Episode 50

Winters in the capital are fairly cold. Of course, it isn't as bad as up north in Southerland, but still, surviving the season without furs was no easy feat.

Gloria Deveres was in a foul mood. Thanks to her beloved—and utterly maddening—little brother, she was forced to bundle up and pay a visit to the palace from early morning.

Never mind the Hanger family—why does our family have to be dragged into this too?

Her husband, the head of House Deveres, happened to be away, so she was left with no choice but to go in his stead. The queen greeted her with a warm smile, clasping Gloria’s hands as she welcomed her. There were long pleasantries, warm tea, and dainty sweets, but the real message was simple: chip in for one of the king’s pet projects.

“Damn it, Marcus!”

So Gloria, upon visiting her childhood home for the first time in a while, made her entrance with a string of harsh language. The butler, who greeted the eldest daughter of the house, bowed his head naturally.

“Welcome, my lady.”

“Don’t ‘my lady’ me. I’ve got three kids—enough with the flowery nonsense. Where’s Marcus?”

“He’s been inside since this morning.”

The butler knew all too well that Marcus Hanger had stood his sister up for several days, using his duties as an excuse.

Everyone in the household knew the Hanger siblings had a complicated love-hate relationship. And the butler, who had helped raise them both since childhood, knew this better than anyone. So while the lady’s words were sharp, he also knew she would never truly harm the young master.

In fact, he was secretly hoping the now-married lady might lift her brother’s spirits, which had sunk noticeably in recent days. Gloria stood before the second-largest room in the house.

“Wasn’t this Father’s old room? Marcus is using this now?”

“Since last summer.”

“Hah. So after all that grand talk, he is planning to leave everything to Marcus. Marcus!”

She stormed in with a shout.

Inside sat her younger brother—his face now sharper than before, familiar yet distant. Standing beside him was another familiar figure: his secretary. The man gave a polite bow. Gloria ignored Logan and marched up to the desk, scowling.

"Just how much did you tell them we’d donate? Thanks to you, I got an earful from Her Majesty today!"

"You were planning to give something, though."

Marcus replied offhandedly, flipping through his ledger. Gloria nearly smacked his forehead, but barely held herself back.

As much as she wanted to treat him like a thirteen-year-old, he was well over thirty now.

Besides, she was a lady with three children herself.

But then again, all three of Gloria’s kids were boys. And anyone who raised rowdy boys knew that the mothers' voices tend to be thunderous—and Gloria's voice was three times that.

“Marcus Hanger!”

“Shut it. Speak more quietly, will you?”

Apparently even Marcus couldn’t withstand that voice. He winced, covered his ears, and finally looked at her. Gloria scoffed coldly, arms crossed.

“Of course I wasn’t going to refuse entirely. It is the king’s pet project, after all. But you could’ve at least told me what amount you had in mind! Thanks to you, I had to play a guessing game with the queen all afternoon!”

For years now, the king had been obsessed with holding a world exposition. Ever since the kingdom opened a route to the New World, he’d been desperate to turn it into a foothold against the old continental powers.

But the king had neither the funds nor the resources. The nobility opposed everything he did and dismissed the exposition as some lowly merchant’s ambition.

Which meant House Hanger had no choice but to become his most loyal supporter.

Financially—and politically.

Of course, Marcus couldn’t possibly shoulder all the costs himself, so he roped in a few merchant families envious of the Hanger family’s influence. Among them was the Deveres family, well known for their jewelry business. It helped that his sister had married into the family and now played the role of its matron.

However, barely anyone had a grasp on the full budget for the exposition. Gloria was nearly beside herself with rage over her brother, who hadn’t shown his face in days.

If the King had just hinted at how much he expected from the Deveres family, she could have handled the negotiations and settled everything. But in the absence of that figure, she was stuck, going back and forth in a fruitless tug-of-war with the Queen. The money she reluctantly forked over today wasn’t enough to make the Deveres family stagger, but it was enough to make Gloria think she’d need to cut back on dress orders for a while.

“How much did you give, then?”

Gloria rolled her eyes and held up two fingers. Marcus sighed through his nose.

“You got swindled.”

“What?! Damn it! This is all your fault!”

“Don’t lie. That’s exactly the amount His Majesty wanted. Her Majesty turned out to be surprisingly modest.”

She rolled her eyes again, then cautiously raised one more finger. Marcus lifted an eyebrow.

“…Didn’t you say two?”

“It was actually three.”

“Sounds like Her Majesty wanted a new dress. She could pass for a merchant. Shame to waste that talent. She pocketed quite the cut, didn’t she?”

“Damn it all!”

Gloria ruffled her luxurious hair and plopped down into a single-seat sofa in the corner of Marcus’s room.

