This Villain Is Mine Now

Chapter 119

The Marquis, pacing anxiously in the study, stopped in his tracks as he saw a carriage pulling in through the window. From it descended his eldest son, the Young Marquis. Only then did a sigh of relief escape the Marquis’s lips.

As soon as his son stepped into the study, the Marquis strode over and got straight to the point.

“The divorce papers?”

“Here they are.”

The Marquis all but snatched the document from his son’s hand. The contents written on the letterhead were undoubtedly a letter of divorce from Elaina Winchester to Lyle Grant. The Marquis scowled as he read the contents.

“What is this mess? It’s absolutely sloppy.”

“Ah, that was…”

The Young Marquis swallowed hard. But soon, he offered a casual smile to his father.

“Even if she’s the Archduchess, she’s just an ordinary woman. After a few threats, she was so frightened that she kept making mistakes while writing. No matter how I pressed her, she couldn’t fix it properly, so I just picked the cleanest one.”

The Marquis stared intently at the divorce letter. He simply couldn’t picture that wretched woman, Elaina Grant, trembling in fear while writing it.

Narrowing his eyes, he studied his son. The Young Marquis met his father’s gaze without flinching. As though trying to read something in his son’s expression, the Marquis finally spoke.

“Did you handle the Archduchess as planned?”

“No. Not yet.”

“…Why not?”

“She was so scared she couldn’t even resist. I thought she might still be of some use.”

Had he been lying, the Marquis would have rushed to the tower to verify Elaina’s condition. But the Young Marquis confessed without hesitation that he had not carried out the order. What he said also made sense. Even the Marquis had thought it a bit wasteful to simply kill Elaina, now imprisoned in a tower deep in the forest.

Still, that was one thing, and the disruption to his plan was another matter entirely.

“The dagger?”

“Right here.”

“Always keep it on you. Never let anyone else see it.”

“Yes, Father.”

The Young Marquis gave a respectful bow and withdrew. Watching him, the Marquis smacked his lips thoughtfully.

‘I’ll have to push him to finish the job properly.’

The plan was that the enraged son, unable to forgive what happened to his mother, had acted on his own and committed the crime.

To make the public accept such a provocative statement without suspicion, the Marquis had calculated every angle meticulously.

The dagger had been purchased by the Marquis himself. But according to official records, it had been bought by his son.

The dead may not speak, but the marks on a corpse can reveal much. If things went awry, it would be advantageous to the Marquis if it appeared that his son had harmed the Archduchess Elaina Grant.

Fortunately, he had two sons. Even if one were sacrificed in a crisis for the family, the other could still carry on the title.

Of course, it would be best if such a disgraceful outcome never occurred.

He had chosen an isolated mountain location for his son. Due to the treacherous terrain, even a close pursuit would result in the pursuer losing their way in the forest.

The Marquis’s eyes returned to Elaina’s divorce letter. The document, full of crossed-out lines and corrections, looked unsightly…

‘No need to worry about such trivial things.’

Turning his gaze away from the oddly swirling letters, the Marquis dismissed it. He didn’t have the luxury to worry about every detail.

Everything had to be concluded before the legal dispute surrounding his wife’s death reached a verdict.

***

“Master! L-Look here…!”

At the sound of a scream from downstairs, Lyle leapt up from his seat and ran out.

Could it be that his wife, who had gone missing after leaving for court, had finally returned? But contrary to his hope, the maid who had screamed was only holding a letter in her hand.

The maid, her face pale, handed the letter to Lyle. Even the butler, who had been scolding her for causing a commotion, was rendered speechless. The handwriting on the envelope was unmistakably Elaina’s.

「To: Lyle Grant.」

The moment he confirmed his name, his heart dropped with a thud.

“Master, quickly…! Please open the envelope, quickly.”

Sarah urged Lyle. She was on the verge of hysteria.

The testimony at the court had supposedly ended in mere minutes, yet not a single person at the courthouse had come forward to say they had seen Elaina.

Lyle opened the envelope. His gloved hands were trembling uncontrollably. A letter written in Elaina’s handwriting. There could only be one meaning behind a letter from a wife who hadn’t returned home.

She had fallen into a situation where she couldn’t come back.

“A d-divorce letter…? Why would she suddenly send something like this…”

Upon checking the contents, Sarah gasped, almost collapsing. Her head spun from the sudden shock, and her body swayed. The other maids rushed to support her.

“Master, Madam always writes very neatly. She would never cross out lines like this so messily. This, this definitely means something is wrong.”

Sarah’s eyes welled with tears. There was only one person who could have done such a thing.

“Madam must be at the Redwood estate!”

Tearfully, Sarah pleaded to go find Elaina. Lyle’s insides burned just as much. But Sarah was wrong. There wasn’t even a grain of possibility that Elaina was at the marquis’s estate.

“Please, Master. We must go rescue Madam before Marquis Redwood harms her. If something happens to her, I… I…!”

Sobbing, Sarah broke down, screaming that she would rather die. Seeing her like that, the surrounding maids also began to weep.

“Something must have happened. She’s not someone who would give in so easily. And yet she sent a letter like this. Whatever’s going on must be serious.”

The Elaina Sarah knew was always bright and confident. The type who would choose to break rather than bend. For such a woman to send a divorce letter, it could only mean she was in a situation where she couldn’t resist.

Ironically, Sarah’s words stirred something in Lyle. Amid his chaotic thoughts, his eyes fell on a sentence Elaina had crossed out with two lines. No, to be precise, it wasn’t a sentence, but a symbol.

Lyle’s eyes widened. He calmly called for the butler.

“Bring me some paper. And a pen.”

“Paper and pen? Why all of a sudden—”

“Now!”

At Lyle’s urgent voice, the butler scrambled up to the study. With a grave expression, Lyle began to reread the divorce letter Elaina had sent.

Soon, the butler returned with the requested paper and pen. Lyle lay down on the floor, placing Elaina’s letter beside him, and began copying something onto the paper.

“W-what are you doing, Master?”

Sarah’s tears instantly stopped at Lyle’s unexpected action. But even at her question, Lyle said nothing and continued his work in silence.

The hidden code within Elaina’s divorce letter.

“…Bring me a map.”

The sun setting behind the mountains. A tower. A vast forest. A steep cliff to the east. A large river. A distant village to the west.

Lyle clenched his teeth.

A picnic in Mabel, a memory that felt like it belonged to another lifetime.

Back when Kyst had teleported them with spatial magic to a mountaintop, Elaina had asked Lyle about the symbols on the map.

“Ah! So this flag-like mark represents a village.”

At the time, while Elaina had fallen asleep beside him, Lyle had drawn a map alone. He remembered her looking at the map with fascination and then laughing brightly as she deciphered the symbols.

“Ha… seriously.”

Lyle rubbed his face. He didn’t know how Elaina had managed to observe the surrounding terrain after being kidnapped, but truly, his wife was extraordinary.