Please Grant Me a Glorious Regret [Novel] Chapter 10

Arte bolted from her room like a madwoman.

Neither her pointy shoes nor her long dress could stop her.

She bounded down the stairs and tore through the long corridors as if she didn’t care if she tripped and tumbled down.

Just before reaching the first floor, she did inevitably trip, but she paid it no mind.

Springing up as if she felt no pain, she ran and ran.

Following the clamor, Arte located where the gunshot had rung out.

It was none other than the main hall, right inside the entrance.

“…”

Arte was left speechless by the scene unfolding before her.

The noise that had guided her just moments ago vanished entirely, replaced by a ringing in her ears.

Everyone was shouting with their mouths wide open, but she couldn’t hear a thing.

The first thing she saw was a police officer pointing a gun at someone.

As if possessed, Arte followed the line of the gun barrel.

Shockingly, at its end stood the Count.

Surrounded by the butler and servants desperately trying to calm him, the Count was wailing in agony.

Beside him, the Countess had collapsed into the arms of Lisa and the maids.

Arte frantically looked around for her unseen brother.

Standing next to the officer were Baron Pitt and Benjamin, both sporting sinister smiles, and the floor in front of them was splattered with blood.

Her gaze darted back to where it had just been.

Arte hurriedly scanned her family.

Fortunately, there were no traces of blood on the Count and Countess, nor on Lisa.

However, even Baron Pitt and Benjamin, just looking at them made her blood boil, were spotless.

Someone had clearly spilled blood, yet no one had blood on them.

Her breathing quickening, Arte traced the trail of bloodstains.

At the end of the pooled blood, there was no person.

“…!”

Instead, two fingers, which had been attached to someone’s hand just moments before, lay discarded on the floor.

Over the severed fingers, the image of Benjamin’s severed wrist from two days ago superimposed itself.

That gruesome memory, so horrific it had lacked any sense of reality, wrapped around Arte once more.

Arte muttered as she shifted her gaze to find the owner of the fingers.

A wave of dread, incomparably larger than what she had felt before hearing the gunshot, seeped into her bones.

“Ah…”

Why were her dreadful premonitions never wrong?

The moment she found her missing brother, Arte’s entire body turned ice-cold.

Blood was dripping from Peter’s hand as he was forced to his knees by the officers.

The thick, straight fingers that Arte had always loved so much, her older brother’s hand was ruined.

The moment she saw Peter’s bloodshot eyes, filled with agonizing pain and fury, the ringing in her ears ceased.

All the sound she had temporarily lost came rushing back.

“Let go of him! Release my son!”

The Count’s furious roar echoed through the hall.

However, none of the officers who had stormed the estate listened to him.

“Ha! Finally showed up, huh!”

As she stood trembling uncontrollably at the hellish sight, Benjamin spotted Arte.

Every eye in the chaotic hall turned toward Arte, who had turned deathly pale.

“Here, look. This happened because of you. I suppose that pathetic brother of yours is quite a decent soldier? I was going to blow his wrist off just like mine, but he dodged, so we only wasted a few innocent fingers.”

Benjamin sneered as he approached Arte.

Not only the Count and Peter, but even the servants stepped forward to protect Arte.

But when an officer fired a warning shot, no one dared to move from their spots.

“Here. The contract you love citing so much. See it? It says right here that inflicting injury will result in a proportionate penalty. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. You know it, right? You’re smart. That means I committed no crime by shooting that bastard’s wrist.”

“There is no such clause in the contract.”

“Yeah. That’s right. I added it. Because I can. Your father signed this contract himself, so look closely. What can you do when he signed such a moronic agreement? It’s all your fault for getting into that accident and draining his money back then.”

Arte’s eyes, locked onto Benjamin, also turned bloodshot.

For the first time in her life, Arte felt a profound, murderous intent.

She wanted to snatch any gun right then and there, shove it into that mouth, and pull the trigger.

