#Chapter 30. Did You Fight with Mom?

“Dad.”

All the food had been set when Lucy pressed her forehead with both hands and raised her head from the table.

Damian had also been sitting blankly at the table and turned his gaze at Lucy’s voice.

“Did you fight with Mom?”

At Lucy’s question, Damian briefly rolled his eyes.

Fought? Fought…… Fighting was an act of quarreling to beat the opponent, so did I want to beat Ariel……?

“……Wait, wait a minute.”

Lucy stretched out her small palm toward Damian with a snap and said firmly.

“Dad, don’t tell me you got angry at Mom?”

Lucy’s face beyond the palm was completely crumpled.

The green eyes glaring as if telling him to just try answering yes were consistent.

However, Damian could confidently answer his daughter’s words for this question at least.

“No.”

“Then…… did you get scolded?”

The palm disappeared and Lucy opened her small lips and spoke as if dumbfounded.

Damian pondered on that word for a moment and slowly nodded.

“……I got scolded.”

Lucy sighed as if she thought so and shook her head back and forth.

“Haah…… I thought so. You got scolded, well. By the way, why did Mom scold you?”

Lucy decided he got scolded, widened her eyes, and asked Damian.

“Well.”

Damian looked at his daughter whose face changed colorfully with various expressions even in that brief moment.

In the midst of it all, perhaps because she didn’t like Damian’s answer, contempt flashed through the green eyes looking at Damian.

But it was difficult to answer the question of why he got scolded.

For some reason, it wasn’t easy to tell either Ariel or his daughter.

However, there was no need to define it specifically. His daughter didn’t seem like she would dig deeper either.

Damian unconsciously smiled at Lucy, who was glaring straight ahead with an extremely serious expression, and lowered his gaze to the child’s wrist.

Perhaps because she resembled Ariel, Lucy’s wrists were also very slender.

They say you have to eat well when young to grow up strong.

Damian looked down at the steak on his plate and picked up a knife. Slice- slice- he cut it to fit the child’s mouth size.

He hesitated briefly, but anyway Damian stabbed the steak with a fork and brought it in front of the child’s mouth.

He couldn’t predict what reaction would come, but fortunately Lucy put the meat that came to her lips in one bite with a serious expression as if making a major decision.

Even as she chewed the meat, her green eyes stared straight ahead, fully absorbed, as if lost in deep thought.

Lucy swallowed the meat and called Damian while wiggling her eyebrows.

“……Dad.”

Damian smiled slightly at Lucy eating well, nodded, and picked up the knife again. He began cutting the steak into small pieces as much as she had just eaten.

“I want a younger brother, and Dad wants to make up with Mom, right?”

Damian stabbed another piece of meat with the fork, brought it in front of Lucy’s mouth, and nodded.

This time too, Lucy put the meat Damian gave her into her mouth without resistance and frowned while saying “Hmm-.”

“Then let’s do it like this.”

Lucy put the meat in her cheek and stored her food like a small animal, then sparkled her eyes.

*

While Damian and Lucy were eating, Ariel went through the investor list Bruno had written down one by one.

Naturally, there were many unfamiliar names and families.

“They’re all aliases.”

If they had money overflowing while playing at clubs and even thought of investing, it would be impossible with ordinary wealth.

There was no way people from families Ariel didn’t know could have such capability.

So the names and families of people written on the memo were all aliases.

Ariel sighed and sat on the sofa.

If she deployed people, even if they were aliases, it wouldn’t be completely impossible to find them…….

But this way, even if there was a mastermind among them, evidence would be very hard to find.

It would be impossible unless they searched the entire club or checked the ledgers.

She wasn’t even certain that the memo Bruno gave was real. The possibility that there was a mastermind inside was also something to consider.

“If only Bruno would just open his mouth…… Should I wait for now?”

Ariel held up the memo.

It wasn’t just one or two people he had written down.

Did he deliberately write many? Or did Bruno also want to dig deeper into the mastermind forces? If they pushed him as the culprit right now, he would have nothing to say…….

Ariel frowned.

Of course, that confidence probably came from the assurance that Damian would not point to Bruno himself as the culprit.

He couldn’t actually know how Damian would come out.

“Hm? The name is…… Kerpin?”

In the memo Bruno wrote, some had only families written, and some had only names written.

There weren’t that many written with full names, but among them was one written as Kerpin.

A strange sense of déjà vu struck her.

“……Kerpin? I feel like I’ve heard it a lot somewhere.”

