Contrary to his gruff appearance, he was a family man supporting his physically impaired mother and a daughter about to get married. The three of them lived about a 30minute walk from Langbue’s old well, in a middleclass district, Castel Ravico.
“I couldn’t eat. Paola hasn’t come back yet, so there was no one to help me.”
“What? Paola hasn’t arrived yet? She left before me, promising to prepare dinner for you.”
His mother expressed resentment.
“So, are you saying I’m lying!”
“No, no. That’s not possible.”
Mr. Scampa became genuinely scared.
“Paola isn’t the kind of girl who would take a detour on her way home……”
Paola, his only child and unmarried daughter, was his pride and the reason for his life. Despite their tight budget, he always provided the best for his daughter in terms of food and clothing.
Lately, Scampa had been looking for a suitable husband for Paola. He had even saved a dowry to ensure her dignity upon marriage.
Paola felt guilty about touching her father’s savings for her wedding and had been helping out with odd jobs at the old well whenever they needed extra hands, receiving daily wages in return.
It was one of those days. During the day, she helped with cabbage planting at the old well, and in the evening, she went home early to take care of her grandmother’s meals. Paola was supposed to be home by this time. She wasn’t the type to stay out late.
“I guess I need to go out and look for her.”
As Mr. Scampa was about to put on his coat that he had taken off, Mrs. Pampinella from next door walked into the front door.
“Mr. Scampa, there’s a commotion in the street right now. Have you heard?”
“No? What happened?”
“Two female corpses were found in the back alley of the old well……”
“What?!”
“And both of them are headless.”
[This is the time separator]Lucrezia sent Loretta to the fish shop at No. 8 Campo de Spezia once a day.
“Do you have any goods?”
‘Is there any goods?’ was the code Lucrezia had agreed upon with the fish shop.
Lucrezia had asked the fish shop to hand over any boxes marked ‘entrusted to the lady’ to the servant she sent without opening them, and although their dealings had recently stopped, the owner of the shop, who had made a lot of sales thanks to Lucrezia until a few months ago, agreed to do her this favor.
If a box arrived, he would just hand it over. If a box didn’t arrive, he would just say, ‘No, there are no goods today.’
However, the owner of the fish shop at No. 8 Campo de Spezia looked at Loretta with an extremely difficult expression.
“No goods?”
Loretta asked again. At that moment, people who had been waiting in the room inside the shop swarmed out and surrounded Loretta.
“Caught her!”
“Which household’s maid are you!”
“What kind of aristocratic family did such a horrible thing?!”
Standing at the front of the crowd surrounding Loretta was Mr. Scampa, his eyes bursting with threadlike veins from anger and pain, his eyes turning as red as his hair.
“You killed my daughter!!!”
“What are you talking about?!”
Last night, upon hearing that a female corpse without a head was found, Mr. Scampa frantically rushed to the spot. The body was found somewhere midway between Langbue’s old well and Scampa’s house.
It was somewhere between Castel Ravico and Comune Nuova. Since they couldn’t leave the body in the deserted barn, they moved it to the community building in Castel Ravico.
“Is my daughter, my daughter here?!”
As Mr. Scampa rushed in, the representative of Castel Ravico turned pale. The representative of the cooperative was also in charge of the local security. He hastily showed him the two bodies.
“I was looking for the relatives. From their clothes, they look like the local women……”
“Paola!”
Mr. Scampa’s shrieking voice echoed through the Cooperative Building.
“My daughter!”
His only daughter, who had been growing a prohibited plant, had returned as a decapitated corpse.
“Who is it!”
Mr. Scampa cried out.
“Who did this!”
“We will have to find out…..”
“Is Representative Castel Rabico present?”
Another man entered, pushing the entrance to the coop. He was the representative of the local cooperative in Comune Nuova. Since the Ranbuie Orphanage was located in Comune Nuova, Mr. Scampa was familiar with the representative.
“Our kids saw suspicious men wandering around the Ranbuie Orphanage.”
