‘Damn it…!’

“Let go of me!”

Karina shouted, violently resisting.

“Get off of me!”

Jeremiah, firmly holding down the struggling Karina, spoke again.

“Tell me the truth now. If you confess everything without leaving anything out… I’ll forgive you.”

His voice was suppressed, as if desperately trying to hold something back.

But the moment she heard his words, Karina’s inner self turned cold as frost.

‘Forgive? Forgiveness? Who’s forgiving whom?’

The blade of resentment deeply seated in Karina’s inner self sharpened its edge.

The pointed tip of anger aimed at Jeremiah.

She grabbed his collar with the hand that had been pushing him away.

A cold, low voice that had never been heard from Karina before burst out.

“Jeremiah Colsberg.”

“…!”

Jeremiah’s body flinched when Karina called his full name.

Until now, Karina had only called Jeremiah by his name on their wedding day.

Since that day, Karina had never once called Jeremiah by his name.

“Don’t misunderstand. I’ve never done anything wrong enough to need your forgiveness. And stop trying to tie me to my guard. Everything I say and do is my own will and intention. It has nothing to do with anyone else! Understand?”

Karina spoke slowly and deliberately, as if grinding her teeth.

Her eyes, staring directly into Jeremiah’s, were filled with indignation and hostility.

Jeremiah froze, shocked by this unfamiliar side of Karina.

At that moment, there was a commotion outside the room.

Someone shouted while knocking on the door, accompanied by hurried footsteps.

“Your Highness! The prisoner Gennon Yeongshik, who was confined in the prison, has been found dead!”

Karina was startled by the shout from outside the door.

‘Gennon is dead?’

Jeremiah also frowned.

“We’ll talk again later.”

Jeremiah spoke briefly before getting up.

Of course, Karina tried to object, asking what they would talk about later, but he retreated faster.

Jeremiah went to the entrance, opened the door, and asked Ron who was standing there.

“A prisoner confined in the prison is dead?”

“Yes. It seems he ingested poison.”

“…!”

“We found a vial in Gennon Yeongshik’s pocket that had contained powder with similar components to the poison. Just looking at that, it appears he committed suicide by ingesting poison he had in his possession, but…”

Ron continued the rest of his statement.

“It seems to have been staged to look like suicide.”

“…!”

Karina was even more surprised than before.

Ron’s words meant that Gennon had been murdered.

A prisoner in the Grand Duke’s underground prison being killed by poison was no small matter.

It meant there was a hole in the Grand Duke’s security, and that there were malicious elements mixed among the insiders.

Jeremiah’s expression hardened.

“Let’s go right now.”

“Yes!”

Jeremiah was about to head to the underground prison with Ron immediately.

“I’m coming too!”

Karina shouted urgently.

Unlike in the past, if Gennon Yeongshik was dead, she needed to find out what had happened.

‘Is this Caroline’s doing? Or could it be that Revals bastard who urged framing me using Gennon!’

If it was indeed Revals who killed Gennon Yeongshik, it needed to be thoroughly investigated from the start.

It was an opportunity to find out for certain and root out the problem completely.

“If it’s about Gennon Yeongshik, I’m involved too!”

Karina quickly stood up to follow along, moving to stand next to Jeremiah.

However, both Jeremiah and Ron flinched simultaneously upon seeing Karina.

Ron was startled looking at Karina, while Jeremiah glared at the shocked Ron with wide eyes.

“…!”

Ron turned away, terrified after receiving such a murderous glare.

“…?”

As Karina stood there with a puzzled expression, Jeremiah turned to stand in front of her.

“Were you going to go out like that…”

As Karina was about to ask, Jeremiah cut her off and asked.

“Are you going out like that?”

“What?”

Hearing Jeremiah’s words, Karina looked down at herself.

The disheveled front of her clothes was wide open, revealing her cleavage.

It seemed to have come undone during their physical struggle.

“Ah…!”

Karina’s face turned red with embarrassment as she hurriedly pulled her collar together.

‘I should have fixed my disheveled clothes before getting out of bed!’

Feeling mortified, Karina shot Jeremiah a resentful look.

Jeremiah remained composed, seemingly unaffected by Karina’s gaze.

“Don’t follow and stay in the room.”

“No.”

Karina refused and did not return to the room.

Jeremiah sighed.

Then he suddenly took off his own clothes and draped them over Karina’s shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“If you’re going out, at least wear that.”

It felt like he was giving her medicine after making her sick, so she was displeased.

But she couldn’t go out with her clothes undone like that.

“Then I won’t refuse.”

Saying that, she immediately turned around.

Karina quickly moved her feet to leave the place, hiding her embarrassment.

“…”

Jeremiah and Ron watched Karina’s retreating figure as she fled.

Jeremiah warned Ron without even looking at him.

“Forget what you saw today.”

The unspoken threat that he would make him disappear without a trace otherwise seemed to hang in the air.

The frightened Ron nodded his head quickly and replied.

“Of course! I didn’t see anything!”

Jeremiah also moved to follow after Karina.

