My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 10
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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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Chapter 10
Chapter 1. Fracture (10)
His voice was heavy with sleep, as lazy as the morning sun, and his hair lay disheveled as though he’d never touched a comb—details that made her eyes widen.
“You came here looking like that?”
His shirt was buttoned so carelessly that the front gaped open across his chest.
He rubbed his tired, reddened eyes and rolled his shoulders slowly.
“I’m not going anywhere. What does it matter?”
“Evandor, are you out of your mind? This place is crawling with House of Windmere people. How could you walk in here looking like this, with so many eyes ready to find fault?”
Evandor touched his earlobe with a mocking smirk.
“Fault? How dare they. What are a few servants groveling beneath Windmere’s feet to criticize me—the next heir to House of Brickwell?”
Celia glared at her foolish brother at his arrogant words.
He stepped closer now, crossing his arms.
His blue eyes swept over Celia once, then landed on the table. Unfinished letters lay fully displayed before him.
“Writing to Father? Once you’re done, give them to me. I’ll deliver them when I return.”
If he didn’t lose them along the way, that would be a miracle.
But if she said that aloud, he really might lose them, so Celia simply nodded. Evandor surveyed her tidy sitting room with a slow, appreciative gaze.
Then he spoke in a voice tinged with excitement.
“You’ve furnished it exactly like Brickwell’s.”
“Of course I have. I’m a Brickwell woman.”
“Being in a familiar space like this, doing this with you since morning—it feels like old times.”
Celia’s eyes turned sharp.
Evandor laughed and stepped back, hands raised in mock surrender.
“No, no, I didn’t come here to fight. I came because I have something to tell you.”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully with one finger.
“Something to tell me?”
“Yes, something I need to say.”
Evandor, who had been lounging contentedly in the morning sunlight, erased his smile. He placed a hand on the table where she sat and leaned his upper body down toward her.
As his shadow fell over her head, Celia opened her mouth to speak, but Evandor didn’t give her the chance.
“Tell me—what are you hiding from me right now?”
Celia froze.
The moment her pen stopped moving, Evandor’s gaze—which had been fixed on her face—shifted to her motionless hand.
“You should tell me. I’m going to report everything that happened in Windmere to Father anyway, and this conversation will be included in that report. Will you be alright with that? With Father finding out that you’re hiding some major secret about Lucius and refusing to speak?”
Had Evandor noticed?
That something had happened to Lucius.
‘…There’s nothing left to hide.’
Celia carried the name of Windmere, but she would always be Brickwell.
They said that once a woman married, she became a daughter of that house. But the house where she was born and raised was far away.
They were always saying that blood couldn’t lie, that you couldn’t steal your roots—but did a mere signature on a marriage contract truly change your nature?
So there was nothing she couldn’t tell.
Because there was no loyalty to uphold between herself and Lucius.
If anything, she wanted him destroyed. She could find no reason to defend him, not even in betraying her family—her mind had turned over every possibility and found none.
At last, Celia’s lips parted.
As she spoke, Evandor’s playful smile faded. His eyes, which had been calm as windless water, slowly widened. The tranquil pupils began to ripple with a terrible, delighted disturbance at this new knowledge.
He shot to his feet.
“This is an opportunity, Celia.”
He strode toward her with long steps and spread his arms wide, pressing his palms down on her shoulders with a joyful cry.
She tried to brush his hands away, but Evandor tightened his grip.
She moved to push at his wrist, but her own hand was caught instead. Then, shocking words spilled from Evandor’s lips.
“It’s Father’s order. Lucius has evidence that could destroy Brickwell. Find it and bring it to us.”
At this command, delivered as though it were obvious, Celia’s eyes narrowed in fury.
Evandor’s laughter deepened at the sharp, yearning glare she turned upon him.
“You’re forever the eldest daughter of Brickwell, the only lady we have. Shouldn’t you be doing what you can for the house?”
