123

A few days after the youngest prince’s nanny was quietly dealt with.

The First Prince and Smith, who knew nothing of that incident, sat facing each other despite their mutual discomfort.

“What brings you here?”

The First Prince, who hadn’t even touched his teacup, spoke bluntly, not hiding his desire for Smith to state his business and leave.

“The trade agreement period has ended. And we both have nothing to show for it.”

“Since when did you and I become ‘we’?”

“If you have the luxury to nitpick my words, have you still not grasped the situation?”

Smith retorted irritably, but the First Prince said nothing more and closed his mouth.

It would be better if he’d say something stupid like before.

Furrowing his brow with a long horizontal line across his forehead, Smith couldn’t contain his frustration and blurted out everything he wanted to say.

“Have you heard about the Prince’s private audience with His Majesty the Emperor? If we leave things as they are with nothing to show, everything from those suspicious foreign groups to the epidemic will all be credited to that guy—I mean, Einar. This was supposed to be the test we’ve been waiting for to become Crown Prince, but it’s just a matter of time before it ends in futility.”

“Ah, yes. That’s right.”

But when the response was not only insincere but dazed, Smith felt no need to remain there any longer.

He rose to his feet with undisguised contempt, a sneer on his lips.

“Even after saying all this, that’s your attitude. There’s nothing more to discuss, so I’ll take my leave.”

Despite clearly seeing Smith’s face and attitude, the First Prince didn’t get angry or shout as he would have in the past.

He just nodded and waved his hand dismissively.

Bang!

Smith deliberately slammed the reception room door, leaving the First Prince behind, and muttered under his breath.

“I had my doubts, but as expected. That fool is useless.”

Since the hunting competition, the First Prince had been acting half-dazed, to the point where even his supporters could no longer keep it quiet.

Whatever change of heart he’d experienced, Smith didn’t particularly want to know.

In any case, it was as good as a threatening yet merely annoying competitor falling by himself.

But why now, of all times!

They had both failed the test together, so they should have joined forces to check Einar—the only one who had shown potential in that test—and bring him down, before resuming their competition with each other.

What a fool. Never helpful.

Well, he had always known that the only time that fool would be helpful was when he was dead.

Dismissing his thoughts about the First Prince with a click of his tongue, Smith returned to his office and roughly sat down on the sofa.

He quickly stood up and reached for a crystal-glinting whiskey bottle, but soon put it back down.

The reason Smith didn’t pick up the glass despite licking his lips was that it was still broad daylight, and his aide was expected shortly.

If the aide weren’t coming, he would have downed the alcohol to clear his frustrating thoughts, but he couldn’t appear weak by smelling of alcohol in front of a mere aide.

Smith instinctively knew that the aide was the only one around him who feared and looked up to him, and he wanted to maintain that relationship for a long time.

He wanted to fill the sense of loss from the one who had once feared, admired, and embraced him most brilliantly—the one he had already lost due to her unilateral declaration to break off their engagement.

Of course, as someone who believed in doing everything by his own strength and capability, he would consciously deny all those feelings.

Knock, knock.

“Come in.”

At his distinctly unpleasant voice, the aide, with extremely stiff shoulders, carefully opened the door and entered.

“Report.”

“Yes. Regarding the epidemic, His Majesty the Emperor has begun to take action…”

Listening to the hollow report with no substantial results, Smith ran his tongue over his parched mouth.

Truly useless, wasn’t he?

Even such a man had seemed extremely capable when that woman was around.

As a wave of red hair flickered dimly in his mind, Einar’s warning reflexively followed, and naturally, the fine hairs on his ears stood on end.

Unconsciously rubbing his ears roughly, he spat out:

“Don’t even mention Riina’s name. Riina, Riina Riina Riina…”

Away from Einar’s presence, Smith chanted Riina’s name several times with a deeply contorted face.

When Smith, who had been listening to the report with a terrifyingly stiff expression, suddenly started calling out the Bolshevik lady’s name, the aide closed his mouth tightly with frightened eyes.

How much time passed like that?

Smith, who had been floating through memories of the past, suddenly spoke again without context, breathing heavily.

“Ha! Not interested? What can’t be done with words?”

“Y-yes… yes, that’s right.”

