I Married the Dragon I Killed
Chapter 89
“Stefan.”
Emotion seeped into Merchit’s voice.
But it was only for a fleeting moment.
“Since the situation is difficult, I’ll be understanding as your older brother. Later, once you’ve calmed down, make sure to apologize for treating me like a murderer.”
He spoke as if giving gentle advice, but to Stefan, it was no different from being treated like a child.
“Don’t make me laugh. Are you… are you saying I’m just barking up the wrong tree right now?”
“Do you truly believe this was your brother’s doing?”
“I already have proof! Look at this!”
Stefan pulled out the scarf he had been clutching in his hand.
The insignia of the Pascal Mercenary Company caught Merchit’s eye.
“I already know your methods! That filthy tactic where necessity creates demand! This started happening right after I said I would monopolize that trade route.”
“You believe the nonsense those merchant bastards spout?”
“It’s not just one person. Everyone who contracted with you says the same, so how could I not point the finger at you!?”
Merchit pondered those words for a moment.
“Fine, maybe those things that happened to those people were my doing.”
He hummed as if readily admitting it, then tilted his head.
“But the proof that I interfered in your business is where?”
“Isn’t it right here?”
“This fancy scarf? I can have as many of these made as I want.”
He fluttered the scarf before tossing it onto the table.
“My company has ten thousand registered mercenaries, and we have over two thousand scarves in stock. Anyone could have stolen one to make it look like my mercenaries did it. You’re smarter than me; how could you not think of that?”
“Could you say that even in an Imperial court!?”
“You want to go to court? You want to go for total annihilation? You little brat, you really must be pissed off. To think you’d drag your own family to court.”
“Stop with that family talk. You only bring up family when things are hard for you, but when it’s time to eat, we’re strangers, aren’t we!?”
“Are you saying I tried to keep it all for myself? Hey, Stefan. I helped you plenty when you were struggling. I gave you favors, I did everything I could for you, so what the fuck is the problem?”
“Haven’t I been telling you? The problem is that those bandit bastards you lead killed my employees!”
“This brat is really going to keep calling my men third-rate trash to the end—”
“Merchit Pascal.”
Merchit, the veins in his neck bulging, moved to stand up.
When Ferda called his name, Merchit realized Ferda had been watching and bowed his head toward him.
“My apologies, Regent-nim. I have shown you an unseemly side of our family affairs.”
“I do not mind that. But I’m sorry, could you stop this discussion for a moment and step outside? I have something to discuss with Stefan.”
“Of course. I shall withdraw for a while.”
Merchit bowed obediently and left.
Once Merchit was gone, Stefan pointed at the empty seat and shouted.
“There’s nothing to see. It’s that man’s doing.”
His face was flushed a deep red.
“Stefan.”
“We have to seize him right now and interrogate him. Ask him if he feels refreshed after killing thirty-three people.”
“I wanted to do that, but seeing you now, I realized I shouldn’t.”
“Seeing me? What’s wrong with how I look?”
Ferda answered with a cold, piercing gaze.
“You are no different from a ghost hungering for blood and revenge.”
“Revenge. Isn’t that why we’re doing this right now?”
“The problem is that this revenge doesn’t fit the present. Isn’t the revenge you’re trying to take now dragging up grudges from your past?”
“I am…”
He wanted to deny it, but Ferda’s words allowed him to regain a shred of composure.
“I suppose you’re right. To be honest, there were many times I was tormented by my brother when I was young.”
“Tell me.”
“Whenever I came home after being beaten, he would say he didn’t like my spirit and would beat me half to death with a wooden sword, claiming he was training me.”
Ferda could understand that feeling, if only a little.
After his mother died, Ferda, treated as a bastard, had suffered such harsh treatment many times.
“And I… no. Let’s stop this story.”
“No. Do not stop.”
Ferda prevented him from ending his lament.
“Express every bit of the rage you hold for Merchit right now.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Because it will be helpful.”
“I don’t think it will be very helpful…”
“Then I shall change it to an order. Hurry, curse him for what he did and scream.”
