before, would it be possible to hire just one more secretary?”

“Where am I supposed to find someone to bring in right now? I can’t even trust the people already here. At this rate, I’ll have to get rid of them all.”

“But you’re terribly busy….”

Rashak glared at him as if to say, Would you like me to make you even busier?

Only then did Pierce retreat to his place.

A secretary, huh….

A little while later, Rashak returned his full attention to work.

Every now and then, he remembered Hiel Caveron standing at her entrance and seeing him off, but he quickly refocused on his duties.

He was so busy that he practically forgot about her from the very next day.

The biggest headache was identifying the spy.

He could narrow down a list of suspects, but verifying their identities was the problem. Every one of them was as suspicious and wary as he was.

And so, one day passed, then two…

Four days after he’d proposed using Hiel as bait—

“Boss, Hiel Caveron is here to see you.”

Escorted by Pierce, she entered the office, greeted him politely, and spoke.

“Boss, I humbly beg your pardon for troubling you, but….”

“Cut out the strange formalities and get to the point.”

Hiel blinked those green eyes of hers several times before speaking in a small voice.

“I think I’ve caught the spies….”