Ariel blinked and separated her body from the sofa backrest.

“Kerpin. Kerpin……”

Ariel jumped up from her seat and opened her lips.

“Don’t tell me Blake Borghese……”

Kerpin was the name of the monster in the fairy tale book that her younger brother had loved since childhood.

Ariel let out a hollow laugh and put down the memo. Perhaps things might be resolved much more easily.

Her younger brother was a spitting image of their father and had completely inherited that very nature. There had been more than one or two times when Ariel was very flustered as a child.

But because of that, he was simple.

Except for Ariel, he hated listening to anyone’s instructions, and his eyes would spin at money and shiny objects.

With high probability, the club owner would be her younger brother.

He wasn’t a brother who would invest money in something that wasn’t his.

Moreover, if it was a club, money would come and go, so there would be many shiny things. It was a scene that would satisfy her younger brother’s heart.

“He deliberately leaked it.”

Her younger brother’s alias being written on Bruno’s memo was probably not a coincidence.

It was a signal.

Come see me.

The moment she was certain upon seeing Kerpin, a knock sounded.

“Madam, the lady wishes to have a conversation in the garden inside the ducal residence.”

*

“Daughter.”

Damian called Lucy. After dinner ended, they moved to the garden for a while as Lucy had said.

Lucy naturally sat on Damian’s lap and turned her head back as if asking why he called.

Instead of speaking, Damian gestured toward the seat next to them. It was a space where two people could sit.

Moreover, there wasn’t just one bench.

He couldn’t understand why he was stuck together with his daughter like this among the scattered benches.

Since it was summer and the weather was already hot, it became even hotter when his small, warm daughter climbed onto his lap.

“……Ha. How on earth did Dad marry Mom?”

Lucy frowned, crossed her arms, and shook her head at Damian.

“Benjamin also makes various efforts to sit together with Elisha, but Dad…… aren’t you more stupid than I thought? You weren’t a stone but an idiot.”

Sharp criticism came from her small lips.

“Why on earth did Mom……”

Lucy stared intently at Damian’s face and sighed repeatedly again.

“I saw in a fairy tale book that faces last three months!”

“Three months?”

Damian tilted his head at the sentence he was hearing for the first time.

“But……”

Lucy suddenly seemed to lose confidence in her own words, bit her lips, and grabbed her chin with her hand.

She lowered her head slightly and fell into thought again. The small voice muttering added weakly.

“But Elisha said appearance lasts a lifetime.”

Damian burst into laughter at Lucy’s words, nodded, and casually asked.

“If you had to choose between being handsome and having a good personality, which would you choose?”

“Can’t you be handsome and have a good personality too?”

At his greedy daughter’s answer, Damian shook his head.

“If that were possible, the choice wouldn’t be fair. A handsome dad and a dad with a good personality. Which one?”

At Damian’s words, Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and said clearly.

“……A dad with a good personality! If it had been a dad with a good personality…… I wouldn’t have a reason to be doing this.”

Coldness flowed again from Lucy’s wide-open eyes.

However, the round eyes that had been flowing with coldness switched thoughts in that short time, the coldness disappeared, and they rolled around in the air.

Perhaps because she was a child, she seemed to have many bubbling thoughts.

Lucy quickly switched thoughts and nodded her head.

“But Mom has a good personality and is pretty too. How…… How…… is that possible? No, but…… meeting a dad with a bad personality and going through such hardships……”

Lucy’s thoughts changed this way and that way even within one sentence, then she suddenly grabbed Damian’s cheeks with both hands.

She pressed his cheeks firmly with strength and wrinkled her face.

“Dad is definitely protected by the soul of a knight who saved the country in the past. A really~ really~ big and important ship with His Majesty the Emperor on it, it must be the protection of a knight who was at least a left oarsman there. Otherwise, you couldn’t have met Mom.”

“That’s fortunate. That such a knight protects Dad.”

When Damian agreed, Lucy nodded.

“What fortune you had to marry Mom. Mom will marry me later when I grow up.”

“Well. That seems difficult.”

Damian’s words with a slight smile rang out, but Lucy had stopped pressing his cheeks and leaned her head in.

The voice that became small as if what had just happened was really a joke scratched Damian’s ear.

“Become a handsome husband with a good personality. Before I find a new dad.”

“Lucy? Damian?”

The expressionless child’s face flashed eerily and disappeared.

It was the same moment Ariel, surprised by the sight of the father and daughter stuck together on the bench, raised her voice.