Lucrezia jumped up from her bed where she was lying down.

“Where was he seen?!”

“He was spotted at the San Ercole Cathedral!”

“What!”

“He was walking around in a cloak with the seal of the Lambuye Refuge! He must have been sitting in the Refuge!”

Lucrezia’s eyes widened. That wretched maid was going to tell her husband that Ippolito was someone else’s seed! Why in the world would she go that far to ruin me?!

“We must stop her.”

We must kill her to silence her. That was the only way to silence that hateful maid.

Lucrezia got up and started spinning around the room in confusion.

‘Would Butler Nicolo help me?’

Inwardly, Lucrezia shook her head. Butler Nicolo was fundamentally Archbishop de Mare’s man. He had never conceded to her demands that crossed the line, even when she held strong power.

The male servants brought from Rossi Ga that Lucrezia used to do her dirty deeds were all expelled like ghosts as soon as Ariadne took control.

‘If only I had some gold……!’

No matter how much Butler Nicolo sticks to his principles, if it’s in hundreds of Ducatos, it’s too much money to refuse. But Lucrezia’s financial situation was not good now.

A while ago, she had pawned Isabella’s pink sapphire tiara at a pawnshop, but it ended up getting only 70 Ducatos. It was impossible to flex such a large amount of money in hundreds of Ducatos right now.

“Call Ippolito, call Ippolito!”

What good is a firstborn son. Instead of worrying on her own, Lucrezia decided to bring her son and think together.

Loretta, who was rushed to fetch him, brought Ippolito in a hurry, who asked his mother.

“Mom, what’s the matter?”

As soon as she pushed Loretta away, Lucrezia shouted at Ippolito.

“That wench Maletta is trying to kill us all!”

“What?”

“She was seen lurking around the San Ercole Cathedral! There’s no doubt she’s trying to tell your father the secret of your birth!”

Strictly speaking, he was not Ippolito’s father, but Lucrezia didn’t care about such things at this point.

“If it gets into your father’s ears, both you and I will be ruined!”

Ippolito seemed to finally feel the reality. In fact, when he heard Uncle Stefano’s slip of the tongue, he had some suspicion. He just didn’t want to admit it, so he pushed that Arabela’s father was definitely someone else.

‘I should have asked Uncle Stefano clearly before he passed away.’ He had a bit of regret, but now that he heard Lucrezia’s words driving the nail in, he thought it was good that he didn’t. There was no need to hear unpleasant words for nothing.

He wanted to hide under his mother’s skirt and pretend he didn’t know forever. But the limit was gradually approaching now.

“……Mom, what will happen to me if this gets out?”

“Who knows your father’s mind! Do you think he will accept you as his own when he finds out?”

Lucrezia spat out those words and stared at Ippolito. Ippolito looked back at his mother. Their gaze exchange was complete.

‘It’s totally absurd.’

In some ways, Simon de Mare was a very fragile person. However, establishing the ‘de Mare family’ had been the cardinal’s longheld dream.

The woman who he thought had been with him from the beginning of that dream would not stay quiet upon learning that she had brought a cuckoo egg into the nest from the very beginning. It was as clear as fire what her treatment of the cuckoo egg would be.

“We must kill that Maretta. Ippolito, do you have a way?”

“We have the servants you used to employ, don’t we?”

“Ariadne threw all of them out!”

Lucrezia was furious.

“We can’t use Nicolo. We don’t have enough money to employ him.”

Ippolito, too, had squandered his money frivolously, so he had no immediate funds available. But he had friends in the back alleys. It was the only income he had earned from splashing out money like water.

“Mom, what about the tramps?”

“Tramps?”

“When I was studying abroad, there were friends who distributed cigarettes.”

“You had such friends?!”

Lucrezia looked at her son in surprise. She had sent him to study hard, and this was the result! But now was not the time to fuss over such matters.

“Continue.”

“They’re friends who used to work with the smugglers. They have connections with the tramps in the city. Tramps would deal with one or two people for just a few dozen ducats.”

“Why didn’t you say this earlier!”

“You’d have been thrilled to hear I knew the city tramps, wouldn’t you?” Ippolito looked at his mother with a displeased expression.

“The tramps are a bit sloppy with their work. But Maretta probably has no parents, and there’s nobody who would investigate if she died. We can kill her roughly and throw her into the Tiber River.”

“Alright, let’s do it that way!”

“Where is the Maretta girl?”

“She seems to be at the Rambuie Orphanage.”

“Then I’ll send the guys right away.”

Ippolito contacted the tramps through a friend who smuggled cigarettes.

Kill the plump woman with red hair, dressed surprisingly well for a peasant, and throw her into the Tiber River.

Lucrezia insisted that she had to see with her own eyes the proof of Maretta’s death, questioning how they could trust the tramps.

After killing the woman, cut off her head, put it in a box and leave it at the fish shop at Campo de Spesia, number 8.

That fish shop was Lucrezia’s regular spot. To be precise, it was a shop that laundered the source of the pickled fish sent from Taranto.

Since they couldn’t have Maretta’s body brought to the de Mare mansion, they decided to leave it at the fish shop and have Loretta secretly bring it in for confirmation.

A group of tramps, each hiding a knife in their bosom, headed for the vicinity of the Rambuie Orphanage.