A Handsome Kinky Gangster Reporter

“I shouldn’t have agreed to the proposal to choose the successor by voting. If only I hadn’t been greedy for the throne at that time. I’m sorry, I should have prioritized my family’s safety over anything. I didn’t know the current empress was such a meticulous person.”

That meant Empress Fionia was the one who killed his mother.

Claude’s head was spinning. Even after committing a crime, she had been going around freely and remained unpunished for many years.

“When I told her that I had found my missing son, there were frequent disturbance from the hitmen who had been targeting you. That’s why I spread false rumors to people that my son was sick, and prevented you from leaving the state area.”

This was the reason why Claude couldn’t meet Haley. Claude was also unable to enter the academy that everyone attended, and had to call a tutor in the state area to teach him.

“The Empress has filled and dominated the parliament with her people. She also completely stopped paying attention to you for a few years. By now, I guess I’m relieved that you’ve been eliminated from the list of imperial successors.”

Regardless of how much the Duke of Gateron Lischer tortured and forbid the assassins who came after his son, they died without ever telling who ordered them. No one knew what poison the assassins drank, but the after-effect they suffered from was as if their voices couldn’t come out, and they suffered cardiac arrest. It was a frustrating situation for the duke. Even if the Duke of Gateron wanted to accuse the empress for it, there was no evidence led to her.

Claude, who had been listening, began to ask his father.

“Father. How did you know that the empress was behind all of these?”

Hearing his son’s words, Gateron Lischer closed his mouth firmly.

‘I was able to find out the truth of the incident by using a witch. No one will believe me if I tell about this to others.’

He made a deal with the witch who protected his son. How could he possibly disclose it? Even he had promised the contents of the deat would never be revealed to anyone else. Gateron turned to the window and spoke firmly to his son.

“You don’t need to know about that. It’s just that now it’s time for me to introduce you to the nobles. On the day of the princess’ engagement, you must make your official debut in front of the nobles. I don’t want you to leave the house until then.”

Although he did not tell his son, Gateron Lisher was now seriously thinking about finding a partner for Claude. There was hope that even the empress would not be able to do anything against her son after he made his social debut safely.

*  *  *

The shocking facts he heard yesterday made Claude a little absentminded and unknowingly walked his way to Haley’s office. His mother’s death was actually related to the current empress. However, under the pretext of a lack of clear evidence, his father seemed to have no intention of alleviating his mother’s injustice.

It really seems that he is a coward.’

Originally, he wasn’t allowed to wander around without an escort. However, Claude had insisted on going and seeing Haley last night.

Claude would feel relieved after looking at his sister’s face.

At the Golden Wild Goose Daily office, he wanted to act childish and be comforted like when he was a child, rubbing his face in his big sister’s arms.

However, there was a strange man in the office. The blue-haired man who was believed to be an employee there, Claude strangely felt perturbed. Just like when Claude saw Charon. Using his primal instincts, he guessed the blue man must be seeing his older sister as a woman.

Like a wolf invading his territory, he was supposed to be anxious and bared his fangs to someone he was seeing for the first time. Of course when Haley’s eyes fell on him, he pretended nothing had happened. Claude didn’t want to be despised by his big sister.

Was it jealousy? Or was it because the road was so beautiful that night?

Drunk under the bright moonlight, he did it first without confessing his love for Haley beforehand. If Claude had to make excuses, he could say that he had fallen to the temptation of the wolf inside him. In fact, he wanted to do something worse than that. Thank god, he managed to hold back.

Claude couldn’t sleep because he was too overwhelmed by excitement. Even a cold shower didn’t do anything at all. Inexpressible desires kept surfacing, but he paced around in front of Haley’s door. Then, he finally packed up at daybreak.

If his father’s words that said the mastermind behind her family’s misfortune was the empress were true, then Haley’s family could have been put in danger for no reason by the assassin who had been targeting him since he was young.

‘Meanwhile, I’ve snuck through the security guards around Haley’s house. Things will be very dangerous until I made out through my social debut.’

He left a short note.

[I’ll be staying at the Duke residence for a while.]

Claude hoped that Haley wouldn’t get the wrong meaning out of this.

He was doing all this for his sister’s safety. Claude thought about his determination as he left the house. His father, the Duke of Lischer said that he would announce to the nobles that he was still alive on the day of the princess’s engagement. He would stay away from the Haley family until then.

In the future, he would become the young master of the Duke of Lischer. Now, with the salary given to him, he could give his sister an expensive gift.

‘Although I lost the ring that I prepared myself to propose to you, Noona. Please wait a little longer. I will propose to you with a more lavish ring.’

Claude made a promise at Haley’s doorstep and left the house.

*  *  *

Tom Baker’s bakery in the red brick building was busy in the kitchen again today, baking new loaves of bread. Tom, the baker and the cook, said to his daughter, while kneading the cake.

“Mary. The bread you’re making now still has time for the dough to be cooked, so you can go to James’ house.”

