I Became the Daughter of a Disgraced Duke - Chapter 23

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 22
“Then why did you come looking for me!”
Bang!
Lightning crashed down from the ceiling, but Cassian simply leaned back and dodged it with ease.
Genovion, made only angrier by this display, ground his teeth.
Left to his own devices, he would have liked nothing more than to fry the man alive with that bolt.
‘Hold on.’
If he incinerated him at home, disposing of the body would be troublesome, and destroying the evidence would be messy.
More than that, if murder came to light, he’d lose any claim to Cassian’s title.
So the man had to die in the streets.
Genovion summoned his patience and replied.
“If there’s any connection, it’d be to Divine Power. Magic belongs to the realm of miracles, but the Divine belongs to the realm of the soul.”
“Then she’s a child of the Three Great Families?”
The Three Great Families referred to the sacred lineages that guarded the Divine Temple.
Blessed by the goddess, they possessed Divine Power denser than that of mere priests, and some even wielded extraordinary abilities.
It was a reasonable enough question, though Genovion let out a bitter laugh.
His voice turned cruelly cold.
“What, would you give up if she were from the Three Great Families? Cassian Calypso. Make up your mind. Are you her patron, or are you trying to substitute yourself for your daughter? Or do you actually intend to raise her as your true child? The future of a promising girl hangs on your answer.”
……
“One person made unhappy by you is enough for me.”
Cassian bit his lip. The words left no room for rebuttal, which only stung more.
Genovion cut through his silence with a final proclamation.
“You’ve seen what you came to see. Get out.”
“Let me ask one last thing. Henrietta—how is she getting on?”
Henrietta Balduer.
The woman Cassian had loved, the one who had borne his niece.
Genovion’s blue eyes fixed on him steadily.
His brother, whom he wished dead with every fiber of his being, yet whom he loved enough to die for.
And so the words would not come easily.
This was the first time Cassian had ever asked about that woman’s circumstances.
Genovion deliberated for a moment before answering.
* * *
“(Mister? Do you happen to know my daddy?)”
“What’s that? Little one, are you lost? Where’s your mother?”
Understanding is one thing; speaking is another—and oh, how cruel it was to be caught between them.
After much wracking of her mind, she managed to form a sentence.
“My daddy!”
A sentence… perhaps?
“Did you get separated from your father? Where did you lose him?”
“(I don’t know.)”
She shook her head at the man.
“(My daddy’s name is……)”
* * *
When Cassian returned home, he found the bed empty and his eyes began to blink rapidly.
Number one Casanova in the Capital, voted by its women.
The sexiest man, ranked first.
The most exquisitely decadent, first place.
Such a man—yet in this moment, his face was stupider than anyone’s could ever be.
“Where’s the child?”
The time was eleven-thirty in the morning.
No matter how much a child loves to sleep, she should be awake by now.
Cassian checked the guest room.
Cold. Empty.
The bathroom?
Bone dry—not a drop of moisture anywhere.
The garden was the same.
The bare earth bore not a single footprint.
“No, no, no—impossible!”
The child was gone.
Cassian grabbed his head and began to think.
Think, Cassian!
You didn’t pick up something other than the child in a drunken stupor yesterday, did you?
He retraced the events of the previous day.
He’d carried the child out, laid her on the bed, slept on the sofa, woken in the middle of the night to use the washroom, quietly checked if she was sleeping soundly, crouched beside her listening to her breathing, then collapsed on the floor and didn’t wake until dawn.
‘I definitely brought her back…?’
Cassian’s face drained of color.
The child wasn’t on the sofa, wasn’t even under it.
Barefoot, Cassian tore from the house and ran to the tavern.
It was morning, so the tavern was still closed.
Bang! Bang!
“Hey, Tavern Owner! Wake up! Hey!”
As he continued pounding the door, the owner who lived on the tavern’s second floor opened a window.
“You crazy? It’s still morning!”
“The kid who came with me yesterday—didn’t she come back?”
“Ha. You bolted with her clinging to you. Why are you looking for her here?”
Screech! Bang!
The owner shut the window roughly and disappeared.
He’d only left the house an hour ago—there was no way the child could vanish in that time.