As the menacing gaze was withdrawn, Ron finally let out a silent sigh of relief.

‘I hope I didn’t get on his bad side for interrupting their good time…’

Ron had clearly seen the vivid red mark on Karina’s nape.

‘Still, I never imagined the Grand Duke would be like that…’

Jeremiah usually showed no interest in the opposite sex and gave off a cold and bleak atmosphere.

True to the atmosphere he gave off, there had never been any talk about his private life or women issues since he was born.

Rather, people around him were worried because there was too little of it.

Even the marriage was an arranged one without his own opinion, and he didn’t seem to have any special feelings for Karina who entered the Grand Duke’s household.

Rather, he showed a colder attitude to the Grand Duchess than anyone else, acting as if he would never have any special feelings in the future.

Of course, he had been showing some slightly different behaviors since some time ago.

‘He acted like there was nothing, but to leave such an obvious mark on the Grand Duchess’s nape…’

As Ron recalled the earlier situation, he felt embarrassed again, but at the same time, Jeremiah’s murderous gaze and unspoken pressure of threat also came to mind.

Ron shuddered and shook his head.

As his life and personal safety were more important, he decided to completely erase the recent memory from his mind.

Karina quickened her pace.

‘There it is.’

As she approached the prison, soldiers were bustling about noisily.

Someone was lying collapsed inside the prison, surrounded by soldiers, doctors, and investigators doing something.

The face of the person lying down wasn’t visible because they were blocked by the people around them, but judging by the clothes they were wearing, it seemed to be Gennon.

Those surrounding Gennon were investigating what kind of poison he had ingested.

The soldiers around were tracking the situation inside and outside the prison, as well as the route by which the poison was administered.

‘This isn’t good.’

Unlike in the past, Karina’s thoughts became complicated when Gennon Yeongshik died.

She was aware of the fact that if she acted differently from the past, the future could also change.

‘But I didn’t cause any major incidents or start any large-scale projects! I just got a little revenge on Caroline and those who tormented me!’

She hadn’t thought that the future would change so drastically because of the small things she had done until now.

She felt slightly wronged.

Although she had no intention of dwelling on the past, when a new incident that didn’t exist in the past occurred, Karina started to feel anxious.

And this was even before she had really started to do anything in earnest.

‘If things are already changing this much, there could be many more unpredictable variables in the future.’

She thought it would be good to hurry the divorce.

The more the future differed from what she knew, the more information she could utilize would disappear.

Originally, the incident where Gennon Yeongshik framed her and put her in a difficult situation should have happened much later than now.

‘It’s changed much more than I expected. To successfully leave freely by utilizing the future I know, I need to settle this at the New Year’s Festival that will be held soon in the capital.’

Among the things she had been preparing for divorce, some were starting to show results.

According to the report she heard while giving commissions to Selena and Heistine, she would soon be able to handle a lot of money from the success of the businesses she had invested in.

Some businesses had already succeeded and made profits.

She had laid the foundation for creating a continuous source of funds.

It would be good to earn as much as possible, but now that the foundation was laid, it didn’t matter when she got divorced.

Once she prepared to a certain level, she could earn more after the divorce when she became independent.

For that time, when Karina gave commissions to Selena and made investments, she had told them to create a phantom persona.

A mysterious investor shrouded in mystery, ‘Cali’.

Karina planned to continue investing as the phantom persona ‘Cali’ even after the divorce to steadily increase her money.

‘If I buy land in the Welrun region and prepare a house, and then have a fake identity for me to use and a few essential employees to manage the mansion, it will be perfect.’

She thought that was the minimum preparation needed before getting divorced.

‘Later, when it becomes known that top-grade diamonds are buried in Welrun, I can sell the Welrun land and make another big profit.’

Or she thought she could directly hire mining rights and workers to mine and process diamonds for sale.

‘That would make the process and procedures a bit more complicated, but I’ll have plenty of time and nothing to do by then anyway.’

She planned to live like that, working while having fun and doing nothing.

Karina put aside her continuing thoughts.

It was more important to understand the situation now.

Just as Karina was about to ask a nearby soldier about the details of the incident.

“Investigator.”

Just then, Jeremiah called the investigator.

The soldiers, doctors, assistants, and investigators who had been bustling about inside the prison all turned towards the entrance, straightened their bodies, and bowed their heads.

“Report the situation.”

At his words, the investigator began to report what he had found out in detail.

“At first it looked like a simple suicide, but several rats were found dead in a pile only around the cell where Gennon Yeongshik was confined. Wondering if the rats might have died after eating food crumbs that Gennon Yeongshik had dropped while eating, we had the food, dishes, and utensils the prisoner received investigated.”

And in that process, a small amount of poison was also found on the bowl and spoon of the food Gennon had eaten.

“The maids working in the kitchen or the maids in charge of food distribution are suspicious.”

“We need to catch them before they escape or destroy evidence.”

When Jeremiah gave the order to Ron, Ron replied.

“We’ve already sent knights to investigate those working in the kitchen.”

Hearing their words, Karina turned to go to the kitchen herself.