The Crown I Will Take From You - Chapter 225

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Part 2, Chapter 72

Virna’s gaze moved past Catherine to stare at Raju on the platform.

Raju was kneeling, gasping for breath.

Blood dripped like sweat from his forehead, torn by a misplaced whip strike.

“Mother may have forgotten while consorting with that lowly bastard, but I haven’t. I am Father’s, Joaquin Claudio’s one and only daughter.”

Virna, who had been glaring at him with disgust, let out a rough breath.

Then she turned her head to glare straight at her mother. Her voice was filled with anger and venom.

“The noble royalty of this nation. So naturally, as his daughter, I must take revenge! I’ll show Father clearly the moment that bastard’s breath stops—”

“Aaaaah! You foolish thing!”

Catherine clutched her head.

“Joaquin is not your real father! Raju, that man over there is your real father!”

Her sharp voice cut through the sky.

“You are! Roberto Raju’s daughter! Claudio is your adoptive father! Your real father is that man dying over there!”

Catherine felt like she was losing her mind.

The surging resentment lifted her up from where she had collapsed helplessly.

Forgetting the countless people gathered here, she grabbed her daughter’s shoulders and screamed.

“What, what nonsense…”

Virna stepped back, looking at her mother with confused eyes.

“Because of you, everything is ruined! Everything we’ve hidden for you, all the efforts he made for you—you’ve trampled it all!”

She couldn’t believe it.

That she had cherished such a thing so carefully, as if it would fly away in the wind.

That she had raised this beast who stabbed the father who had sacrificed love and youth to care for her all this time!

“How have we lived for you! How much Robi cherished you!”

Now Catherine glared at Virna as if she would kill her.

Her tear-stained eyes were full of hatred and disappointment toward her daughter.

“That man’s execution is all because of you. Everything was done to make you, his daughter, respectable, so you wouldn’t bow your head to anyone. And you reported it? Even a demon wouldn’t be more vile than you!”

When Catherine heard the lion’s words that Raju had embezzled the Emperor’s ledgers, she finally realized.

Where the count, who had helped them financially and materially even after Claudio’s failed rebellion collapsed, had obtained all that funding.

Yes, her lover was not a god.

Catherine shouldn’t have just relied on him blindly either.

‘I should have asked him. Whether he was overexerting himself. Whether he was making dangerous choices because of us.’

Instead of parasitically feeding off his lifeblood.

Not like her daughter who shamelessly tried to devour him even after that!

“No, it’s a lie.”

Virna shook her head.

Her aimlessly trembling voice was close to a whisper.

“No, that can’t be. It’s a lie. You’re trying to deceive me! You deceivers!”

Then she bit her lips tightly and shouted toward the crowd.

“I am a Claudio! Virna Claudio! Don’t insult my father!”

A handful of fear was mixed in that voice that burst out like a scream.

That’s when it happened.

“Virna, cough! The reason you could get your hands on the ledger!”

Raju let out a scream-like shout.

Even while bloodied from the whipping, he glared at Virna with bloodshot eyes.

“Was because it was enchanted to only open with my blood! The ledger itself! Is proof that you’re my daughter!”

Even as he curled up in pain, he kept his gaze fixed on Virna.

“Even if you deny me, you’re my daughter! That alone, cough! Is a truth even God cannot deny!”

Between his trembling, blood-stained lips, the cry that burst forth contained both irrepressible anger and affection.

“Virna! I came here for you. To stay by your side and protect you, how much… But you did this to me…”

The sharp whip flew down on him.

Raju, contorted by unbearable pain, gritted his teeth and swallowed his scream.

He wouldn’t leave this place alive.

So there was nothing left to hesitate about.

“You repay this father’s love with death! Ungrateful thing! You will never find peace even in death!”

Raju, who had spat out his final curse toward his daughter, could no longer endure and collapsed with a thud.

“Are you insane? Shut up! Don’t slander me with such nonsense. There are so many people here… How dare you, me, how dare someone like you!”

Virna’s entire body stiffened with anger and shock.

She couldn’t handle the rock-like confusion Raju had thrown at her.

“M-Mother.”

Virna’s eyes instinctively sought Catherine.

Like a child seeking its mother in danger, it was a manifestation of wanting to depend on her mother.

Her eyes were filled with shock and denial.

Her trembling hands fumbled through the air and grabbed Catherine’s arm.

She gripped Catherine’s arm so fiercely that her five fingers seemed to dig into the flesh.

“Mother… please answer me. It’s a lie, right? My real father… it’s not him.”

Catherine looked down at Virna’s hand with a hardened face.

She shook off her daughter’s hand.

She pushed it away so violently that Virna staggered and lost her balance.

“No matter how you deny it, the fact that you are the fruit of our adultery and a demon who reported and killed your own father with your own hands will never be erased!”

Catherine’s voice, breathing roughly as she spat out the words, was full of venom.

To her, Virna was no longer a daughter.

She was just a murderer who killed her lover, and an enemy who had destroyed Catherine’s dreams, love, and entire life.

“M-Mother…”

Virna was speechless at the vivid hatred in her mother’s eyes, who wanted to stab and kill her own heart.

The crowd gathered here was equally shocked.

As if they couldn’t believe it, their gazes busily moved between Catherine and Virna, and Raju on the platform.

“So, Princess Claudia, who was supposed to be Joaquin’s daughter, was actually that bastard’s daughter?”

The square, which had been silent for a moment, immediately began to stir all at once.

Excited voices burst out from various places.

“Ah! That girl’s middle name is Robi! Roberto Raju! Indeed, they were father and daughter!”

The confessions of the two lovers, Catherine and Raju, enlightened the people’s minds like lights turning on one by one in their heads.

“I wondered why Raju was so devoted to that girl… Right! It wouldn’t make sense unless they were blood relatives!”

“Looking again, she does resemble her father somewhat?! Now everything makes sense!”

Laughter and curses burst out from everyone without exception, creating an even more chaotic atmosphere.

The crowd’s anger was directed at all three people.

“How can that woman Catherine be so shameless! Raising a daughter born from adultery like a cuckoo and still acting noble as a duchess?”

“What about Raju! After all that, to kill the person who raised his daughter—is that even human? No matter how much he deserved to die, Joaquin must be so wronged he’d break out of his grave!”

However, it was Virna who was most painfully stung by that criticism.

“She acted so high and mighty as royalty, looking down on people, but her own blood was that of a lowly commoner? Such a mongrel was trampling on us claiming to be nobility! Does this make sense?”

“Everyone remembers how that girl oppressed and tormented our Princess with the Regent’s power, right? What shamelessness does she have to lift her head!”

The Valdinians had not forgotten the sorrow that the powerless Princess Medeia had suffered three years ago because of them.

Even the lovely and cunning Princess Claudia’s behavior of taking even the Princess’s dress for a banquet.

“If the Regent’s rebellion had succeeded, we would have lived serving that dirty blood as our Princess!”

“There’s a limit to treating us like dogs and pigs! Executioners! Don’t stop the whipping! We cannot let that criminal who mocked our people and defiled the Imperial bloodline go!”

The angry voices of the Valdinians grew louder and louder.

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