CHAPTER 19: REAL FATHER

After I told Serpens about the existence of his possible child, he frowned.

"Lady, you must be mistaken."

"Hm?"

"That simply cannot be."

"Why are you so sure?" I asked in surprise.

"Such an incident has only happened once, and I don’t remember it very well..." The man coughed. "It’s impossible for me to have had a child since then."

Serpens seemed to be 100% sure of this. Although, for my part, I had no doubts about this theory. Serpens Strange was too similar to my love interest for it to be just a coincidence.

In addition to the obvious physical resemblance, their habits and mannerisms were also identical. Any woman would envy their gracefulness. Both exuded a pleasant floral scent of cologne, and their clothes were always in line with the latest fashion trends. In the end, they even had the same hairstyle. Serpens wore his hair in the same ponytail as Lionel in his adult version!

Only a blind person could fail to notice this.

And since I knew for a fact that Lionel had no brothers or any other male relatives, there was only one possibility. It was his father.

Although Serpens himself refused to believe it and dismissed my words as nonsense. He found it strange that I had even brought up the subject.

"So you don’t admit it?"

"Of course not!" Serpens declared proudly. "I am a man of noble upbringing. I would never have children out of wedlock."

"Noble, you say? But you recently offered me to stage a coup..." I casually reminded him of this, while Serpens was embarrassed.

"Th-that... That’s different!"

"Really?"

"Overthrowing an ignoble man from the throne is a worthy cause!"

"Ignoble?"

I was surprised. The current emperor was the father of the main character, so it was unexpected to me that anyone could dislike him. When Serpens spoke of the emperor, his expression darkened. It was the same last time.

Since we were talking about personal matters, I thought it was the most appropriate moment to ask about it.

"Did something happen between you two?" I cautiously suggested.

The man sighed heavily.

"You could say that."

"Come to think of it, I never asked you about this before," I remarked, "Why did you start working for my father?"

To be honest, Serpens seemed to me to be the most unusual candidate for this position from the very beginning. He was well-mannered, educated, and surely came from an intelligent family. But for some reason, he got involved with a family of villains and became the deputy head of a dark organization.

"It’s a long story..." The man looked away.

"It’s okay," I replied, "We have plenty of time."

He sighed and looked at me.

"Do you really want to know...?"

"No, of course not, I just asked..."

Serpens didn’t notice the irony in my voice and stared into the distance with a thoughtful look, as if returning to past memories.

"It happened twelve years ago," he began reluctantly. "I had just finished college and returned home. I was going to become the heir to continue my father’s business..."

The man stood up and began pacing the room.

"Our family had long been involved in the arts and owned paintings," he continued. "We had also always been loyal to the emperor. But at that moment... An aristocrat framed us in order to take our family’s treasures for himself. His position was higher than ours, and the emperor took his side. They wanted to put my father and me in prison on false charges of fraud...

When Serpens recalled those events, his eyes filled with anger again.

"The man to whom my father was most loyal turned his back on us. Only Duke Weinstein unexpectedly intervened and saved us," the man smiled bitterly. "Isn’t it ironic? At the very last moment, it was not the light of the empire but the devil who reached out to help us.

I paused. The duke’s actions came as a surprise to me as well. As it turned out, he was capable of more than just evil deeds.

"I will never forget that. Since then, I have renounced the current regime and sworn to serve the Weinstein family until the end of my days."

"I see..." I coughed. "What about that ’incident’? How did it happen?"

Serpens seemed even more reluctant to talk about it.

"On the day my father and I were released from prison, I got drunk for the first time in a bar. Some woman took me away... And then I woke up in an unfamiliar bed."

The man remembered the incident as a stain on his impeccable reputation.

I was surprised.

"And what did you do?"

"Of course, I ran away as soon as possible!" he snorted. "I don’t even remember her face."

Everything happened much more unpredictably than I thought. The mystery of Lionel’s real father was not revealed until the very end. Therefore, it was generally accepted that his father was one of the clients of the brothel where his mother worked. However, as it turned out, the boy’s blood was not that of a commoner, as he himself always believed, but that of an aristocrat. The woman was probably flattered by Serpens’s good looks and didn’t even take any money from him.

I met Lionel’s real father completely by accident. What’s more, neither of them even knew of the other’s existence...

According to the game’s plot, the boy’s adoptive father will be the old Count Ferber. This will happen in a couple of years, when Lionel turns fourteen. The count will accidentally discover Lionel in a brothel and be struck by his incredible appearance and abilities. The man could not have children of his own due to pathological infertility, but he still had to leave an heir. In the end, his choice fell on the son of a prostitute.

The count will buy the boy from his mother, and Lionel will be educated at the count’s estate for about six years. At the age of twenty, he will enter the palace as an assistant to the deputy minister of culture. And later he will become an imperial tutor... His career will develop very rapidly.

Lionel was devoted to the emperor his entire life. And so he would probably be shocked to learn the truth. Knowing that his real family had lost everything because of the emperor, would he remain loyal to him?

To be honest, my childish curiosity got the better of me. Should I bring these two together or not? Now that I knew everything, the temptation to change the original plot of the game was very strong.

"But why are you suddenly talking about this?" Serpens frowned. "What does my child have to do with it?"

However, it was also dangerous to reveal such important information. I hadn’t decided whether or not to bring up the subject with Serpens. At least my own suspicions had been confirmed.

"Oh, nothing," I smiled casually. "I just happened to meet a boy who looked like you."