Hans arrived too late, grabbed the railing, and looked down.

The culprit had landed safely on the pile of hay and lay there catching their breath.

As the cart began to move, they mockingly waved at Hans with a smirk.

Watching the culprit disappear, Hans didn’t seem particularly disappointed.

By then, the distance between them had increased, so the culprit failed to notice something was amiss while savoring their successful escape.

Though the hay was scratchy, it felt like a luxurious down comforter due to their sense of relief.

Unable to jump off the moving cart, they decided to wait until it stopped.

How much time passed?

While waiting for the cart to stop, they inadvertently dozed off in the warmth of the afternoon sun.

When the culprit opened their eyes again, they were inside a large warehouse.

More precisely, the cart they had been riding on was parked in a warehouse used for storing hay.

The driver and workers must have gone for a meal, as they were alone in the warehouse.

Groping around in the darkness to find an exit, all they could feel were walls of dry grass stacked up around them.

Just then, a creaking sound echoed as the door opened, allowing a beam of light to enter the warehouse.

The workers seemed to have returned.

“Hello! There’s someone here!”

The culprit shouted while covering his face with one arm, blinded by the light.

“Did you sleep well?”

Instead of the gruff speech of a burly worker, a youthful and gentle voice responded.

The culprit finally lowered his arm and faced the person standing at the door.

Marie stood with her arms crossed, grinning at him.

Moreover, she wasn’t alone.

Hans and Adelaide, along with several workers, had formed a circle around the entrance, leaving no room for escape.

“H-how?”

“I saw a cart parked behind the building. People generally value their lives even in extreme situations. I figured you’d jump down onto it.”

The cart driver transporting the hay had briefly parked his vehicle to buy bread for lunch.

Marie had approached him, offering money to let her ride alongside him to his destination. The amount was substantial enough that he had no reason to refuse.

When Hans had looked down from the rooftop earlier, Marie had been sitting in the driver’s seat, waving at him.

The attorney elaborated on the explanation given by the resourceful and shrewd office manager.

“The only place around here that would order hay in bulk was the racetrack. Decisively, they practically advertised their unloading point.”

Hans pointed behind the culprit.

When he turned around, he finally noticed the image of a jockey on horseback along with the racetrack’s name painted on the cart.

This place was very familiar to Marie and Hans.

It was where Felix had passionately and wholeheartedly lost his money.

Marie had pointed to the logo on the cart, telling Hans to follow later, which finally allowed him to relax.

Adelaide had joined them, and the two women immediately hailed a public carriage to the racetrack.

They had locked the sleeping culprit in the warehouse and paid the workers called from the racetrack to wait a while for unloading the hay.

That’s how they successfully caught the criminal in the act.

“What grudge do you have against me to do such a thing?”

Adelaide approached with a face full of indignation.

The culprit immediately fell to his knees and began begging desperately.

“I-I don’t know anything. I just r-received instructions to drop the flowerpot from the roof when the Miss came out! Please spare me!”

He didn’t even know Adelaide was a married woman.

“Who ordered you to do it?”

The culprit pulled out a crumpled note from his pocket and unfolded it.

Marie snatched the paper from his hand, recognizing it might be an important clue.

Written in neat handwriting was a detailed description of Adelaide’s clothing and appearance, followed by instructions to drop the flowerpot, disguising it as an accident.

The last sentence was written in capital letters for emphasis:

「BUT DO NOT HARM HER AT ALL, JUST FRIGHTEN HER.」

“Someone must have handed this to you!”

“It seemed like they paid a passing child to deliver it to me. There was money inside the note. They promised to pay twice this amount if I succeeded.”

The culprit confessed, pulling out a wad of bills from his pocket to show them.

“Do you recognize the handwriting?”

Marie asked, handing the note to Adelaide.

As soon as she saw the note, Adelaide’s face turned pale, and she dropped it.

Seeing her sister trembling, Marie became certain that she knew who had orchestrated this.

Although the man who dropped the flowerpot had confessed everything, he was still handed over to the police for participating in the crime.

On the carriage ride back from the police station, Hans asked:

“You know who it is, don’t you?”

He seemed to have picked up on the same clues as Marie.

Since Adelaide appeared reluctant to tell the police, both had kept quiet inside the station.

“I told you at the villa, remember?”

She murmured with a pale face.

“About being sexually harassed by my second brother’s classmate.”

“Don’t tell me it’s that b*stard?”

Marie asked with a trembling voice.

The man had forcibly kissed Adelaide when she came to the library to see her brother, which led to a fight with Felix.

One of his gang had tried to hit Felix with a brick, but Wilhelm took the blow instead, becoming color-blind and having to give up his dream of attending the Air Force Academy.

None of them received any punishment because they were sons of prestigious families.

“Even after that incident, he constantly pursued me. He even sent a marriage proposal.”

“A marriage proposal? Did Father and our brothers just stand by?”

“Our eldest brother had already cut ties with Father, and I asked Father to keep it from our second brother. No, only Father and I knew about it in the family.”

Marie understood why her sister had done this.

There was a risk that the hot-tempered Felix might throw punches at him again, causing another incident.

“His family was too powerful to reject without a valid reason. Then Father found a solution.”

“Don’t tell me……”

“The Kaiser ducal family coincidentally sent a marriage proposal, so Father rushed to arrange my marriage with Alfred. If I married into the Kaiser ducal family, that man would never dare approach me again.”

“……”

“I was fine with it. The thought of having to marry just anyone to escape that man was terrifying, but Alfred was a man lacking nothing in family background or character. I believed I could have an enviable, happy marriage.”

“……”

“But thanks to someone, it all turned to nothing in the end.”

Marie finally realized that Adelaide’s resentment toward Vivian ran deeper than she had thought.

Adelaide didn’t know that Alfred had loved Vivian for a long time, so she believed her only hope had been trampled by the sister she had trusted so much.

Of course, Vivian also didn’t know that her sister was trying to marry Alfred to escape a stalker.

Seeing her sister suffering from the fear that her reputation would plummet after being rejected by Alfred, Vivian had proposed a contract marriage to him.

Being rejected during marriage discussions was often perceived as a broken engagement.

But Alfred was also a victim of a marriage arranged by his family without his knowledge, and he couldn’t marry the sister of the woman he loved.

None of the three were at fault, yet unfairly, they all ended up suffering.

The two sisters completely turned their backs on each other due to misunderstandings.

In the end, the real culprit behind all this was Adelaide’s stalker.

If he hadn’t sent marriage proposals pressuring the Klein baronial family with his family’s power, Paul wouldn’t have needed to rush his eldest daughter’s marriage.

Adelaide would have had time to choose her destined partner more carefully, and Paul might have considered his second daughter, Vivian, for the marriage proposal from the Kaiser ducal family.

The Kaiser ducal family was also guilty of sending a marriage proposal to the Klein baronial family behind Alfred’s back, aiming for the dowry, but they were currently being punished with physical labor like peeling garlic and washing dishes.

The only person who hadn’t taken any responsibility for his actions was this stalker.

Shocked by the thought of being betrayed by her sister, Adelaide had spent a night with a doctor who had been infatuated with her, resulting in pregnancy.

“What happened to that man after you got married?”

“He went quiet for a while, but after my miscarriage, he started sending love letters again. My husband found those letters and almost divorced me, suspecting I was having an affair.”

At that time, Adelaide thought she couldn’t show her face in public if people learned she had been sent away from a commoner family shortly after marriage.

So she desperately clung to her husband, and her husband and mother-in-law, who had been living in reverence of the noble-born Adelaide, seized control.

That’s when it began.

When Adelaide’s married life started heading toward the worst.