Episode 62: Alec’s Jealousy

If he had to witness such a scene every day, it would be better to gouge out his eyes. If he couldn’t erase it from his mind, it might be better to hang himself. Since he couldn’t scrub his brain clean with detergent, the thoughts festered.

“How… How could you…”

Lara didn’t push him away. What kind of relationship did she have with that man?

Alec recalled the investigation he had ordered Orchen to conduct into Lara’s past. Orchen had personally traveled to Heidelberg to compile the report, documenting Lara’s history.

The report was concise—slave records, family ties, seven years of labor responsibilities, and her saleable status certificate. It wasn’t even four pages long. He had stuffed the documents into a drawer without reading them again because they stung his eyes.

He understood how much Lara despised and feared her past. Though he had already seen glimpses of it, he knew how extreme her fear was of her previous life being exposed.

She didn’t want anyone to know. She dreaded even mentioning it, loathed hearing her name on others’ lips, and found it unbearable to speak of it herself. For that reason, he couldn’t ask.

For that reason, he couldn’t get closer.

Even if he wanted to comfort her wounds, he feared she might think he was prying into her past. Seven years at most.

Considering the years she could remember, it couldn’t have been more than two or three, yet Lara always wore an unpleasant expression. She was terrified of her past being exposed to the aristocratic society.

“It’s fine. It’s just a brief stir. Nothing significant…”

When her identity and childhood were revealed by Valerie, Lara suffered as though she were dying. She even attempted suicide, and he had nearly lost her forever.

Immediately after the attempt, Alec found her trembling in her bedroom with a pale face. He tried to comfort her anxiety by holding her close, but she… she forced him out of the room and refused to see him.

In the end, it took about two and a half months of waiting outside her door before Lara finally allowed him back in. He never wanted that to happen again. He never wanted her past to become her shame again.

Dranberg was a city known for its progressive and open-minded elites, advocating for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of the caste system.

Thus, he chose Dranberg as the city to announce his return and recruited figures like Marquis Heslo. His aides and associates were not conservatives but talented individuals from Lankolisher University, chosen for their intellect and character regardless of their social status. However, Lara…

“Love and understanding are different. That’s why I’m the only one for you.”

Had she agreed with what Lawrence said? Was that why she didn’t push him away? Alec felt more pain from Lara’s calm demeanor in Lawrence’s embrace than from Lawrence himself.

Unable to face her with a clear mind, he left the bedroom. If he stayed, he wasn’t sure what he might do.

“How could you…!”

Alec shouted, slamming his fist repeatedly into the broken desk.

---

The faint taste of blood lingered as Lara bit her lip repeatedly. She tried to steady her ragged breathing while recalling Alec’s cold expression as he left her in the bedroom.

It was a face she had never seen before—a completely frozen, emotionless expression. It chilled her to the bone. Lara furrowed her brows as she thought of Lawrence, who had been led away without much resistance.

He was someone she had known over a decade ago. The memories were so hazy and tangled that recalling their interactions confused her.

The inexplicable attention and persistence were unsettling, yet she didn’t feel overly tense in Lawrence’s presence.

She tried consciously to push him away, but unless she reminded herself to reject him outright, she might not have shown even a hint of wariness toward him.

“I’m on your side.”

The whisper of Lawrence echoed in her mind. Lara buried her face in her hands. The reason she could remain calm in his embrace.

The reason she could let her guard down was, in the end, because he was someone like her. Among countless people, the only one who had experienced a situation similar to hers was Lawrence.

Perhaps that was why. The tension she couldn’t release even in front of Alec melted away. Ever since her memories had returned, Lara had been wary of Alec, too.

Even more so in her previous life. At some point, Alec had become someone akin to Valerie or Gladys to her.

Someone she couldn’t afford to show any weakness to. Someone she couldn’t turn her back on. She didn’t want to share the things she had bottled up inside or have an intimate relationship with anyone. That included Alec.

After retreating behind impenetrable walls for so long, Lara completely let go of her feelings for him when Gladys’s pregnancy was revealed.

How much time had passed since Loras ended up that way? Lara left for the secluded palace and avoided him. She focused solely on her sick son and sharpened her thorns to protect herself.

Alec could never truly be on her side. He was a man who willingly shared a bed with women who had harmed her and her son for his own goals. He consorted with them to counter others who sought to bring her down.

During all that time… for so long, Lara was utterly alone. Surrounded by people who exploited her inescapable past as a weapon to shake and undermine her, she fought a grueling battle every moment.

She had lost her first child and couldn’t even protect her second, whom she had struggled to bring into the world. Alec claimed he slept with those women to protect Lara and Loras.

Even knowing what those women had done to her… he still became their husband and spent nights with them. Alec was no longer her ally. He wasn’t someone who could protect her.

If he could protect her, Loras wouldn’t have ended up that way. A newborn, barely able to lift his head, poisoned by the woman who claimed to be his stepmother…

How could the man who became the husband of such a woman… How could he…

“It’s something that didn’t happen.”