Evandor—who had inherited one measure of Father’s nature and another of Grandfather’s bearing—mimicked their tone of voice as he tried to stand over her.
“If you want to move me, then tell me first: what is this evidence that Lucius has—the thing that could destroy Brickwell?”
“Hmm.”
As though the moment had finally come, he paced the room restlessly. His heels clicked against the floor in a brisk, cheerful rhythm.
One might have worried that dust was rising from the floorboards that the servants cleaned and polished every day.
After a long moment of thought, he finally began.
“The reason Father suddenly made peace with Windmere in the first place—the reason he used that as a pretext to provide patronage to the gentry and merchant classes, only to marry you to the spawn of a house chasing nothing but profit—all of it was because of this.”
Celia’s eyes turned cold and distant.
As she set the stage for him to speak, Evandor’s voice lowered.
“Eight years ago, Father briefly lost his judgment and invested in a Western Colonial Region defense contract. You remember, don’t you? The incident called the Black Dawn.”
Of course she remembered.
It had overturned the entire established order.
At the time, an armed militia had been established in the Western Colonial Region. Operating under the guise of colonial protection, they were actually a faction that sought to foment division within the empire and orchestrate a coup.
Traitors, in a word.
Celia’s hands, which rarely trembled over anything, began to shake violently.
Her heart, which she thought had been tempered through years of witnessing incomprehensible horrors, now beat like that of a newborn chick—frantic and raw.
“Father quickly liquidated the funds and destroyed all evidence—ledgers, documents, and the silence of everyone involved.”
He tapped the table in front of her rhythmically, speaking with chilling precision.
“But it wasn’t gone. Someone stole a single Logistics Consignment Document bearing Father’s signature and seal. And guess who?”
Smart or not, the answer was already obvious in this situation.
“Surely not Lucius?”
“Yes.”
His answer came without the slightest hesitation.
“I don’t know why that bastard hasn’t exposed it yet. Thanks to that, we’ve had breathing room, but because of it we’ve had to swallow this absurd reconciliation, and now Father crawls before Windmere like he never did before. Will you keep watching that?”
Every shred of honor and position they had built would inevitably crumble.
Every conceivable disaster was already playing out in her mind.
“So while that bastard is confused and has lost his memories, try to get close to him. Become someone he’ll allow into his study, his bedchamber, anywhere and anytime. Eventually, the opportunity to find that document will come.”
The taste of blood bloomed in Celia’s mouth. She had bitten the inside of her cheek so hard that the soft flesh hung ragged.
“Even if Lucius has lost his memory, you know his character as well as I do. He’s meticulous. He would never let me access his intimate spaces.”
“He’s lost his mind, isn’t he? Who knows, maybe he’ll let you in if you throw a tantrum.”
The words were almost unbearable to hear.
Backed by Father, Evandor was treating her like a tool.
“Or try pillow talk in his bedroom.”
That was when the grip on her hand suddenly loosened.
Her expression became one of disbelief as she looked up at Evandor. As her face crumpled, he leaned in closer.
“Surely you’re not about to cry weakness because you can’t manipulate one brain-damaged man?”
He laughed softly near her ear.
“After all, you’re the one who faked the First Night Ceremony out of fear on your wedding night.”
Evandor’s face twisted into something wrong.
His eyes narrowed coldly to half-mast, and the corner of his mouth curled into a slow, cruel smile. That strange, malformed laughter pierced into Celia, who was already uncomfortable.
A quiet, hardened stare—eyes that didn’t move, fixed steadily on their target.
“But what will you do now? You’re the one who pretended to have gotten through the First Night Ceremony, only to be exposed before the priests, and then had it redone! How will you claim any propriety now?”
His cruel grip wrenched her arm upward.
“Men are stupid enough that if you flatter them a little, they’ll lay everything they have at your feet—their bodies, their minds, whatever. You should use something to help Brickwell, shouldn’t you?”
A brutal command was thrust before her eyes.
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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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