Chapter 04
This insolent fool! How dare you show up here!”
At the baron’s furious voice, Lucy instinctively shuddered but then mustered her courage and pressed her ear against the door of the reception room.
“It’s a marriage proposal. Please give Lucy to me.”
“You worthless wretch! Do you think I raised that girl with so much care just to give her to some illegitimate brat like you?”
Unlike Edwin’s calm voice, the baron was still filled with rage.
“The Perriquel Mine. I will give that mine as a dowry.”
“What? Perriquel…? How could you possibly—no, isn’t that a royal-owned mine in the first place? How dare you mock me like this?”
“It may have been royal property before, but it’s not anymore. Now, please review these documents. I will give you the mine, so please grant permission for me to marry Lucy.”
Standing outside the door, eavesdropping on the conversation between Edwin and her father, Lucy had no idea what he was talking about.
Edwin offering a mine? She had heard that daughters of wealthy families sometimes received land or even mines as part of a dowry. But not just any mine—this was one formerly owned by the royal family. Lucy pressed her ear a little closer.
“Even if this document is genuine, there’s no way I would give Lucy to you for a mere mine like this. Do you know how many nobles are sending proposals to Lucy even now?”
“As I suspected, you are truly difficult. I even doubt if Lucy is really your daughter. And even if it’s called a proposal, it’s probably from some minor noble’s second son or a concubine’s child.”
Edwin’s mocking voice reached her.
“That’s none of your concern! If you send a proposal, it’s better for Lucy than giving it to some illegitimate brat like you.”
“Very well. If you allow me to marry Lucy, I will not only give you this mine but also a tax exemption guaranteed by the royal family.”
“Wh-what, a tax exemption? Someone like you…?”
Lucy could not understand a single word of what Edwin was saying to her father.
All she remembered was that Edwin had said to her, confidently, to just wait here for a moment, and that he would get her father’s permission to marry her.
Lucy woke with a frown. Memories from her past tormented her in her dreams.
Her fiancé of two years, Edwin.
She remembered the day he had boldly met Baron Diallo, insisting he would get permission to marry her. Lucy pressed her ear against the door, anxiously listening. On that day, Edwin had indeed obtained the marriage consent.
But he never showed up at the wedding. He disappeared without a trace, as if he had never existed…
The memory lingered in her mind, leaving her deeply unsettled.
“That swindler! How dare he toy with me like this? How many opportunities did I give up just for that tax exemption!”
When Edwin disappeared, her father’s anger over losing the promised tax exemption after the wedding boiled over.
Lucy had been devastated when Edwin didn’t show up on the wedding day and had not left her room since.
Had something happened to him? Or had he truly abandoned her?
Every night she cried herself to sleep, gradually drying out from grief.
“And now I’ve woken up… but what about the real Lucy…?”
Though she knew no one would answer, she murmured to the empty air.
“Miss, are you awake?”
At that moment, Anna brought breakfast, as usual.
“Anna, why did you tell me my fiancé was dead?”
Startled, Anna looked at Lucy in surprise.
“Miss, did your memories return?”
The memories that had flowed into her the previous night were incomplete, just fragmented pieces—moments of joy, sorrow, or shock that remained vivid in her mind.
Thanks to these fragments, she could at least narrow down which novel she had come from.
“No, I just overheard what people said at the party,” Lucy replied.
“I’m sorry, Miss. The baron told me to say that so you wouldn’t get your hopes up, in case your memories returned… He said he suddenly disappeared, so it must be that he died somewhere…”
Anna spoke in a trembling voice.
Whether the baron was lying or Edwin truly was dead, Lucy had no way of knowing at the moment.
When the bruises from her father’s beatings began to fade, the baroness came to Lucy’s room again.
“In three days, attend a tea party hosted by the daughter of Count Ferrohos, along with Jessica. The young Viscount Ferrohos is on break from the academy, so he’s staying at the estate.”
‘What does a tea party have to do with the Viscount being on break?’
Lucy could not understand the purpose behind such instructions.
“Let me see my father. I have something to tell him,” she insisted.
Lucy did not want to go anywhere like that again. She would surely be laughed at for being a bride abandoned on her wedding day. She summoned the courage to tell her father she would not attend such parties—but the response was once again merciless violence.
“You’ve lost your mind since you died and came back! Do you know how much damage you’ve caused me to say such things!”
Lucy curled up defensively at her father’s angry roar. Physical pain she could endure, but continued abuse like this was unbearable.
The mental deprivation from such treatment was difficult to compare with either her previous life or her current one.
Eventually, exhausted by her father’s violence, Lucy started attending the parties—but this only attracted the attention of numerous men, all of whom tried to flirt with her.
“Lucy, surely you don’t intend to act like nothing happened just because you lost your memory? I mean, the memories of that passionate night we spent together.”
Knowing she had lost her memory, men openly harassed and groped her, leaving her in awkward situations more than once.
“She claims to have lost her memory, but how can she walk around with such shamelessness?”
“It’s lucky, isn’t it? I enjoyed these boring parties just to exchange a word with her. And then, suddenly, she got married—I can’t tell you how disappointed I was.”
“Since the Baron Diallo allowed the marriage, he must have been an impressive man. But why did he call off the wedding at the last minute? That’s what I’m curious about.”
Over time, Lucy became desensitized to people’s whispers.
“This vulgar woman dares to seduce my husband? I’ll make sure to teach her a lesson today!”
Once, she had naively gone to some salon and had her hair grabbed by a stranger.
‘Hah… I thought it would be a refined reading discussion, but this is worse.’
Lucy knew who her husband was—one of the countless men at parties who had flirted with her.
With a bitter smile, she inwardly scoffed, then glared at the woman and shouted:
“Go tell your husband! Why are you doing this to me?”
After months of enduring all sorts of things, Lucy had become unshakable.
Pushing the woman hard, she huffed:
“You—this vulgar woman…!”
Taken by surprise, the woman fell backward.
Lucy quickly turned away before the woman could get up. She knew well that the longer a fight lasted, the more disadvantageous it would become for her.
‘A bride abandoned on her wedding day…’
When Lucy pieced together what people were saying about her, a character from a certain novel came to mind:
A villainess abandoned by the male protagonist on her wedding day, who turned dark and committed atrocities, ultimately disappearing in the executioner’s shadow.
Victory Becky. That was the title of the novel.
Before possessing Lucy, Sohee had loved reading novels. Through them, she imagined a normal school life and dreamed of a healthy future. She mostly focused on the protagonists, so she barely remembered the names of the countless villainesses.
But for whatever reason, she had always felt it was only fair that the male protagonist who promised marriage and then abandoned the heroine should be blamed—and she remembered that vividly.
At that time, Lucy still could not be sure if this world was truly the novel or not. There was no clear way out, and time passed quickly with no chance to think.
Going out was strictly limited under surveillance and control, and there was no money in her hands—nothing to spend.
Stress and anxiety only accumulated, and even after several days, nothing improved. She was completely isolated in this world.
Then one day…