“What? What’s the point of going there?”

“I think we need more milk for this new menu. Please ask them to bring one more amount of bottle of milk than usual tomorrow. And on the way here, please buy several batches of beef. It’s cloudy today, so I think the meat pies will sell higher than usual.”

“Oh, father! Please send someone else. Stop bothering your daughter!”

Mary thought she could rest while waiting for the dough to be cooked.

Mary was upset at her father, who treated her like an employee in the bakery. As if he was used to his daughter’s complaints, Tom Baker mindlessly let it slide.

“How much is the labor cost and are we even hiring an employee? This is the bakery you’re going to inherit, so work conscientiously and treat this as if I’m educating my own successor.”

“Who says I want to inherit this rundown bakery? I have dreams, too!”

Mary took off her apron, threw it harshly before walking out the door. If she becomes an employee, she should be paid. Mary’s father used Mary as free labor under the pretext of being the member of the family.

“Damn. There’s nowhere to go even if you go out there.”

Mary always got up early in the morning to make bread, so she didn’t get enough sleep. Mary felt tired of being stuck in one place without being able to go anywhere. By now, Mary felt nauseous just by the smell of butter. Since she was born, she has always been stuck to the bakery and has no friends. Mary wished she could go to her friends’ house on a day like this.

As she ran out of the bakery while being mad at her father, Mary became even more sad that she had nowhere to go. Why is the sky so cloudy, too?

‘Is it going to rain?’

Mary raised her palms in the air to check if it was going to rain, but it was as she’d expected. The raindrops, which had only been one or two drops, quickly began to grow. People on the side of the road quickened their pace.

“Oh my god. How unfortunate I am today.”

Mary ran recklessly into a nearby shop. When she shook her body from the raindrops and looked around, it was a bookstore filled with the smell of books.

‘I have no money.’

As Mary stood still and waited for the rain to stop, she felt the bookstore owner staring intently at her. She looked around as if she had come to look for a book. However, it was impossible for her to immediately find a decent book in her eyes because she had been staying away from the book for a long time.

Then, she saw a notice that said ‘Take it for free and read it.’. There was a stack of newspapers under the notice.

“Sir. May I take this?”

The bookstore owner answered Mary without taking his eyes off the newspaper he was reading.

“Yes, I’m giving it away for free because this newspaper company said they would be promoting it for free for a while. Take it and read.”

The newspaper, which was considered a waste of time, turned out to have very interesting contents, which Mary was quickly absorbed to. There was an old baron’s first love story on the front page and the Cinderella wedding story, which were equally interesting. A commoner who had nothing could be married to a rich baron in a blink of an eye. How can there be such majestic tale?

‘I don’t believe this is real.’

It sounded like a romance novel.

The contents of the newspaper were very clearly outlined as a novel. No, it must have been a romance novel and not a newspaper article. Mary even sobbed at the part where the psychological description of Baron Stephen, who was pathetically abandoned by his first love.

That’s not the only ridiculous part. There was also today’s fortune-telling section in the newspaper. Mary read the prophecy by pointing her finger at the year of her birth.

“You are 15 years old, born in the year of Orion. You will feel sad in the morning, but you will have good opportunities in the afternoon.”

The prophecy was also good. Mary was angry with her father and she felt bad. How can it refers to her situation so well? She was a little confused by the expectation of having a good luck in the afternoon.

Mary’s eyes were immediately drawn to one place. There was a heart-wrenching story written by Haley.

“Today’s story?”

Mary read anonymously about the story of someone lamenting their marriage.

I’ve been married for 13 years. My ex-husband had an unfortunate accident after being hit by a collapsed building. I even cleaned up my sick husband’s mess and took care of him carefully. However, my husband died a while ago after being bedridden for a month.

I was very sad after becoming a widow for a while, but I didn’t have time to keep isolating myself because I suddenly became a runaway and had to take responsibility for many things. A woman came up to me a week ago. She was much younger and prettier than me.

The thing that she said was shocking.

She said that she was my husband’s mistress, and they had been together for five years. She asked me to divide the property because she also has the right to inherit my husband’s property. Unfortunately, I don’t have any idea what to do in this.

Below the woman’s story was the opinion of the newspaper editor.

Please feel free to send your well-written opinions to our newspaper. If you have any concerns, you can send us your story as well. If you submit it anonymously, we would highlight the nice opinion and include it in the newspaper. The person who submitted their opinions would be given a free one-month subscription to our newspaper.

Mary read the story of a nameless woman in a free newspaper, and became very empathetic and angry. 

‘Oh, my God! It’s so hard to believe. How can he cheat on his wife?! Even this woman only found out that her husband was having an affair after he died.’

“If she had known that the man was having an affair before he died, she would have had the opportunity to project her anger on her husband.” 

Mary was determined to dig up his grave and burn his body!

Mary felt sorry for this poor woman. She wanted to leave a comforting message, so she carefully read the newspaper address.

“Huh? This is the address of our bakery, isn’t it?”