She cursed—boldly but not rebelliously—at the royal couple who, while never laying a finger on tax-exempt nobles, were ever tightening the leash on the merchant class. Marcus appeared weary.

“So, you came all this way just to complain?”

“Damn right I did! I’ve been dropping by for a whole week and couldn’t even catch a glimpse of your nose!”

“A week? That’s a lie. I was at the estate a week ago.”

Gloria bared her teeth.

“You proud of that?”

“Seems like Lord Deveres isn’t back yet, if you’re coming all the way to the palace.”

“My husband, unlike someone, is dependable to a fault. Busy all 365 days of the year.”

At that, Marcus shut his mouth. Logan glanced vaguely in Gloria’s direction. She glared at him. What? What’s your problem? Did I say something wrong? Logan subtly shook his head and folded his hands again.

She knew the truth.

Her brother had been managing the Hanger family’s affairs single-handedly for the past three years. Their father, Archibald Hanger, had let Marcus live freely up until that infamous incident. After that, he didn’t hold back. When Marcus was home, he was worked to the bone from morning until night. If we’re talking about diligence, he was no less “dutiful” than her husband.

But he would still vanish for days, sometimes over a month. Gloria knew why. Her brother was searching for someone—a woman who had disappeared without a trace.

Gloria had nearly fainted when she heard that Marcus had gotten married while on vacation in Cliff. Then, seeing him return without a wife by his side, she’d nearly fainted again.

Rumor had it her brother, already notorious for strange behavior in the capital, had gone and made a real mess of things in Cliff. He’d seduced a virtuous young woman, staged a fake marriage, and even slept with her before marriage, ruining her reputation. Naturally, the woman couldn’t trust Marcus and ran away to avoid further entanglement with the Hanger family.

No one outside the family knew, of course. But Archibald Hanger had decided from that day onward not to indulge his beloved son’s antics any longer. When he’d first heard Marcus had gotten married, he’d been so thrilled that he revised his will. But after all that, he never changed it back. And since it had already been signed and notarized by His Majesty himself, revising it would inevitably stir up scandal over what Marcus had done.

It wasn’t just embarrassing. With the Hanger heir involved in something like that, it was only natural the family business’s reputation would plummet if word got out. Not to mention the Deveres family, tied to them by marriage, would also take a hit.

In the end, it was Gloria who proposed a compromise to her father and brother, who were ready to shout from every rooftop to find the woman. They would say the wife was in frail health, resting in seclusion, and Marcus would make regular visits to see her.

And so, her brother traveled the country, searching for the woman who had left him behind.

“This one wasn’t it either? Are there really that many beautiful blonde teenage girls out there…?”

A woman in her mid-thirties with brown hair and a blonde daughter. The daughter had strikingly blue eyes and was so beautiful, one glance was unforgettable. On top of that, her behavior wasn’t exactly ordinary. While pretty blonde girls might seem common at first glance, they all thought that this particular combination was quite rare.

Turns out, it wasn’t as rare as they’d thought.

This time, Marcus had gone to a small city a day’s travel from the capital. He’d heard there was a stunning blonde girl in her late teens living there with her mother and had rushed over. But once again, it turned out to be nothing.

“She was pretty, but she had a husband.”

“She might have remarried, you know.”

“…It wasn’t her.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

Gloria shrugged. Marcus looked at her with bloodshot eyes.

“The diamond?”

“If I had seen it, don’t you think I’d have told you first? No. Diamonds that big don’t just show up.”

“She might’ve broken it up…”

“You idiot. How many times do I have to tell you? Breaking a diamond only lowers its value. And even if it’s broken up, you still need to have it cut. All the jewelers in the country are under our thumb—do you think we wouldn’t notice?”

Marcus’s face darkened. Gloria, repeating the same conversation for the hundredth time, grew somber as well. Marcus’s fake wife—the woman who vanished—had disappeared with a 122-carat diamond he had given her.

While searching for a woman with a daughter matching that description, Marcus had asked his sister to alert him if a diamond of that size ever surfaced. The Deveres family was the perfect ally for that kind of hunt, so Gloria had readily agreed.

Madam Noskina had indeed bestowed the woman some jewelry, but it wasn’t nearly enough to sustain two women with no home for several years. So everyone believed she would eventually try to sell the diamond.

Three years passed like that.

Marcus even placed a bounty on Madam Noskina’s jewelry, but none of it ever turned up.

Gloria looked at her brother and sighed. The lines around his eyes, once etched deep from constant smiling, had vanished without a trace. The handsome, well-kept young man who had always appeared so lovable was gone, replaced by a man who was meticulous, sharp-edged, and weary.

It wasn’t just his face. Her once chatty brother had grown quiet. No matter what she said, his responses were gloom-filled. When society heard he had married, everyone scrambled to find the dashing eccentric nobleman they once knew—but the cheerful Marcus they remembered was gone.

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