“……”

“You helped my daughter 11 years ago, didn’t you?”

Maverick’s eyes wavered for the first time. Duke Clematis watched that face with interest. The Duke had already received reports of all of Maverick’s actions. He was quite a valuable talent to be under Count Phlox.

“May I ask just one thing, just one?”

“I permit it.”

“…Is Rose doing well?”

“Though your impudence in casually calling her name irritates me, that’s not a question. Haven’t you heard the rumors? About my daughter’s disgraceful behavior.”

“……”

That’s right. What Maverick truly wanted to ask was something else.

“Has Rose, never once mentioned… me?”

“……”

The Duke’s lips fell calmly.

“No.”

Maverick’s heart sank. Soon it became black charcoal.

“Because she doesn’t remember you.”

“…Wh-what do you mean.”

“When she returned, she was suffering from a fever. After the fever broke, she remembered nothing.”

Saying this, the Duke looked down at Maverick once more. Did Rose truly remember nothing? That wasn’t the case. The daughter who had shown careful signs of seeking love changed her attitude like she instinctively resented the father who came to her belatedly.

The Duke buried the kidnapping incident in secrecy. Those who knew in the mansion kept their mouths shut, and he prevented the truth from leaking outside.

The changes that happened to Rose after her return weren’t just that. Rose would cry loudly every night looking for someone. She asked everyone who held her to tell her their name. From the sixth year she started having nightmares, and only now have they finally subsided.

After coming of age, she deliberately kept several lovers… but those lovers were all blonde with blue eyes. Consistently for 10 years. All the same without a single steady relationship.

Watching from the side, Rose seemed to be searching for some ‘perfect’ being, carefully examining each man who passed by.

According to the maids, she sometimes called out strange names in her sleep. Though that only recently disappeared. Right, could it be considered that his daughter remembered nothing?

“Let me thank you now for helping my daughter. What do you want?”

Maverick clenched his teeth. Don’t remember? You don’t remember me, Rose, but you loved someone? You whispered to me that you wanted to have me, shared your lips with someone else. Did you smile so prettily and brightly to that someone too?

“Ha, haha…”

Tears flowed down Maverick’s cheeks. Tears that no one knew of as they were washed away by the rain. It was pointless. Below that, a small anger swirled. The demon inside whispered. That you endured violence, endured abuse, all for a woman who doesn’t even remember you, and your efforts were just trash.

Take revenge on that woman now, it said. Ridiculously, Maverick loved Rose enough to suppress such whispers. It was an obsessive emotion. From the start, enduring pain close to death for one woman isn’t something a sane person would do. He had realized long ago that he wasn’t normal. Perhaps he had been wrong from birth.

“You ask what I want? Give me Lady Clematis.”

“How dare you…!”

A nearby knight raged but the Duke raised his hand. The Duke quietly tilted his head.

“I forgot to mention the one-eyed maid from earlier. Though that maid was also innocent… she died by my knights’ blind swords.”

“……”

“Do you still want my daughter?”

The iron-blooded Duke with a cold face asked slowly. Maverick’s mouth opened quietly. He said everyone was killed. Was Martha included in that ‘everyone’? Because he couldn’t imagine Martha committing a crime, he had naturally excluded her. He could only stare wide-eyed, unable even to grieve for the death of his only family.

The woman he loved and promised to be with forever had forgotten him, and his only family died by blind swords. Everyone with the name ‘Clematis’ had carved up his heart.

Duke Clematis quietly observed Maverick’s face where emotions were storming turbulently. Love and hate coexisted. But ridiculously, with the same face that had asked for Rose, desire and obsession still swirled.

Interestingly enough.

The Duke temporarily erased the reward he had been thinking of.

“If you accept my request, I’ll at least give you the corpse of your family’s maid.”

The Duke had one request. The term was 3 years — to enter the Clematis ducal family as an adopted son-in-law and live as Rose’s husband until Princess Greta became Crown Princess or Emperor.

