‘Ugh!’

Her husband, wearing a white bauta mask, let out a pain-filled groan.

It was a kind of rampage. His eyes turned bloodshot, and his back convulsed. It kept heaving as if something was about to emerge from it.

The one who discovered her husband’s rampage was Olentia, the person who shared his bed.

Olentia hastily threw off the cumbersome blanket and grasped his hand.

Contact.

She wanted to transmit her holy power through touch to alleviate her husband’s pain.

However, it seemed that merely holding his hand was not enough to calm him, as he let out a voice akin to a beast’s growl.

‘This is not enough. Quickly, quickly!’

Her husband was on the verge of losing his breath. His urgent and desperate feelings were palpable.

Olentia knew best what was needed.

She swiftly removed the mask her husband was wearing and rushed towards his lips. She thought that the contact between lips, the most delicate skin, would surely stop the rampage.

The moment their lips touched, her husband’s intense breath transferred to Olentia. It was a breath filled with all sorts of sorrow and regret. He, too, must not have wanted to rampage like this.

Suddenly, her husband spoke desperately between their lips.

‘You are all I have.’

And a deep kiss followed. Their heads turned, and bittersweet feelings mingled.

Her husband bit her lips and frantically explored inside. As if yearning for something, and yearning again. Olentia felt her mind becoming hazy.

It was then.

“Lady Olentia!”

A very familiar voice rang in Olentia’s head. A high-pitched, crisp voice. It was Bobby, her dedicated maid.

She instantly came to her senses. As she opened her eyes, she saw the white canopy swaying.

“Ah, this… Was it a dream? I should have known.”

Indeed, it was impossible for such a passionate and beautiful man to exist in this world. In the dream, when she had directly removed the mask, her husband’s face was quite handsome. Moreover, the idea that she possessed holy power and was married to a rampaging husband was a dream with truly unique imagination. No matter how she thought about it, it was a ridiculous dream.

“What will you do if you oversleep, my lady? Do you know what day it is today?”

At Bobby’s question, Olentia immediately got up, gathered her wits, and said.

“I have never forgotten about today. I think it’s time for Brother Sokol to return my inheritance.”

“Of course you should receive it back, my lady. It’s already been three years since you came of age.”

“Indeed. It seems he doesn’t want to return it, so he’s saying he’ll give it along with the dowry when I marry. But I have no intention of marrying right now.”

“Yes, yes. Of course. I know better than anyone how many gentlemen you turn away every day, my lady.”

Olentia was very popular among men of marriageable age, but she was famous for turning away men who came to propose.

Olentia dipped her hand into the washbasin that Bobby had brought and said sharply.

“There are no decent men. I don’t want to marry for money or political views. I wish Brother Sokol would come to his senses.”

After washing her face clean, Olentia, with Bobby’s help, put on a dress that her late mother Melissa used to wear often. It was a dark green satin dress that didn’t quite suit the vibrant twenty-three-year-old Olentia. However, since she had the same build as her mother, she could at least avoid looking ridiculous.

Olentia let her honey-like, brilliant platinum blonde hair fall as calmly as possible, then looked at herself in the mirror.

‘It’s been quite a while since my cousin Brother Sokol took on the role of guardian in place of my deceased parents. Now that I’m an adult, I want to be independent. I must.’

Sokol’s intentions in constantly refusing to return the inheritance were very suspicious. Even though she wanted to trust him, she couldn’t trust Lady Kikozellia who was by his side.

Olentia steeled herself and headed towards the grand meeting hall of the Count’s residence where the council of elders was in session. Her feet, stepping on the carpet, seemed slightly tense, leaning to one side. Olentia kept swallowing dry saliva inwardly.

‘Don’t be nervous. I am the one who carries on the legitimacy of the Armenica County family.’

The front of the grand meeting hall was guarded by soldiers.

“Move aside.”

At Olentia’s firm words, the soldiers looked at each other, seemingly bewildered for a moment.

“Um, Lady Olentia. Right now, an important meeting is in progress…”

As one soldier courageously spoke, Olentia widened her eyes.

“It seems wrong from the start that I can’t join a gathering of the family head and the elders. Don’t you think?”

‘This is treating me like someone who knows nothing. Isn’t it?’

Olentia’s voice was clear and resolute, similar to her mother Melissa. The soldiers couldn’t go against the will of Olentia, who appeared wearing the dress of the former Countess Melissa, who had been respected for a long time.

