Waking up to find yourself abandoned in an unfamiliar place… wasn’t exactly pleasant. It brings an instant sense of frustration and emptiness.

This was the situation Angela, the sole heir of the Huntley family, currently found herself in.

When she opened her eyes, she was lying alone in a secluded forest on a pitch-black night without even faint moonlight, surrounded by the sounds of insects and threatening wild animals.

“Where am I? Just moments ago I was sleeping in a soft, comfortable bed….”

Angela jumped up in shock and looked around, hoping she might be mistaken, but all she could see were trees with lush leaves and thick undergrowth.

“Am I really in a forest?”

Just before this, Angela had arrived at Count Huntley’s mansion, eaten a hearty dinner, bathed, and gone to bed.

That was definitely what happened….

Wondering if this might be a dream, she pinched her cheeks several times and rubbed her eyes repeatedly, but all she felt was the pain from her reddened, swollen cheeks and stinging eyes. She wasn’t waking up from any dream.

This meant that while she was asleep, someone had secretly moved her to this forest.

If she couldn’t escape from here, she would either starve to death or become food for wild animals. At that thought, goosebumps spread across Angela’s body. Terror immediately consumed her at the prospect of dying.

She couldn’t die like this. She needed to return to the Huntley mansion, but there was a problem. She had no idea where she was.

Angela immediately looked up at the sky. All she could see was a dark night sky without even a trace of stars, let alone the moon.

Could she escape safely?

The more she looked around, the more Angela felt even her small hope of survival fading away.

If she at least knew which direction to go, she might be able to make her way back to the Huntley mansion, but everything around her was completely dark and damp. One wrong move and she might lose her way entirely.

“These people are insane.”

When she realized she might not make it back alive, anger began to rise above fear. With intense emotions, Angela clenched her fists.

The culprits were obvious. It had to be the collateral relatives she’d met for the first time today. They were trying to kill her to claim the Huntley family fortune.

How could they do something so cruel when we’re supposedly family, even if distantly related?

She had expected some hostility, but facing the reality of her life being threatened made her increasingly indignant the more she thought about it.

How could no one take action while the sole heir was kidnapped and abandoned?

Even the servants who had worked with Count Huntley had sided with them, which came as a great shock to Angela.

‘Sigh. If only I had known, I wouldn’t have trusted anyone…’

She had been foolish to trust them simply because they had worked with Count Huntley.

Angela sighed heavily and recalled the events of the day.

It all began with a letter she received.

⌈You have inherited all of Count Huntley’s assets according to his will.⌋

After her mother passed away, Angela had been running their dress shop alone when this unexpected letter arrived. It stated that Angela was Count Huntley’s daughter, and since he had passed away, all his assets would be inherited by her.

‘Your father is a nobleman, so noble blood runs through your veins too.’

‘Blood—what good is that? If we never meet, it’s all pointless, isn’t it?’

When her mother was alive, she would occasionally mention with a wistful look that Angela’s father was a nobleman.

But Angela didn’t know which family he belonged to and had never met him, so she thought of her father’s existence as a distant fairy tale.

‘Someday, you’ll meet him.’

‘I’m not getting my hopes up.’

Though she responded curtly on the surface, she hadn’t completely abandoned hope. There were times when she harbored a small expectation that, as her mother said, she might meet her father someday.

But even that small hope disappeared completely after her mother suddenly passed away from illness.

‘Don’t hate your father. He loves you.’

Following her mother’s final words not to resent him, Angela didn’t dislike her father, but she considered him a non-existent person in her life, someone she would never meet or be involved with.

That was certainly the case, but…

Incredibly, the father she had never met died and left her a vast fortune.

[My daughter, I wanted to find you all this time, but I feared that the collateral relatives who coveted my wealth would threaten your life if they knew of your existence. So I could only watch over you from afar. I wanted to spend time with you before I died, but my condition suddenly worsened, and I’m deeply sorry I couldn’t see you.]

The letter was filled with regret about not meeting his daughter and concern for her well-being.

