‘No way, it can’t be a real gun, right?’

The sight of the weapon heightened the tension.

It had only been about three years since firearms were released to civilians in Levania.

As a result, regulations on firearms hadn’t yet firmly taken root.

Of course, not just anyone could own a gun.

That sleek and beautiful weapon, barely the size of a palm, was worth as much as a small house in the capital.

It was not something an ordinary person could easily possess.

Only royalty, wealthy individuals, high-ranking nobles, or senior military officers could own such a thing.

Despite their fear, the two men couldn’t help but glance at the magnificent weapon.

They still didn’t grasp the situation.

They kept getting distracted by appearances.

‘How lightly do they take me…?’

Karl’s eyes, which had been chuckling, turned cold in an instant.

He pressed the hammer of the revolver and lightly pulled the trigger.

Bang!

“Eeek!”

“Ahhhh!”

The proximity made aiming easy.

A faint smell of gunpowder spread, and a round hole appeared between Proxy’s legs as he knelt.

Startled by the sudden noise, the horses neighed and struggled.

The carriage shook, causing the prostrate men to topple sideways.

Their trembling shoulders shook even more violently, and sweat poured from their bodies, soaking their clothes.

“Wh-what are you doing…?”

“Report to the police, you say.”

Karl muttered, scratching his forehead with the slightly smoking gun.

His golden eyes gleamed with fatigue.

“…Do you really think you can do that?”

The man’s elegant smile instead instilled fear in them.

The other young man, trembling beside Proxy, nudged him.

His eyes suggested finding a way to survive rather than stubbornly resisting.

Karl watched the two men exchange glances and pointed the gun at them again.

‘My head hurts.’

His ears were noisy.

The unpleasant breathing of the two kneeling men filled his ears.

The auditory anomaly was worsening.

Their whispered voices, thinking they were quiet, echoed loudly in Karl’s ears.

The sound of the horses stamping outside and the whispers trying to calm them down all persistently stimulated Karl’s hearing.

A world overflowing with unwanted sounds.

He tried to ignore everything as if he couldn’t hear anything.

But he couldn’t help but feel irritated.

Lumiere had lost her memory.

Someone had harmed Lumiere.

Lumiere was injured, and she couldn’t remember him now.

It all happened during the three months he was away.

In fact, his current irritation was directed at himself.

He was angry at his own carelessness, his lack of thoroughness.

The anger surged.

Anger directed at himself.

Click.

Karl pulled the hammer of the revolver again.

“If you’ve finished discussing, it’s time to start talking. I’d like to rest now.”

Finally realizing the situation, the two bound men trembled more violently, and cold sweat drenched their foreheads.

Karl pressed the muzzle of the gun to their foreheads and said with an expressionless face.

“Who sent you?”

* * *

A handsome man with soft ash-brown hair stood in front of a large portrait.

His three-piece cream-colored suit fit him perfectly, and the blue gemstone tie pin, matching the color of his eyes, sparkled in the sunlight.

Clink.

He gently shook the ice in his glass, mixing the cold.

Interestingly, the man wore a black leather glove only on the hand holding the glass.

Thanks to this, he felt no cold despite holding something icy.

In fact, he wore a prosthetic hand after losing two fingers just before retirement, so he wouldn’t feel much even without the glove.

A chunk of ice from the Roxan River, something common folk might never taste in their lifetime, swirled silently in his numb hand.

“Indeed…”

The man wet his dry lips with the gin in his glass, then muttered with a short, mocking laugh.

“No wonder the ladies are dying to have it.”

To think his sister would be portrayed in such a way.

Landers Tartien couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Maria Tartien, standing as if bathed in sunlight.

That woman, full of greed and vanity, was smiling benevolently in the painting.

‘Benevolently,’ of all things.

It was the word that least suited Maria.

Moreover, Maria had never cooperated even once when Lumiere Lashantia was painting her.

After all, she must have been irked that the lover of the man that she was after had come to paint the portrait for her marriage proposal.

Yet the painting didn’t seem forced or unnatural, solely because the artist’s style was so warm.

His sister was smiling, holding a small white dog she cherished like a child.

The fluffy white dog, with fur like a little lion’s mane, held its head high, looking straight ahead as if it were the main subject of the painting.

Despite being merely a beast that wagged its tail for food from its master.

Of course, his incompetent sister was trying to mimic ‘benevolence’ by relying on the dog’s cuteness.

The man coldly smirked as he admired the large portrait hanging on the wall.

The painting was so well done that it was hard to believe it had been completed in just a month.

He had thought the woman, rumored to be ‘his’ lover, was just a pretty face with no real skill…

Landers recalled the woman finishing the painting in the family’s secret garden ten days ago.

Her bright red hair contrasted sharply with her emerald green eyes.

The intelligence in those beautiful eyes, focused intensely.

Landers had spent over a month trying to break that intelligence.

‘…I thought it was almost done.’

To think she’d escape like this.

Landers had targeted the woman, Lumiere Lashantia, while Karl Winger was away from the capital.

Lumiere Lashantia, the poster artist for the Cissus Opera House.

Karl Winger’s hidden ‘real’ lover.

She had stubbornly resisted with her meager will, but she couldn’t be unscathed.

Landers stared at the background of Maria Tartien’s portrait.

The secret greenhouse of Tartien, a paradise of yellow flowers.

Flowers they had carefully cultivated over ten years.

The very demonic flowers that brought them wealth and honor.

“And she endured all that?”

She was indeed an interesting woman.

Even more interesting was that she had desperately tried to hide something.

‘What could it be? What was she so desperate to protect?’

Even while her small body was being mutilated.

Landers fiddled with his glass, recalling the story the butler had relayed.

‘There was a carriage accident on the way. The coachman broke his leg and arm, and the horses ran off. By the time we arrived, she had already been taken to the medical center.’

‘And the woman?’

‘Fortunately, she wasn’t seriously injured. She returned home on her own.’

He couldn’t immediately demand the woman be brought back after the accident.

Acting without grace and patience was the behavior of vulgar lower nobles.

Of course, that didn’t mean he hadn’t placed surveillance.

But the fact that the surveillance team hadn’t contacted him suggested they had been discovered.

He hadn’t expected much from the cheap thugs he hired in a hurry.

What bothered him more was the carriage accident itself.

The accident occurred when the reins broke.

The horse suddenly reared and twisted its body, snapping the reins and causing the carriage to overturn.

The coachman was thrown out, and the carriage rolled down the hill.

A very common accident that happened in an instant.

‘Why do I feel so uneasy?’

Tartien’s carriages were inspected twice a day.

Whether for the master or guests, it was the same.

And suddenly, the reins broke?

The butler had questioned the injured coachman several times, but the coachman was just as bewildered.

The coachman was lucky to escape with only broken limbs; he could have broken his neck.

What was even more baffling was the doctor who treated the woman.