My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 73

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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 73
Chapter 8. Awakening (3)
Evandor did not leverage his father’s name to corner her.
And that was how she knew he meant it.
“What’s always mattered to me is you… and Liam.”
Celia’s head bowed as she spoke haltingly.
Even as she recognized that something had gone terribly wrong, the words tumbled out like instinct—strange and twisted on her tongue. A sensation of collapsing inward, as though her chest were caving in on itself.
“Right. That’s how it should be. So find the documents quickly, divorce once father rewards you, and come back to Brickwell.”
Celia’s body went rigid as she lifted her head.
“Divorce?”
“We put you there in the first place to find the Treason Evidence. If the objective’s achieved, you come home.”
Her mind swam.
Celia shook her head as though to clear it, her jaw clenching.
“That doesn’t make sense. Father would permit my divorce? That’s impossible. I need to ask him directly.”
“Wait, please! Sister!”
Evandor grabbed her arm to stop her.
“This is what Liam told me!”
Evandor’s voice cracked across the room.
Celia’s eyes widened as she turned to face him.
“Liam overheard it by chance during an evening walk. Father’s plan was to have you divorced once we found the Logistics Consignment Document.”
No, that couldn’t be—
‘So the marriage itself was contingent on divorce from the start?’
Hearing this for the first time, her pupils trembled. A situation she had never once considered thrust her into bewilderment.
Just as they both moved to speak, a knock cut through the hallway’s tension like a blade.
“Young Master, Young Mistress.”
Evandor spoke in Celia’s stead while she still caught her breath.
“What is it?”
And then came words like thunder, utterly unforeseen.
“The Young Marquess of Windmere has arrived.”
A man who had no business being here had come.
A wolf wearing an innocent face, tail wagging as he entered the viper’s nest—where she had tried to kill him, where even now she waited for the chance to strike.
***
“Lucius!”
“Celia.”
Their voices nearly overlapped.
Without a moment to think, Celia descended the stairs. The hem of her dress swept wildly. Evandor, leaning against the railing, let out a sharp scoff at the sight, but Celia had no mind to register even that.
“What are you doing here!”
She hurled the words between ragged breaths.
“I happened to be passing nearby, so I came to fetch you.”
After pushing him away so forcefully, and now he said he came to pick her up?
Was he out of his mind?
‘Out of his mind. Right.’
Celia shook her head and seized his wrist, pulling him along.
“Come with me.”
“Celia?”
“We’re leaving right now.”
“What? Is there some reason for such urgency?”
Lucius’s voice remained gentle. Cursing his willful ignorance and faulty memory, Celia opened her mouth wide.
“It’s just…!”
Because we’re not an ordinary couple!
Because Brickwell is waiting for the moment your pristine neck snaps in two.
But Lucius, unaware of such circumstances, saw only the devoted husband coming to fetch his wife from her family home.
“I’d like to pay my respects to the Duke.”
“Mis…”
—guided.
She clapped a hand over her own mouth in panic.
Either he hadn’t heard the slip, or he chose not to—he merely looked down at her with his usual expression. It was an open, innocent face utterly at odds with the woman who had been quarreling fiercely with Evandor moments before.
“…You know as well as I do that the relations between our houses were strained.”
“I’ve heard as much.”
Lucius nodded matter-of-factly.
“But that was in the past. We’ve reconciled now, and we’ve even married, haven’t we?”
The remark was so reasonable it only highlighted his naïveté—the innocence of a man who understood nothing.
“If it wouldn’t be presumptuous, I’d like to pay my regards. Will the Duke be within?”
“Not today. Let’s just go.”
“But that wouldn’t be proper.”
“Lucius.”
“Celia.”
…
It was around then that Celia began to notice something odd.
He was being persistent.
The Lucius she knew would have taken a step back if she said she disliked something. But now he pressed his agenda upon her with an oddness that bordered on compulsion.
“Come to think of it, I’ve never properly paid my respects before.”
He guided his hand from her forearm to her elbow.
“Won’t you tell him I wish to pay them?”
That was when it happened.
“Ah… damn it.”
A chill cut through the railing above, and the silence turned strange.
Lucius and Celia both looked upward at once.
“Get out.”
Evandor descended the stairs, hand gripping the railing, his gaze turned to ice.
Lucius’s eyelids rose slowly, as though he’d been expecting exactly this.
“…That’s novel. The first greeting like that—I find it quite interesting.”
“What business do you have in someone else’s home? Do you want our knights to drag you out like a dog?”
Even as Evandor twisted his mouth in derision, Lucius did not yield.
“I’d welcome it, if that were possible.”
He lowered his arm and offered himself up, the arrogance and hubris of a man who knew they would do no such thing.
Evandor’s eyes narrowed to slits.
Lucius swept the surroundings once—the corridors of the Duke’s Estate, the servants frozen in tension, and Evandor, who made no effort to hide his animosity.
Then he murmured quietly.
“Something is strange.”
“…What is?”
“I came only to fetch Celia.”
His gaze drifted slowly back to Evandor.
“Yet none of your reactions unfold as I anticipated.”
Lucius took a measured step forward.
“Are you angry because I’ve taken your sister, just as they are?”
Celia didn’t hear it, but Evandor heard every word.
The lazy ease that had settled over him evaporated. His gaze, as though pricked by something sharp, suddenly blazed and fixed on Lucius.
“You…!”
Evandor’s patience, much like Celia’s, was barely longer than a mouse’s tail, gathered though it might be.
His shoulders trembled as his teeth ground together.
“Lucius Windmere!”
“Evandor Brickwell!”
Evandor’s hand flew forward by reflex at nearly the same instant Celia opened her mouth to stop him.
“Don’t you dare!”
Her voice split the hallway like a whip.
Lucius stepped back, and Evandor’s fist froze midair, his eyes blazing. In the moment both men hesitated, she stepped between them and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Want to settle this with fists like some common ruffian? Fine by me—leave Brickwell. Then you can live however you want.”
“Tch… you and your habit of running your mouth.”
“Not just me.”
As she pressed her weight down on his shoulder, Evandor’s face contorted and he reached for her wrist—or tried to. Lucius’s hand cut across the gap between them, intercepting his.
“Even so, this isn’t right.”
But that was precisely what rubbed Evandor the wrong way.
“This is our family matter.”
“It concerns my wife.”
What he didn’t know was that this was Evandor’s signal to yield one move—a concession to Celia.
Evandor’s gaze shifted at an angle. His eyes, holding something of a predator’s gleam, flashed with tension.
Then his mouth opened, worn patience pouring out.
“Want to know the truth?”
“You, don’t…!”
Celia threw herself in front of Evandor, but he was unmoved.
“You hated your sister terribly!”
A single sentence shook the corridor.
Celia would have given anything to grab her own head and lash his back.
Seeing him like this, she understood the downside of his fiery temper all too well. Even as that belated realization struck, her feet remained rooted to the spot.
“You despised my sister, didn’t you? Persistently, darkly obsessed—and I told you to hate me instead, didn’t I!”
The fragment of their past, which Celia herself had not known, spilled from Evandor’s lips—and it caught her feet as surely as chains.
Lucius had? Celia flinched, exhaling sharply, when—
“So?”
Two eyes of the same light turned toward Lucius in unison.
Before she could speak, Lucius’s hand found Celia’s waist, drawing her gently toward him. His arm crossed her torso, caging her against his body.
“What of it?”
Evandor went rigid. Celia’s breath caught.
“I have no intention of letting her go.”

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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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