Stefan was bewildered by Ferda’s request.
But in a situation where he had no choice, Stefan forced the name out.
“Merchit… you… you… son of a… bitch….”
It started stifled, but that didn’t matter.
“You….”
Like a dam bursting, the expression of emotion became violent in an instant.
“You… filthy bastard!!!”
Stefan’s eyes rolled back as he began to scream at the top of his lungs.
“Damn that wretched bastard! He’s been praying for my downfall, and now he pulls this!? Did I look that easy to you!? Huh!?”
“…….”
“I’ll make you the same! Just like you shattered my bones when I was a kid, I’ll shatter every single one of yours!”
He continued to rage, shouting out a long string of grudges piled up from the past.
After about ten minutes of this, Stefan’s voice finally gave out.
“Ack! Cough!”
“Have a drink.”
“Cough, cough… Thank you….”
Stefan sat down and drank the tea.
He looked drained of all energy.
“Do you feel a bit better?”
“Yes, thanks to the Regent-nim… I think I’ve avoided a heart attack from pure stress.”
“Then your eyes should be a bit clearer now. Let us resume our discussion.”
Stefan straightened his posture, and Ferda said to him.
“To jump to the conclusion, this does not feel like Merchit Pascal’s doing.”
“…Pardon?”
Hadn’t he just been talking as if Merchit were the culprit after presenting the mercenary company’s scarf?
And now, he was saying it wasn’t him?
“Then why did you tell me to curse my brother?”
“It was so you wouldn’t be possessed by the grudges you hold. Weren’t you keeping things in your head that could cloud your judgment?”
Ferda’s words were baffling, but on the other hand, he was right.
Had he ever screamed and cursed like that before?
When he was a child, he usually just stuffed his fist in his mouth and cried, and as an adult, the most he did was sob while sipping liquor hidden in a corner of his desk.
Now, he had been able to pour it all out at high volume.
“You said contracting with the Pascal Mercenary Company was no different from making a deal with a devil?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you already know that from the beginning?”
“I did.”
“Then you could have suspected your brother, Merchit Pascal, from the very start. But you never showed that suspicion to me.”
Ferda asked calmly.
“What is the reason you didn’t?”
“The reason I didn’t was because I was frantic at the time and…”
“Is that the only reason? Simply that you didn’t think of it?”
Stefan shook his head at Ferda’s question.
It couldn’t be just for that reason.
Stefan thought.
Why hadn’t he suspected Merchit first when this happened?
‘Merchit Pascal.’
Family and enemy.
Since childhood, he had been unable to control his overflowing hot-bloodedness.
Merchit had used that temperament to become a mercenary captain.
He had charisma and leadership.
Having leadership meant knowing the weight of a heavy responsibility that common thugs did not.
As a merchant analyzing another business owner, he judged everything about the man based solely on data and facts.
When he did, the answer came out with startling clarity.
“…The possibility was low.”
“The reason?”
“The idea that my brother would retaliate if someone didn’t contract with him… honestly, it’s no different from a myth. It was an act of digging their own graves. In truth, most of them were cases where people hired cheap mercenaries and met with disaster in dangerous areas. They just bought something cheap and then blamed others for the consequences.”
People see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe.
Stefan had been so gripped by emotion that he had missed even something so basic.
“So, my current opinion is that a single scarf… cannot make that suspicion certain.”
Even as he reached the conclusion himself, Stefan found it hard to believe.
Clearly, just a few minutes ago, he had been certain it was his brother’s doing and was thinking of taking cruel revenge.
He had judged with emotion, not reason, and that emotion had blinded him.
If Ferda hadn’t forced him to shake it off, he would have ended up fighting Merchit.
As Stefan sat swallowing his hollow feeling, Ferda heard his answer and spoke to Ruri.
“Let Merchit Pascal back inside.”
The waiting Merchit took his seat, and the three-way meeting resumed.
Unlike the atmosphere that had been on the verge of exploding with heightened emotions, a calm current now flowed between them.