“Father…”

Angela held the word “father” in her mouth.

It would be a lie to say she hadn’t harbored resentment toward a father who had never once come to see her. But strangely, the moment she received the letter, her accumulated feelings of hurt instantly transformed into sadness.

Angela looked at the Count’s portrait that came with the letter. Brown eyes, a slim yet prominent nose, full lips, smooth jawline….

His face, which appeared sharp and cold, didn’t resemble Angela’s gentler features, but the brown eyes, full lips, smooth jawline… looking carefully at each feature, they were quite similar, bringing tears to her eyes.

How nice it would have been if he had visited at least once despite the obstacles, why did he prioritize protecting wealth over seeing his daughter’s face? 

These regretful thoughts filled her mind.

‘My goodness! To think he was this wealthy!’

However, her tears vanished the moment she confirmed the fortune Count Huntley had left her.

‘Is this written incorrectly? Is it really this much?’

According to the bank documents, the fortune she was to inherit amounted to an astronomical sum. Unable to believe it, Angela rubbed her eyes several times to check the amount, but the figure remained unchanged.

With this much wealth, it’s worth coveting, isn’t it?

Angela could now understand why the collateral relatives would target her life.

Most nobles passed their family name to their sons, but occasionally when no son was born, a daughter would inherit the family name or they would adopt a son from among their relatives.

Typically, they would choose to adopt from relatives, but Count Huntley had chosen his secretly hidden daughter instead.

Therefore, to the collateral relatives who expected one of their sons to become Count Huntley, Angela’s very existence became their obstacle.

Had they known of Angela’s existence earlier, they would have certainly tried to find and harm her. But there was a reason why the collateral relatives hadn’t noticed her existence until now.

Angela lived in a small rural village, and when Count Huntley contacted her mother, it appeared as though he was simply placing orders at the dress shop, making it difficult to suspect anything. As a result, the Count’s fortune was safely transferred to Angela’s hands.

Of course, all this was possible because Count Huntley had secretly modified his will just before his death, creating a situation where no one except Angela could touch the Count’s fortune kept in the bank.

In truth, Angela could have lived comfortably for the rest of her life even if she had inherited only a portion. Yet, leaving her all that wealth seemed to reflect Count Huntley’s determination not to leave anything to his collateral relatives.

‘I won’t let them have even a single penny! I’ll protect both the family name and the fortune.’

So Angela took on the mission to protect the Huntley family and its assets.

She immediately closed her shop and traveled to the capital, first visiting the bank where the assets were stored.

After verifying the letter left by her father, the evidence, and the bank key, the bank director confirmed that all assets had been transferred to Angela.

Afterward, she visited the Huntley mansion with the bank director. This was to prepare for the possibility that the collateral relatives might not acknowledge her, claiming she was an impostor.

‘What, what did you say?’

Seeing Angela appear out of nowhere claiming to be Count Huntley’s daughter, they were indeed quite shocked. Then, realizing their predicament, their faces gradually turned bright red.

‘Wel-welcome. Angela, was it? Somehow, you do resemble my brother quite a bit.’

However, mindful of the bank director’s presence, they welcomed Angela with forced smiles.

Angela wanted to immediately expel them from the mansion for interfering with her meeting her father, but she refrained for fear of causing unfavorable rumors. Instead, she decided to observe them carefully over time.

They too seemed to be watching their surroundings, and she naively thought they wouldn’t harm her immediately, but that was her mistake.

On that very first day they met, they put sleeping pills in her food to drug her, and once she was unconscious, abandoned her in the forest.

Whether they were fearless, thoughtless, or simply had nowhere else to retreat and were acting rashly was unclear, but it was truly a bold move.

Despite being the primary suspects and risking confiscation of all the wealth Count Huntley had left if caught, they still did this, indicating they too were backed into a corner.

Leaving her as food for wild animals in such a remote place showed they had used some strategy. If she died in the mansion, they might be suspected, so they could claim she had gone out briefly and gotten lost.

“If they were going to do this, they should have just killed me outright. Cowards.”