The Male Lead's Fake Sister - Chapter 83
Translator and Editor: Maru and Tea
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Chapter 83
The room in the villa struggled unsuccessfully to conceal its age.
Heint, Duke Leontine was pacing up and down the precarious wooden floor. His usually polished demeanor betrayed his anxiety.
How could he not?
His recent discoveries had hit him hard in the back of the head.
Bang! Heint slammed his fist on the innocent desk. As a result, some papers scattered across the desk.
Those papers had caused Heint to keep his head down for the past 15 days, so much so that ink stained the tip of his nose.
Those papers contained information about the drugs known as ‘dark flower,’ which were widely distributed in the underworld.
Those were the items handed over to Heint by the Emperor as he issued orders for an investigation. Among the information contained in those papers, the most notable aspect was the utility of the Dark Flower.
Dark Flower was essentially a drug with an additional purpose aside from inducing a state of relaxation.
Hypnosis.
His vision blurred by constant re-reading, Heint went over the paper that he had read countless times yet again.
[…The results show that Dark Flower is a strange mix of multiple drugs. The effects seem to be controlled by combining drugs with an opposing effect, and it is believed that the main effect is a poison that causes hallucinations.
The mixing ratio cannot be confirmed because the poison and the counterbalance drug are not yet known, but it has been confirmed through testimony that a controlled amount can blur the line between consciousness and unconsciousness, making it possible to insert suggestion through hypnosis]
The following is a transcript of testimony given by a dealer apprehended by the Imperial Family. This was the most important point.
Only one person knew the ratio of Dark Flower’s ingredients and used it to hypnotize and insert suggestions. That man was certainly the first distributor and the sole owner of the Dark Flower’s distribution rights.
Initially, Heint was only surprised by the danger of this drug when he first read the document. But, suddenly, he remembered feeling foggy in his head about two months ago.
But he had brushed it off, thinking it was all in his head and that he was getting senile.
Until the fog cleared up.
It was difficult to forget the sensation of the brain fog fading away. On the contrary, he’d been very forgetful when the fog was thick in his head.
Of the five senses, smell is said to be the most tied to memory. He remembered a strong scent of magnolia. And the next thing he saw was an empty and dark salon.
No, it wasn’t entirely empty. Because a man sat opposite him.
He thought it would be nice if he could see the man’s face clearly, but the salon was dark. It didn’t help that Heint was so drowsy. His body was as heavy as a leather bag filled with water.
Rational thinking was hindered as he was caught between a confused mind and an overwhelmingly heavy body, yet only one thing was clear. The familiar low voice belonged to a man.
-I heard you were hesitant to make your only daughter your heir because she doesn’t have silver hair.
-……
-Aren’t you worried that your blonde-haired heir is not legitimate?
Heint simply nodded as he listened to his argument.
That man was right. Heint was unable to appoint his daughter as his successor because she was not born with silver hair.
He had never told anyone, but he had suspected his wife’s affair long before the baby was born. It was possible that Ravia was not his daughter. The man’s point triggered a painful memory for Heint.
When he gave voice to his bottled up doubts about the affair, his pregnant wife cried and shouted.
-You fool! Just wait and see when the baby is born! The child must have silver hair!
When she insisted vehemently that the child in her womb was Heint’s child, he had no choice but to believe her.
His wife insisted that the child would look like Heint and have silver hair. Heint’s craven doubts crumbled in the face of his beloved wife’s intransigence. And further, Heint’s suspicions were mostly unfounded.
Despite the fact that circumstances hinted at his wife’s infidelity, Heint was well aware that he shouldn’t judge everything on the surface.
Heint overcame his doubts thanks to his wife’ s strong insistence and his love for her.
It was peaceful for a while.
At least until the blonde child was born.
Heint could still remember the mixed feelings he had when he accepted the baby from the tired midwife who informed him that it was a healthy princess.
The doubt that he had ignored for so long finally burst out alongside an overwhelming joy.
It was both a happy and a sad moment.
Of course, the child he thought was silver-haired had bright yellow blonde hair like her mother. In fact, the child’s mother was also from a high-ranking noble family as well, so he couldn’t rule out that possibility.
However, it became an issue because the distinctive hair color of high-ranking noble families usually followed the more dominant side, regardless of gender.
Each family bore its own distinct hair color that served as a means of proving their bloodline. Duchess Leontine was clearly a high-ranking noblewoman, but she was not on the same level as Leontine.
So if he just relied on that one fact alone, the child should have been silver-haired.
Unless Duchess Leontine had an affair with a man of lesser blood than herself and conceived a child.
Heint had stopped questioning his wife about it, but she would have noticed his doubts. Because she had told her husband that their child would have silver hair, only to have it born blonde.
They would rather believe that the reality they faced was a terrible lie.
But was it because the shock was too much, or because the labor pains were too intense?
Duchess Leontine died within a year of giving birth. Leaving behind Ravia, a child viewed as nothing more than a tangled mess of doubt and rejection.
Heint would have continued wallowing in his fears if he hadn’t gotten rid of the man he suspected of having an affair with his wife.
However, personal relations and family succession were separate matters.
Ravia was definitely not of Leontine’s bloodline.
If he didn’t have a silver-haired child after Ravia, it would be the same as bringing Leontine’s downfall with his own hands.
He had always been helpless when it came to important matters.
Trapped by his own feelings, he couldn’t move an inch, but a man with a terribly deep voice could read his heart like an open book.
-If you’re concerned that your only child has no legitimacy, you should adopt a silver-haired child from a distant family that strongly embraces Leontine’s bloodline and appoint him as your successor.
Instead, that man suggested a solution.
-Don’t you agree?
If Heint had been sane, he would never have agreed to such a ridiculous idea.
No matter how much he didn’t care for his daughter due to his misgivings surrounding the lineage and his wife’s affair, no one could deny that Ravia was a Leontine.
Therefore, if he wanted to make up for the lineage problem, it was only right to appoint Ravia as the heir and, as the man suggested, to find a silver-haired man among Leontine’s distant relatives and bring him into the family as a son-in-law.
In fact, to compensate for the legitimacy, Heint had been seeking out relatives so distant that he actually felt uncomfortable calling them family.
But that was exactly the problem
All his effort was in vain, so even if he was sober, he would still be swayed by the man’s words.
But in Heint’s memory, there was an imperative urge to agree with the man. When that man spoke, it seemed as if whatever he said was the truth.
In his memory, Heint nodded. Then he saw through his blurred vision that the man’s mouth pulled into a faint arc.
-Alright. You must remember. You will adopt a silver-haired son and appoint him as your heir. Do you get it?
And then a finger flicked.
What happened next was something Heint was aware of. No, only then did he fully comprehend what was going on.
About two months ago, he met a man with nearly silver hair in a salon.
The man claimed to be a fallen noble, equal to a Blue, and was so well-mannered that it was difficult to believe what he said.
Based on the man’s demeanor, origin, and hair color, he suspected the man was that descendant of Leontine that he had not been able to find.
So he asked the man for a private conversation, and the man agreed. The conversation went well, except for a brief moment in the middle when Heint found himself lost in thought and lost track of the flow of the conversation.
His eyes began to blur again, and Heint coughed several times to pull himself together.
-So, you. What’s your name again? I can’t remember your family…
-Soffen. I’m Tidwell Soffen, Your Grace.
The scent of magnolia lingered around him.
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Rate the novel on Novel Updates.
Join our discord to receive the latest updates as soon as possible!
What Are Pilot Novels?
Pilot novels are novels that will only have a few chapters released from our group. We hope that someone else can continue these novels for the enjoyment of everyone!
Tss92
Thanks you