Since I Don't Know Anything About It, Shall We Break Up, Your Majesty? - Chapter 54

After taking a moment to steady her breath, Lumiere spoke in a clear voice with her emotions sorted out.

“I’m going to turn you over to the police.”

Laurel flinched in surprise and looked at Lumiere.

Lumiere continued speaking with a calm face.

The hand gripping hers tightened firmly.

“……I’m sorry about your son. But I don’t regret what you did that day. I had to protect this house, and the people who stay here who are like family to me.”

“……”

“Jeffrey and Cindy, and the twins too. They’re all like family to me.”

Laurel’s face contorted at Lumiere’s words.

They were like family to Laurel too.

And soon, they were going to become her real family.

If a fire had broken out where such people were staying, they all might have died.

It was Laurel who had placed the cardboard box under the designated window without asking any questions.

If even a small spark had fallen on it, it would have burst into flames big enough to burn down the entire mansion.

She burst into tears, covering her face with her trembling hands.

……Family.

Laurel had lost Tommy.

She had lost Tommy, who was her family.

But her other precious people had also almost died because of her.

Because of her careless, stupid, and petty greed.

In an instant, her insides crumbled.

The wrongdoing she had been avoiding to face crashed over her like a tidal wave, engulfing her.

“I…… I…… didn’t mean to……”

She sobbed and mumbled incoherently.

Emotions like sadness, anger, resentment, regret, and guilt were shaking her to the core.

I am a sinner.

I was a sinner.

A sinner who even tried to harm the Miss after losing her mind.

She couldn’t bring herself to lift her head.

“Do you feel even a little sorry towards me?”

“……”

“Towards Jeffrey?”

“……!”

Flinch, Laurel’s thin shoulders trembled.

She couldn’t lift her head and just gripped the blanket tightly, turning it white.

“You’ve ruined the happiness of many people.”

Laurel bit her lips hard, trying to hold back a groan.

“……Even your own happiness, Laurel.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, but couldn’t stop the tears from welling up.

“Live. Live and pay for your sins, Laurel. You can resent me in prison. You can curse me every day, calling me a b*tch, the woman who killed your son.”

“Miss, I…… not like that……”

“If you live like that, maybe someday…… it might be okay.”

“……Huh, huh. Sob, ugh.”

Lumiere silently watched Laurel sobbing, then once again gripped her hand tightly.

Then she slowly let go of the hand she was holding and stood up.

“Miss!”

Just as Lumiere was about to open the door, Laurel called out to her urgently.

“The person who first bribed me was Maria Tartien!”

Flinch.

Lumiere turned around, stiff as a board at the unexpected words.

Laurel continued her confession in repentance, with eyes bloodshot and veins popping.

“But the person changed in the middle.”

“……What?”

“At first, they were just curious about when Mr. Winger visited, what he liked, what you and he did when you met and spent time together….. Such trivial things. But! But…… at some point, the things they asked for changed.”

Laurel listed everything she knew without Lumiere having to press her.

“They started ordering me to do things.”

Laurel’s confession from that point on pierced Lumiere’s heart like a blade.

It was apparently during the time when Lumiere was going to the Tartien mansion to paint portraits.

Lumiere often received gifts and brought them back, and Tartien secretly instructed her to place them close to Lumiere.

At first, Laurel didn’t suspect anything, she said.

At most, they had her make fragrant tea with well-dried flower petals frequently, and sometimes asked her to spray what they called their family’s cologne on her bedding.

They said it was made from flowers grown in Tartien’s greenhouse.

Occasionally, they would send bouquets made of flowers Laurel had never seen before.

Because they were fresh flowers that would wilt quickly no matter how well they were cared for, they always insisted on placing them near Lumiere while they were still fresh.

So, they were insignificant requests.

Laurel thought it was just because of pride in the gifts sent from Tartien, or something like that.

But from a certain day, she started to feel strange.

It started with thirst.

‘Can you give me some water?’

‘Miss, you just drank two cups of water a little while ago.’

‘I think I’m coming down with a cold, my throat has been dry lately.’