Though he had no idea what Smith meant, the aide desperately agreed to somehow match his mood. Smith snorted and added:

“Besides, hearts can exist and then disappear, or appear when they didn’t exist before. Especially in front of the monster called power.”

That was entirely from his own experience.

Until Riina had shown intense interest in him, he, as the Third Prince with neither power nor ability, hadn’t dared to covet the throne.

But now?

He had become a proper Crown Prince candidate, envisioning a future where he would become Emperor.

Although Bolshevik had left, that didn’t mean he couldn’t become Emperor without Bolshevik.

Yes. He would crush Bolshevik spectacularly and proudly sit on the throne.

She had pushed away his hand and gone to Einar, so she should pay the appropriate price.

To bring down Bolshevik, minor accusations wouldn’t be enough.

He had tried to kill Einar and frame Riina for the crime, but the death of one prince, who wasn’t even the Crown Prince, wouldn’t be enough to crush the entire Bolshevik family.

At minimum, it would have to be treason or an assassination attempt on the Emperor.

But of the two options, treason required too much time and effort.

Moreover, even just pretending to commit treason would risk his own neck.

So the remaining option was His Majesty the Emperor…

“Sh-should I conclude the report here?”

Though there was much left in the report, it was merely a formality, so the aide asked with a forced smile.

“Tsk, you’re just rambling on uselessly. Fine. Nothing’s getting done anyway, I suppose.”

“I apologize.”

As Smith waved his hand as if he hadn’t expected anything, the aide swallowed the grievances he couldn’t voice.

If this is how you’re going to be, why do you insist on me making these reports?

Especially when you don’t even listen to them.

Swallowing all the frustrations of subordinates throughout the world, the aide was hurriedly gathering his reports when his ears twitched at Smith’s next order.

“Send someone to Bolshevik.”

“Yes. What? I-I’ve been continuously sending people, but they’ve always been refused…”

The aide realized that Smith had been repeating the name of Riina—that is, the Bolshevik lady—like a mantra earlier, and turned pale.

As he couldn’t continue speaking and shrank his neck like a turtle, Smith openly clicked his tongue.

“Tsk, not that side.”

“Ah, you mean the shadow side.”

Unlike when he thought it was about the Bolshevik lady, the aide’s face immediately relaxed, and he nodded repeatedly.

When Smith gestured for him to leave, the aide was heading out of the office but turned his head as he opened the door.

“Oh, and I heard that the Second Prince had someone disposed of at the Youngest Prince’s palace.”

It wasn’t the Youngest Prince who was dealt with, just a mere palace servant, so the aide had completely forgotten about it and only now remembered, reporting it in a single summarized sentence. Just as he was about to fully open the door and leave—

“Come back in.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Without a single question, the aide returned to the office, meekly swallowing a dry gulp, standing with knees together and head bowed.

“Why are you only telling me this now?”

Truly pierced by the gaze that seemed to ask what use such a useless person was, the aide had much to say but kept his mouth firmly shut and bowed his head so low it nearly touched his knees.

Smith looked down at the aide’s slightly visible crown with contemptuous eyes and spoke.

“Why do you treat something Einar has done as such a trivial matter?”

“I-I apologize… Urgh!”

The aide didn’t even see what had struck the side of his head, and with his vision spinning from pain, he swallowed his groan.

The memory of when Smith had first begun to physically assault him was completely hazy.

Instinctively hunching his back like a turtle in anticipation of additional pain, the aide was showered with Smith’s shouts.

“You shouldn’t create situations that require apologies!”

“I apologize, Your Highness. I apologize.”

“This is no time to be like this. Go contact Bolshevik.”

“Yes, yes!”

Smith didn’t even glance at the aide, who was scrambling out of the office like he was fleeing, and finally unable to resist, he downed about half a glass of whiskey in one gulp.

Exhaling a hot breath, he roughly put down the glass and immediately headed for the door.

“I should go to the Youngest Prince’s palace.”

Flip. Flip-flip-flip-flip.

The sound of papers turning, one after another, echoed cheerfully in the center of the office.

In the middle of the Duke’s office, where documents formed mountains, Riina was flipping through papers stacked higher than her height at an invisible speed, checking and rechecking.

One of the Duke’s aides standing beside her opened his mouth.