“He should have just taken the hit quietly. Not only did your brother dodge, but he shot one of our officers. You know how serious it is for a soldier to shoot an officer, right? Your brother is going straight to prison.”

“What nonsense…!”

“But you know what? Do you know how merciful I am? I’ll tell you how to get him out. Hand over the Count’s title to us.”

“You foolish bastard. A Count’s title isn’t something you can just hand over so easily.”

“You don’t understand, do you? I mean hand it over by marrying me. You turned me into a cripple, so you should take responsibility and wait on me for the rest of your life. Don’t you agree?”

Benjamin lifted his heavily bandaged right arm and grabbed Arte by the hair with his left hand.

A sharp pain flared, but Arte showed no reaction, only glaring fiercely at Benjamin.

“I’ll give you two days. Make a decision. And don’t even think about running. If you do, I’ll show you what a living hell truly is. I will turn you and your entire family into beggars. I’ll make you realize what a fate worse than death feels like!”

Benjamin suddenly raised his voice like a madman before violently throwing Arte to the floor.

“What are you doing? Drag him away!”

“Yes, sir!”

There was no time to feel the pain.

The officers, clearly bribed by Benjamin’s money, began dragging Peter away.

“Peter! No! Peter!”

Arte, the Count, and Lisa all desperately called out to Peter and tried to stop them, but it was useless.

Faced with officers pointing guns, the Count’s family’s resistance amounted to nothing.

“Aaaaaah!”

Hearing the engine roar as they took Peter away, Arte collapsed and sobbed uncontrollably.

That one plea, asking to be saved as if she were Phelia, had turned into a massive disaster, plunging Arte into tragedy.

After the chaotic uproar died down, the Count immediately left to meet with the family lawyer.

He also frantically contacted anyone he knew with connections to the military police.

The servants ran in every direction looking for solutions, while Lisa devoted herself to nursing the collapsed Countess.

But Arte didn’t move an inch.

She remained sitting in the exact same position, gripping the hem of her dress so tightly her knuckles turned white.

Martha and the other maids tried to coax her back to her room, but it was futile.

Arte had turned to stone, harboring a cold, blue flame within.

Only her body was motionless, but Arte’s mind was working faster and more ruthlessly than ever before.

She was the root cause of this incident.

The fault lay entirely with Benjamin, but even the reason they were entangled with him in the first place was Arte’s carriage accident.

Because of Arte, Peter lost his fingers and was taken away, and her entire family and the estate’s staff were suffering.

Therefore, it was Arte’s responsibility to clean up this mess, and it was her burden to make the sacrifices necessary to resolve it.

That didn’t mean she had any intention of marrying Benjamin.

She wanted everything Benjamin desired to be trampled on.

She desperately wished for him to lose everything he thought he held in his grasp.

Peter’s fingers had been blown off.

Benjamin losing his head would barely make them even.

By Arte’s logic and standards, that was the fair price.

If she could, she would have extracted that price herself.

Without anyone’s help, relying solely on her own abilities and strength, she wanted to return the humiliation she suffered today a hundredfold.

But as always, a chasm existed between ideal and reality.

Right now, Arte needed many things, yet she possessed nothing.

She had to ask for help.

She needed the power to instantly demolish the castle the Pitt family had built with money.

She needed the financial resources to shatter the shackles of debt holding her family back.

And she needed the prestige to completely crush another family without facing any backlash.

She needed all of it.

There was exactly one person.

Only one person possessed everything Arte required and desired.

Whatever title he used, he could fulfill Arte’s needs.

“…”

When the underground bell chimed to signal his return, and the servant stepped into the hall to open the grand doors, Arte, who had been sitting stiffly, finally rose.

Her unhesitating strides closed the distance between them.

It was a movement that made it hard to believe she had been frozen in place for hours.

The speed born of her desperation was just that fast.

“I have something to say to you, Duke.”

A voice colder than usual and eyes sharper than ever met Dimion.

“I want to speak in private. Just the two of us.”