Alec always said that. He seemed to believe that if he repeated it enough, it would become true. Maybe it was true for him.

For him, it might have been something that never happened or didn’t exist. If he wanted to believe that, so be it.

But for Lara, those things couldn’t simply be dismissed as something that didn’t happen. Her long life, filled with stubborn endurance, believing even in love that festered and rotted, left her bruised far beyond the flames that ended her previous life.

“…Are you worried about Hamizle?”

Before she realized it, Alec had entered and was now approaching her as she stared at the floor, lost in reflection. Lara looked at him expressionlessly. His face was calmer than when he had left the bedroom. Somehow, he had subdued his anger.

“Your hands…”

“How do you know Hamizel?”

Unbuttoning his jacket, Alec approached her, cutting her off. Not long after, he tossed his jacket to the floor and sat on the bed. The wide mattress sagged under his weight.

Sensing danger, Lara took a step back. But a blood-stained hand grabbed her wrist. She was pulled forward helplessly, standing in front of him. The anger she thought had subsided was still raging—no, it had grown even darker.

“I looked into him.”

Alec’s voice was unnaturally cheerful, as though it were contrived.

“The illegitimate son of Marquis Oppreese. The eldest son of a lowly maid. A bastard of disgraceful origins. The shame of Oppreese…”

Lara’s lower eyelid trembled ever so slightly. Alec smirked cruelly.

“Quite a colorful history. He’s also done all sorts of dirty work under Heslo’s command. They say he’s a man who rose up with his feet in sewage.”

Lara didn’t respond. His words weren’t meant for her. Lawrence wasn’t even present to hear them. Yet her face flushed hot with embarrassment. Despite not having a strong bond with Lawrence, she felt humiliated as though she herself were being trampled.

“But I couldn’t find out how he knows you.”

“…….”

“What kind of relationship did you have with him?”

The documents detailing the past of Loras and Lara, meticulously recorded line by line, didn’t reveal how they had come to know each other, how their relationship had developed, or the depth of their emotional connection.

It only speculated that since both were born in Heidelbern, they might have been familiar with each other’s faces. If their paths had overlapped in the same circles, they might have gotten to know each other better.

“Speak.”

But that wasn’t enough for him. Alec had to know everything about Lara. He had to dominate and control her entirely. Just as she, in turn, had to yield to his control and dominance.

The love he desired was a love without gaps. A fierce, all-consuming entanglement where retreat was impossible—a love that devoured both parties whole.

“Lara.”

“…He probably didn’t want to live with his feet in sewage either,” Lara said softly, her face pale and stiff.

Alec’s brow twisted slightly.

“If he had been born noble… like you… he wouldn’t have had to dirty himself with all those filthy deeds to get ahead.”

“Lara.”

“His father had nothing to leave him—not a single thing. Even though he had so much… just like your father, who left you a kingdom or enough wealth to buy the entire Dranberg region.”

Lara tried to wrench her wrist free from his grasp, struggling in vain. Her face flushed with anger as though she had been insulted, and she glared at him, humiliated by the moisture gathering in the corners of her eyes.

“You…”

You’ve never been denied, have you? You’ve never been torn down over something unchangeable, have you? You’ve never lived a life where no matter what you did, you were never acknowledged, forever burdened by sins you couldn’t overcome.

Lara trembled violently, glaring at him.

“Do you know that?”

Twisting her wrist free with effort, Lara wrapped her hands protectively around her lower abdomen.

“Your child is the child of a lowly maid.”

Alec’s eyes widened. Unable to meet those heavy, metallic eyes, Lara instead looked down at the faint presence growing within her.

Would this child be born safely? It was the child who had already died once because of Valerie. A child lost close to full term…

Even the Marquis of Oppreese had scornfully referred to this unborn child as the offspring of a lowly maid.

It was true. The marquis was correct. Even after Lara became empress, she hadn’t been officially freed. By law, the child was a slave.

In the empire, if either parent was a slave, the child was inevitably born a slave. After losing her first child, Lara had finally been granted freedom—three days after her coronation as empress.

But the child she had lost, the one who had never seen the light of day, was no different from Lawrence, whom Alec had destroyed—a child born to a slave mother.

Because Lara was still a runaway slave. A woman who had dared to desire what she shouldn’t, ruining even her son’s life in the process. She had been tormented her entire life by things she could never overcome.

As Alec’s empress, she wore an undeserved crown, ridiculed for rising to the position of the empire’s first empress—a title meant for Valerie.

“A mere slave who became empress through nothing but a worthless love should know her place. To think she even dared to covet what belonged to Lady Valerie.”

Whenever Lara did anything, the nobles whispered like that. They pushed her to abandon everything, to retreat into obscurity.

At first, she had resolved not to lose. She wasn’t born crippled; she, too, could become an elegant, dignified empress like Valerie.

Bishop Dallas had told her that people are recognized as much as they strive. Lara didn’t want to lose to Valerie. She wanted to stand beside Alec, praised as Valerie was.