To You Whom I Don’t Love That Much (Completed Main Story) - Chapter 131

131.

Ro raised the tip of her fingernail and slid it into the crack. After several failed attempts, she managed to lift the loose wooden plank. The hidden compartment wasn’t deep. Inside, Ro pulled out several leather-bound ledgers and sheets of paper. She gathered the found items into her arms and sat cross-legged on the bed.

A quick skim revealed that every document had been meticulously written in code—just as one would expect from Nick’s thorough nature. Fortunately, all of them were codes Ro could decipher. Though her mouth tasted bitter. That was only natural—this cipher had originally been taught to Nick and Rosetta alone by Kirgos. After both of them died, the man must have felt free to use it openly, since no one capable of decoding it would remain.

Ro opened the ledger placed on top. The first few pages were exactly what one would expect from an ordinary pirate ledger—densely filled with records of protection contracts with merchant guilds, details on which merchant ships had been raided, and how the profits were divided. Ro began reading the ledger carefully.

Her efforts weren’t in vain. As she progressed, increasingly suspicious contracts began to appear. In particular, the name of a recently purchased large-scale shipment was highly unusual. Ro felt she had heard that name somewhere before. When had it been? The memory refused to surface—until she saw the name signed on the document: Duke Baratelli.

‘I’ll do my best to prepare the goods within a few days. As you said, this isn’t the time to be choosy.’

‘……It seems timely delivery will suffice.’

Those snake-like whispers. How could she have forgotten them? According to the contract, this “Kioljen” had traded between ten thousand to fifteen thousand sol per crate. She didn’t know what it was, but even if it were rubies or sapphires, raw stones wouldn’t fetch such a price per crate.

‘So at best, it’s some rare ore only found in Tilsen.’

If even Rosetta, who adored rare gems, had never heard of it, then it clearly wasn’t a mineral commonly circulated in the market. Damn it. If she could, she’d drag Nick’s soul out of hell and shake every secret from it. Why had he purchased dozens of crates of such a peculiar mineral, and where had he gotten the money?

‘Let’s move on. We don’t have much time.’

She flipped through several more pages. The further she went, the more suspicious the contracts became. A few documents mentioned names like Diego, the Crown Prince of Esperanda, and Audrey. At first glance, they appeared to be standard trade records, but Ro gradually realized something odd about them. Instead of item names, the ledgers listed numbers and nationalities. As if… people were being traded. A sudden thought struck her.

‘Back then.’

Ro swallowed hard, her breath shallow.

‘They said they’d secure the final transport crew… Could they really have been buying and selling people? But why? Even if that’s the case, what could they possibly need so many people for?’

Read full content of this chapter on r e d c a t t y . c o m