It was absurd. To kill his family and then ask him to become an adopted son-in-law? Maverick glared at the Duke with sharp eyes. Though he was curious about the reason for such an insane proposal, did he really need to know?

While directing his anger and grief over losing Martha toward the Duke, he still felt his obsession with Rose. His love had transformed into hatred and resentment equal to the patience and pain he had endured for 10 years. Even if she didn’t love him after time passed, he had just wished she would remember him. He could have lived his whole life with just a simple word of thanks.

But now he would never hear that voice calling him ‘Rick’ again.

Maverick’s fingertips dug into the ground. Suppressing his anger again and again, he opened his mouth.

“I accept.”

I’m sorry, Martha. For having a son like me. I’ll pay for my sins in hell.

The Clematis family will pay the price for your death.

Even in that moment, Maverick didn’t dare imagine killing Rose.

His eyes wavered with love and hate as he looked at the Duke.

“When should I start?”

* * *

Maverick wiped his face.

At his feet was Martha’s grave. Though it was a grave without a body. Still, he wanted to make it.

Because it was his mother’s grave.

“Martha.”

Maverick’s voice was heavy.

“Mother, did you… anticipate even this situation when you said those words?”

After divorcing Rose, his revenge against Clematis fizzled out. Of course, being capable, Maverick had found the optimal weakness to attack Clematis. But in the end, the opportunity to use it never came.

Ridiculously, it was because of Rose. If Clematis was destroyed, and her father met death by Maverick’s hands like Martha had… would she look at him with hatred too? The thought made him nauseous. What a pathetic bastard he was.

On the other hand, he gave up his revenge against Clematis without regret. Perhaps that’s what he should have done from the start. Because his mother wouldn’t have wanted it.

It was Maverick who cleaned up the massacred Phlox family. He felt no sadness at all for the death of Count Phlox, or the deaths of the servants and knights who had participated in abusing and tormenting him.

While cleaning Martha’s room, he found her will. Knowing the Count’s nature well, perhaps she had prepared it in advance not knowing when it might be needed.

Martha had written:

[Even if I die by Count Phlox’s hands, forgive him.
Whatever death I meet, feel neither guilt nor responsibility.
I want you to be free from all of that.]

The will, ending with words of love, was a final safety measure to prevent him from being consumed by hatred. Still, once started, his revenge didn’t stop, but that too withered away with his divorce from Rose.

Then what was the point of staying by Rose’s side for those 2 years?

“Haa…”

Like an idiot, he was satisfied just looking at her who didn’t remember him. At the same time, he hated and resented Rose for not remembering. Coldness took precedence over tenderness.

‘From now on, I won’t care whether you take lovers or mistresses. Have enjoy yourself and have fun.’

‘……’

He resented Rose for saying such things on their wedding night.

That’s why he couldn’t believe her when she suddenly appeared in the dead of night saying she wanted him.

His heart was like fragile glass shards messily pieced together after being broken once. If it broke again, he didn’t know what would become of him next. Would he take revenge on Rose out of betrayal? If she got hurt because of that, could he ever forgive himself?

He struggled with mixed feelings every time he saw hehr. Though hatred and resentment always came first, the balance of emotions began to shift bit by bit from the day Rose came to him at dawn.

Nevertheless, his trust was shattered once again. Though now he knew it had been his misunderstanding. He couldn’t say anything before Rose who sent him away so cleanly.

‘What an idiot.’

What did it matter how elegantly he spoke before her? In the end, he couldn’t even properly call her name once. Despite trying desperately for 10 years just for that one thing.

Yes. In the end, here was a pathetic fool whose entire world revolved around Rose Clematis alone, who couldn’t even go back because he feared her rejection.

When Maverick returned to his office, Debbie was standing there. Unlike usual, she had a serious and strange expression.

Sensing the unusual atmosphere, Maverick set aside his troubled thoughts and asked.