Finally, the soldiers opened the doors of the grand meeting hall themselves.

At that moment, the voices of the family head Sokol and the elders, who were deeply focused on the meeting, stopped. Sokol stared at Olentia with narrowed eyes. He had his hair completely slicked back with pomade without a single stray hair, and was wearing a neat black three-piece suit.

Olentia boldly walked towards her cousin Brother Sokol, who looked as if he wouldn’t bleed even if pricked with a needle.

Click, click!

The moment her velvet shoes reached Sokol, he was the first to reproach Olentia.

“What is the meaning of this, Olentia, interrupting such an important meeting?”

Undeterred by his reproach, Olentia spoke firmly.

“About my inheritance. Do you really intend to return it?”

The elders rolled their eyes as if assessing the situation.

The reason Olentia had waited for this day was because she thought Sokol might come to his senses if he was humiliated in front of the elders. And she wanted to show.

‘I am the true master of the Armenica County family, Brother. You shouldn’t exclude me like this.’

Finally realizing why Olentia had invaded the meeting hall, Sokol let out a hollow laugh. He grabbed his waist with one hand and tilted his head back greatly. For a moment, Olentia felt a chill down her spine as he looked like a monster with its mouth wide open.

“Haha! I told you I’d return it when you get married. What’s your intention in making me say this here?”

“Think about it carefully. Isn’t it because you won’t return the money that I’m going this far? The elders should know too. What exactly are you doing with Father and Mother’s inheritance?”

Sokol’s face changed drastically at her statement. He looked around for a moment, then spoke with a forced calm expression.

“I’ve been faithfully continuing the former Count’s business. You should know well that the profits have doubled.”

“But you still haven’t told me how you used those initially large funds, have you? Why is that?”

It was true that the profits had doubled. Even her father had recognized Sokol’s business acumen and had marked him as the successor from before. She was just curious about the details of how the funds were used.

But ‘former Count’? Since becoming Count, Sokol never referred to her father as ‘uncle’. It was a truly cold attitude.

Olentia never dreamed that her cousin Brother Sokol would be so rigidly separating public and private matters, so cold, and even selfish. In the past, he had been a truly kind and affectionate person. It was suspicious enough to make her wonder if he had been acting all this time to keep the successor position.

As Olentia and Sokol’s heated exchange continued, the faces of the elders turned as white as paper. At that moment, they couldn’t take sides with either of them. While Olentia was still the symbolic figure of the Armenica County family, Sokol was the actual family head.

After a while, Sokol stood up from his seat, picked up a thick folder of documents on the long table, and said.

“Let’s end today’s meeting here. An ignorant child has ruined the meeting.”

“Child? What do you mean? I’ve been an adult for three years now. Only you treat me like a child!”

Olentia shouted several times at Sokol’s back as he was leaving. Sokol, who had momentarily stopped in the corridor, turned around and said to Olentia.

“I’ll return it when you marry a good man. Right now, I’m not sure if you can manage such a large sum of money.”

It was an absurd reason. Olentia was already an adult and a person with sufficient planning skills.

“You always do as you please. At one point you said it was to protect me. Don’t you find that reason laughable even to yourself?”

Olentia sneered. It seemed like Sokol was just harping on about marriage, knowing that she wouldn’t easily get married.

If marriage was the only way to resolve this situation, what should she do?

Olentia fell into deep thought. Suddenly, she remembered the absurd dream she had this morning. The husband in the dream was beautiful, but the problem was his rampaging.

Even in dreams, there were so many problems.

‘There’s no man to marry, so what marriage.’

No matter how she thought about it, marriage was impossible right now.

The next morning.

Olentia headed to Shine Street to meet a lawyer secretly from Sokol. Not wanting to be discovered by him, she came out without even her guard knight, bringing only her dedicated maid, Bobby. It was the first time in her life that she had come out so lightly.

“My lady, isn’t this a bit dangerous?”

Despite Bobby’s concerned words, Olentia paid no heed. She had simply decided that she needed to show action now, after having refrained from family quarrels all this time.

‘He must think I couldn’t appoint a lawyer because of old affection…’

It was clear that Sokol had thought Olentia lacked the courage to even appoint a lawyer until now.

But Olentia had only been considering her cousin Brother Sokol all this time. She believed his words and thought he would return the inheritance if she waited.

But Sokol was merely a hypocrite.

“I can’t stand it anymore either.”