“Yes?”
“Not just that. No one has stepped forward saying they saw the murder scene itself, but there were people who saw two men each escorting a woman and leaving the alley. Not just one or two, several people saw.”
Mr. Scampa sprang to his feet.
“Now is not the time! Let’s go catch them!”
Everything moved swiftly after that. Once they gathered the testimonies of the vagrants seen by the children in Comune Nuova, the suspects were clearly identified.
The vagrants had not gone far. They happened to be toasting their successful job and having a grand drink at a nearby pub.
Half of this was due to blindly trusting the words of the employer who said that a woman without a proper home and money is not to worry about, and the other half was due to an alcohol addiction which caused them to not think of the consequences.
“Bastards!”
“We caught them!”
“Eek!!!”
It was certain that the vagrants were the murderers who had killed Paola Scampa and the redhaired woman of unknown name. This was because they were carrying two heads buried in sawdust in a box.
“Why the hell did you kill people and cut off their heads!”
“Commission….. we got a commission…..”
“Whose commission!”
“We don’t know! We just heard that if we deliver the box to the fish shop at Campo de Spezia 8 and say ‘I entrust you with the goods requested by the lady,’ we would receive the rest of the money!”
So Mr. Scampa and the peacekeeping members of two autonomous districts waited in ambush at the fish shop in Campo de Spezia for the person to come for the box. And now, Loretta had just been caught.
“Which housemaid are you!”
For some reason, Loretta felt like she shouldn’t speak, and desperately kept her mouth shut, trying to escape.
“Check her belongings!”
The soldiers rushed in and snatched Loretta’s handbag and rummaged through the items inside.
There was nothing in the handbag but a few Florin silver coins and one lipstick. One of the men, frustrated by not being able to identify Loretta, suddenly shouted after seeing her outfit.
“I recognize that maid’s clothes!”
“Uh? Which housemaid’s clothes?”
“That’s… That’s what the maids at Cardinal de Mare’s mansion wear! I’ve seen a maid buying vegetables around here wearing that!”
The crowd gasped in unison at the statement that she was not a noble but a clergyman’s meal.
Male lead is a Divorced Husband
She said to him: “Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change it!”
Liu Changning transmigrated into a female cannon fodder character in a female-dominant novel.
After reading the first half of the novel’s plot, the first thing she did upon transmigration was to divorce the Pan Jinlian-style male protagonist she had just married.
She indulged herself, pretending to be ugly and poor.
But as time passed, the way that man looked at her became more and more unusual…
Liu Changning was dumbfounded: Tell me, what makes you like me? I’ll change!
――
This lifetime, Pei Yuanshao was rejected by the same woman twice!
The first time, she drove him away. Forced by the situation, he endured the waves of anger in his heart, yielding and humbling himself.
That person lay slanted on a rocking chair, her sallow face emotionless: “If you don’t want a divorce, go cook!”
Pei Yuanshao’s face was dark and gloomy: “You!”
The second time, after the crisis in Jinling City was resolved, the new emperor sent someone to pick him up. He turned around, stammering: “I… I have to go. If you keep me…”
That person lay on the kang bed, her back to him, as if she had long anticipated this day, crisp and clear: “Goodbye!”
Pei Yuanshao was so angry his fingers trembled: “You… you!”
The mission of family and country made him restrain himself, averting his eyes and turning to leave this broken household.
Two years later, they met again. Seeing her ethereal face, his body shook like a sieve.
“She was originally a ‘she’!”
At the Qionglin Banquet, the top scholar of the imperial examination, a talented person with exceptional speech and conduct, all the unmarried young gentlemen from aristocratic families looked at her with shy and timid eyes.
The peerless imperial official Pei Yuanshao felt the anger in his heart erupt. He pointed at the woman surrounded by the crowd at the Qionglin Banquet, his thin lips slightly curled: “Little sister, I wants that person to be the wife-master of my Mingde Prince Manor.”
[Touch the gear icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to move to the next chapter if you want.]