Five years old was old enough to guard a house and get into plenty of mischief.
‘Where on earth could she have gone?’
Anxiety crawling up his spine, Cassian rushed to Police Headquarters, but they had no reports of a lost child.
“Her name is Iris, and she’s a little girl who looks like me.”
“That little girl from before?”
“Since she’s my daughter, if anyone brings her here, hold onto her tight. If you lose her again through careless management, I’ll kill you all.”
Flashing the eyes of a war hero—something he hadn’t done in ages—Cassian decided to check the Back Alley, which was famous throughout the Capital as a cesspit.
It was a place he’d often collapsed and slept in when drunk, so it was worth a look.
There, he recognized the faces.
Human traffickers notorious in the underworld for their depravity.
A dark-haired child was in their clutches.
In that instant, Cassian felt the top of his head blow off.
‘Those bastards would dare…!’
Cassian lunged at the traffickers, grabbed the child, and checked her face.
“Oh.”
Not the child he was looking for. The traffickers scowled and looked Cassian up and down.
“What?”
“I’m her uncle. Where are you taking my niece?”
“Uncle, my foot. Don’t play hero over some orphan with no family. Just move along.”
“You call this heroism? There’s another brat in that cart over there.”
A small sound came from inside the cargo wagon he’d glanced at.
When Cassian moved to check it, the traffickers blocked his path.
“Step aside. I’m looking for a child.”
“Leave while I’m being polite.”
As the trafficker reached to snatch the child from Cassian’s arms, Cassian flicked him hard on the forehead.
There was a wet cracking sound.
“Ow! My head! It’s breaking!”
The trafficker clutched his skull and rolled around on the ground.
Cassian shoved the writhing man aside with his foot.
“I warned you to get out of the way, didn’t I?”
“You bastard!”
The others drew blades, but Cassian dispatched them easily.
To someone who’d killed monsters that tore men apart, Back Alley thugs were nothing.
Two more wet cracks sounded, and the nuisances disappeared.
Creak.
He opened the wagon door to find children huddled inside.
Their terrified eyes fixed on Cassian at once.
“Ah.”
Unfortunately, the child he was looking for wasn’t in the wagon.
“Damn.”
With legs that short, where could she possibly have run off to that he wouldn’t find her here either?
Life truly wasn’t easy.
Cassian, lost in brooding thoughts about life, imagined what would happen if the child was wrong.
The moment he considered that unmet responsibilities could anchor him to a life half-lived, the world tilted beneath him, and phantom bottles of liquor blurred past his vision in a nauseating streak.
Then came a hollow ache. Loss. Solitude. A suffocating emptiness. And grief.
The kind that nothing could undo—the same devastation he’d known when Iris was lost.
For an instant, his vision flickered as if the lights were failing.
The vertigo deepened until his breath caught in his throat.
Cassian swallowed the sensation down, burying it beneath his conscious mind.
It was nothing. The child’s mother had probably come looking for her, that’s all.
‘Better off with her than with me.’
He’d had a taste of what it felt like to have Iris back alive, however briefly, playing house with a child. That would have to be enough.
‘Genovion was right. I need to get clear on my course.’
That child wasn’t Iris.
Could never be Iris.
Support her?
The very word was a cruel joke.
Mountains of debt, interest that exceeded another family’s living expenses—
A wreck of a man drowning in alcohol and smoke had no business raising anyone.
Cassian hauled the trafficker up from the ground where he lay sprawled.
Pat. Pat.
He dusted off the man’s clothes and then snapped his fingers sharply in front of the man’s face, who still clutched his head and whimpered.
“Listen. Hey. Get your head together, now.”
“Y-yes? Why are you—I think my forehead’s cracked. I need to go to a hospital, please?”
“You can do that later. Right now you’re going to Police Headquarters and turning yourself in for the kidnappings. If you run, I’ll find you and end you.”
“W-what?”
In other words, turn yourself in.
“What? You can’t do it? Is that all you’re good for?”
“I, well……”
“Can you do this, or not?”
“Y-yes. I can.”
“Then get going and come back. If you don’t, I’ll hunt you down and take care of things permanently.”
“Y-yes, yes, okay!”
The trafficker bolted from the alley at Cassian’s command.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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