Chapter 17: 17

“We brought her.”

The knights who were dragging me away without saying a word opened their mouths after kneeling down in front of a middle-aged man waiting in the room.

I looked up and tried to identify the man who must have planned all of this.

As expected.

He was the aristocratic man I met on the road.

A thoughtful aristocrat who gave me gold coins as if to show mercy and even sent a knight with me saying that the road was dangerous.

No, the kidnapper who made me think so.

From deep down, unfairness surged.

“……why are you doing this to me?”

I asked in a trembling voice, a mixture of anger and fear.

“Hmm.”

Instead of answering my question, the nobleman looked at my messed up appearance and seemed to think of me as an impulse purchase.

“Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll be quiet, so please let me go home.”

I knelt down and begged. I lowered myself to the point of servility, but his pride was not hurt at all.

I was just begging him to let me go safely.

I didn’t know what this guy wanted, I was a commoner girl with nothing, so I cried and begged him to let me go..

However

“As expected, you look alike.”

The satisfied voice dampened my feeble hope that I might be freed.

“You should become my daughter.”

“What?”

“From now on, live as Helena, my dead daughter.”

It was an order.

I didn’t quite understand what the hell he was saying, but I shook my head at the rejection I felt instinctively.

“No, Sir, I don’t want to. I…”

“I heard that your family lives in a small and dirty place like a rat hole.”

Without realizing it, I raised my head.

The aristocratic man, smiled meanly, fiddling with a hunting gun on his lap and continued.

“Should I go for a hunt after a long time?”

I couldn’t resist the threat of him killing my family if I didn’t obey his orders.

Life as Helena’s stand-in was terrible.

The count couple introduced me as ‘the daughter who came back home after recovering her health’.

However, they could not deceive the employees who worked in the mansion.

The employees who knew the situation called me ‘Lady Helena’ on the outside, but on the inside they ignored me.

Their eyes and tone showed that they were displeased that a lowly woman like me had taken over the position of “their lady Helena.”

That was not all.

Employees who disliked me used to tell me, “no matter how much money is spent on your education , you can’t get rid of your lowliness.”

They giggled and spat out swear words so casually.

They rejected me with their whole soul and heart as if they wanted me to be hurt.

There was something else that was unbearable.

The owners of this mansion, Count Larestine and his wife.

The way they treated me was different.

Countess Larestine thought of me as her true daughter.

“Come here, my daughter.”

After the death of her only daughter, the weak Countess, who was unable to come back to her senses, believed that her daughter was still alive.

No matter how many times others told her that Helena was dead, the Countess screamed at them saying that they are lying.

Whenever she saw a girl of Helena’s age or someone resembling her , she often insisted that they were her daughter.

No matter how stubborn she was, Count Larestine could not stand her and gave it to his wife when a girl whom she thought was her daughter appeared.

Just like giving a doll to play with when a child gets upset, just like that.

I wasn’t even the first to go through this.

I was the third.

It means that there were two other stand ins before me who came to this mansion to replace the dead Helena.

Seeing me astonished, the Count laughed and warned.

“They were idiots who couldn’t even do their job properly. They were useless, so there was no need for them to be alive.”

Count Larestine was nothing like his wife.

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He was sane. He was very aware of his daughter’s death, and of course he knew that I was not his dead daughter.

But he was out of his mind in a different direction from his wife.

He was the one who brought me to the Countess who went crazy, saying her dead daughter came back alive.

It was him who blackmailed me by holding my family into hostages, it was him who killed two poor commoners who acted as substitutes for his daughter before me.

“I hate things that don’t do their job properly. So you be careful too. If my wife ever suspects that you’re not Helena then…… .”

Like the two girls before me, I will be erased as if I never existed in the world, he said with a chuckle.

I lowered myself as much as I could in front of him, but inside I trembled with disgust that made me feel like throwing up.

An awful person who doesn’t see people as people.

A human being who regards other humans life as a fly’s life, and who has no natural feelings.

It wasn’t just commoners like me whom he didn’t treat like humans.

To him, everyone else was just a tool. So was his dead daughter Helena, and so was his wife, the Countess.

One day, I happened to overhear why he tried to make a stand-in for Helena.

“I can’t help it. If the fact that her daughter is dead and she has gone mad spreads outside, then she will ruin the family’s name and also I won’t be able to take possession of her property.”

Enormous fortune inherited by Countess Larestine.

That’s why Count Larestine was still courting his mad wife.

It was also the reason why I was dragged here, ruining my peaceful life and the other two innocent commoner girls who were killed .

Money. Because of that, my existence disappeared from the world.

Just like the two unnamed commoner girls before me, only ‘Helena’s stand-in’ remained.

Of course, I, ‘Lyla Violet’, was alive , but no one seemed to remember the existence of real me.

Maybe I was dying. Maybe I was drowning in the fishbowl known as Count Larestine’s mansion… … .

But people are animals of adaptation.

At first, life as Helena was difficult, but I gradually got used to it.

The time when I used to deny the reality, saying it must be a dream before going to bed, disappeared, and when I woke up in the morning, my pillowcase didn’t feel damp anymore.

I was no longer hurt by the gentle ridicule and ignorance of the servants.

Just one thing.

Once I used to think the whole world was dazzlingly bright but now the world reflected in my eyes were achromatic.

Every day was just boring and insensitive.

 The time I spent before being brought here felt like a dream, and even the hope of being able to escape this place was fading away.

Countess Larestine died.

‘Finally!’

Where in the world was such a violent emotion hidden until now?

All throughout the Countess’s funeral, I struggled to contain my laughter.

Still, she was the one who had treated me “like a daughter” for the past three years, so I didn’t want to be rude before leaving.

That was why I kept my seat at the Countess’s funeral.

And when the funeral was finally over.

“Now that the role I have to play here is gone, please send me back.”

I thought this ridiculous play would be over.

I was full of hope that it was finally time to go back to “me” from “Dead Helena’s Stand-in.”

“You’re going back? Who gve you the permission?”

The will of Countess Larestine trampled on my expectations.

“You should stay as Helena until you inherit the inheritance according to my wife’s will.”

I was trapped again in this terrible Larestine mansion.

Countess Larestine left a will before she died.

“All my inheritance will be inherited by my daughter Helena. No one should touch it until she comes of age!”

This alone would not have made Count Larestine so angry.

Because if Helena dies, her only blood, the count, can take all her property.

All he needed to do was to kill the fake Helena, and the money will overflow itself.

While I’m resting, he can poison me and later say that I died from sickness and if I’m in a hurry, he can overturn a carriage and say that it was an accident.

The problem was that the will did not end there.

“And if she dies before she comes of age, I will give all my inheritance to God.”

The inheritance was dedicated to God, which meant that she will actually donate all her property to the temple.

Upon hearing the will, the temple staff were overjoyed..

But on the other hand, the face of Count Larestine, who could have missed the great wealth right in front of his nose, was dead blue.

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