“Merchit Pascal. I have finished speaking with Stefan, but I want you to tell me one last thing for certain.”
“Speak, Regent-nim.”
“Can you swear that you were not involved in the attack on Stefan?”
Ferda asked so coldly it made one’s blood run chill.
Merchit raised his index finger and spoke.
“I have one principle. That other people are as precious as my own family. My employees and I take up the sword for money to protect others. If you take up the sword and then take money, aren’t you no different from a third-rate thug or a bandit?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Hearing Merchit’s words, Ferda gestured toward the scarf on the table and said.
“If this scarf has nothing to do with the mercenary company’s involvement, then it means someone was trying to drive a wedge between you two.”
“Between me and my brother?”
Merchit’s eyes widened.
As evident on his face, he was truly enraged.
“Which bastard dared to try and touch my family?”
“I think I know who it is.”
The now-calm Stefan replied.
“Who is it?”
“It’s my older sister, Tilda.”
The name that came from his mouth was another family member.
“On the surface, she acts as if the Dandolo Company is enough, but she’s a woman who wants the Pascal Company more than anyone. She’s incredibly persistent and has been hindering me in ways I didn’t even notice. Besides, she’s the only one who would benefit from me and my brother being at each other’s throats.”
“Yeah, if it’s that woman, she’s definitely capable of this.”
Merchit, who had a strong attachment to family, also agreed with the mention of his sister.
It was a strange thing.
“Is Tilda Pascal not your family?”
“Don’t even talk about it. She’s a woman I can’t even call family.”
Merchit answered calmly, though he was incensed and suppressing his bloodlust.
“Do you know what she tried to do when my wife was pregnant with our first? Using the excuse of congratulating her on the pregnancy, she sent my wife poison. Fortunately, I ate it without knowing and suffered for it, but if my wife had eaten it, she would have undoubtedly miscarried. She was always an annoying sister with no redeeming qualities, but she truly crossed the line then.”
It was Stefan who was shocked by those words.
“Something like that happened five years ago?”
“I wasn’t certain, so I didn’t tell anyone. Making a scene would have only given that woman what she wanted.”
To Stefan, who thought it was in Merchit’s nature to flip everything over and rage about who to kill, it was as if he had seen a surprising side of him.
“Anyway, she’s a woman with no talent but plenty of greed. Since she doesn’t have the ability to be self-made, she must be trying to swallow up Father’s company after taking over the Dandolo Company by seducing that old bachelor, Henri Dandolo.”
Merchit clenched his fist, which was as large as a pot lid.
His veins bulged menacingly.
“So, what will you do, Regent-nim?”
Merchit asked.
“We can go over there right now, flip everything over, and drag that woman here.”
“Wouldn’t that only worsen the mercenary company’s image?”
“You don’t need to worry about that. If I can push that witch-like woman onto the pyre, I don’t care if I become a devil. If she laid a hand on my family, she must pay the corresponding price.”
A smoldering rage.
As a mercenary who had rolled around on the rough ground, he knew well how to use anger as fuel.
“We must not do anything to cause her direct harm.”
The one who said that was Stefan.
“What? Stefan, are you an idiot?”
“Think about it. Wielding violence is not good. The fact that she started such a malicious move means her plan has clearly begun. In the worst-case scenario, the entire House Pascal could collapse.”
“I suppose….”
Since both of them knew what kind of person Tilda was, it didn’t take many words to convince them.
“She’s a woman whose malice is deep. We must not touch her until we have firm proof that it was Tilda’s doing.”
“Then what do we do?”
Stefan said, forcing his racing heart to calm down.
“For now, we act as if we returned without resolving this misunderstanding. We give the opponent exactly what they want. If we do that, the plan will surely proceed as scheduled.”
“So we’ll catch that woman’s tail that way.”
Merchit slapped his knee.
“Fine. I’m in. Let’s drag that woman out properly.”
“Understood.”
The two brothers, who had nearly become enemies, united in the face of a common foe.