On days when she returned from the Tartien mansion, she constantly said she was thirsty.

And then headaches and insomnia followed.

There were more days when she was in a daze, and sometimes she would talk to herself incomprehensibly.

Laurel noticed that her symptoms were the same as when the gifts sent from Tartien were kept close.

Feeling uneasy, Laurel told Tartien that she was handling things as instructed while keeping the items away.

Then, miraculously, the Miss’s condition improved.

But even that effort became useless on days when she visited the Tartien mansion.

And the strangest thing happened around the time the portrait was being finished.

‘It’s strange, the Miss hasn’t come out of her room since last night.’

That day, the Miss didn’t come out of her room.

The twins chimed in on Cindy’s worry.

‘She didn’t even accept our greetings this morning….. She’s still not coming out?’

‘Yeah. She won’t even let us in. Did something happen when she went to the Tartien house yesterday?’

The Miss always went to the Tartien house with the twins.

They usually accompanied her as guards and errand runners, but when she was painting the portrait, they said they waited in the guest reception room.

‘No? There was nothing different from usual. We were watching from the reception room as we waited. Right?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. She said she was going to finish the painting in the greenhouse, and we could even see her painting from the reception room.’

Hearing their story, Laurel felt unbearably anxious.

She couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling that what had started with a small greed was actually part of something terribly wrong.

So, even though she shouldn’t have, she secretly entered Lumiere’s room.

She wanted to check if something bad had happened to her.

And the scene she saw inside was.

“……It was terrible.”

Laurel squeezed her eyes shut as she recalled that day.

Ah. It was truly a scene that could only be described as horrific.

Laurel’s heart still dropped when she remembered what she saw in there that day.

Clothes torn to shreds, the Miss covered in blood as if she had been clawing at her own flesh trying to endure something.

The room strewn with all kinds of medicine bottles and the bedding in a mess as if it had been torn with teeth.

‘……Get out. Don’t come in.’

It was the first time Laurel had heard such a voice from Miss Lumiere.

With a voice cracked and torn as if facing death, the Miss urged Laurel.

‘Get out, get out, please!’

The Miss who was always kind and rational…..

Ah, something went wrong.

She didn’t know what it was, but it went wrong.

Terrified, Laurel fled from that room and spent the next few days constantly trembling with an inexplicable fear.

Lumiere came out of the room two days later and entrusted Laurel with cleaning.

“I told the Tartien side that I couldn’t do it anymore. I also lied that there was nothing more I could do, and that it seemed the Miss had noticed. They withdrew quietly, just asking me to let them know when Karl Winger returned for the last time. I thought that was it.”

They threatened Laurel, saying this was the last time, and told her to leave the mansion’s window open.

They reassured Laurel, saying they would just break the window to scare her, and that nothing more serious would happen.

Then they said they needed someone to approach the mansion, but it couldn’t be Laurel as she was too easily recognizable.

That person was Tommy.

“……I was a fool. I was stupid. Not knowing how frightening those people were, not knowing how terrifying what I had done was. I did as I was told. Now I regret it. I regret it so, so much.”

After hearing all of Laurel’s story, Lumiere approached her and gripped her thin shoulders tightly.

The sound of sobbing grew louder.

No matter how bitterly Laurel regretted, it couldn’t change the past.

She had lost her son, and the police would take her away.

Lumiere had lost her memories, and she had lost the knowledge of the wrong Tartien had done to her.

This was wrong.

Not knowing any of this, she had foolishly invited Landers Tartien into her mansion.

Not only that, but she even allowed him to kiss her hand!

It was humiliating.

A cold anger boiled up.

Lumiere covered Laurel, who had collapsed from exhaustion after crying, with a blanket and left the room.

Outside the door, Jeffrey was pacing, having been there for who knows how long.

“Miss……”

Poor Jeffrey.

Perhaps he was the one among them who had been hurt the most.

The woman he had given his heart to for the first time in 30 years had betrayed his master, and even attempted suicide in front of him.

Lumiere nodded as if telling him to go in and passed by him.

Unlike her calm steps walking down the corridor, her heart was beating fiercely with anger.