“Again! Your hand again!”

Shouting, Margaret glared at Jurich, whose face was covered in tears and snot.

“Can’t you at least have pretty nails?! If you bite like that, it’s all ugly!”

“Uwaaaaah!” Jurich cried.

“There’s no hope in these damn Tilrods. They can’t be saved! What happens when there’s money? It all slips away from the hands of that incompetent, stupid patriarch. All the children I gave birth to are all lost cases—gave me nothing but pain to my stomach. Your older sister? Watch very carefully how that detestable wench tries to survive. And your brother? When the hell will your brother come to his senses?”

“Uwaaaaaaah!”

“Shut up! You don’t know anything else except to cry, huh?”

Margaret shook her little daughter’s shoulders like crazy.

“Jurich Tilrod, you’ve just been tormenting me all this time!”

“AHH! Mom, stop! Please stop!”

As Jurich screamed in fear, Margaret pushed her away.

Jurich fell to the floor even more as she hit the floor loudly.

Crying on the ground in a disarray, Jurich looked really pitiful.

Jurich couldn’t even breathe properly and started wheezing as she cried.

Strangely, after seeing her daughter’s miserable appearance, Margaret felt relieved.

“Stand up, Jurich Tilrod!”

“Huk, uhuk, uhuuuk!”

Even as it felt like the whole world was crashing down on her, Jurich reflexively raised her body.

The child was overcome with fear. If she didn’t listen to her mother, she would really be abandoned by her entire world.

Jurich’s fear was not unfounded.

In fact, didn’t her mother also abandon her older sister, Radis, to that extent?

“Hiic, huuuk, uwahhh!”

Jurich kept trying to think that Radis hadn’t been abandoned.

However, she still had a hunch, like an animal’s instinct.

It was as if, on a rainy and windy day, her mother had bitten her sister’s neck and stepped out of the nest—and she knew instinctively what she had done even if she didn’t witness it firsthand.

The quiet death of her sibling.

Suck, suck!

Jurich sucked on her thumb and desperately clung to Margaret.

Margaret glared at Jurich with her narrowly opened eyes.

“Why are you acting like a baby? You’re already fourteen!”

But strangely enough, after seeing her daughter’s behavior regressing in age, Margaret felt calm and felt better.

An eerie smile tugged up on the corners of Margaret’s lips, not knowing whether it was a smile out of glee or despair.

It was an insidious smile, like an old queen reaffirming her dominance through acts of tyranny towards those who would point fingers at her.

Margaret wiped Jurich’s tears and runny nose with the hem of her dress, then she spoke with a strict voice.

“You have to be good to your mom, Jurich Tilrod. Don’t you know how much I sacrificed because of you? Don’t you want to repay your mother? You have to become a great person and marry well. That’s all Mom wants, okay?”

Looking half out of her mind, Jurich continued to suck on her thumb as she nodded.

“Alright. Go wash up now. Oh my goodness, your face is a mess. Gosh, where did my senses fly off to. I should go find the enemy. It’s obvious where the enemy would go right now.”

Driving her daughter’s heart further into the abyss, Margaret stood up with a very relieved face and pulled the rope to call a maid.

After asking Irene to take Jurich and wash her, she fixed her own appearance.

Of course, she was about to find Zade.

Maybe right now, Zade was drunk out of his mind in the bar he frequented, or maybe he was sitting in front of a table with cards being dealt to him, his shoulders tense after being there for a long time.

If he wasn’t in those places, maybe he was in Flora’s house, staying in that rathole-like place all this time.

However, Margaret’s plans fell through because of an unexpected guest.

“I am Felice Roschilde.”

It was Felice, the man from the knight family of Roschilde who Radis met at the banquet.

Although he was a guest who came without any notice, Margaret knew what she had to do since it was a Roschilde.

There was no other choice but to invite Felice in since he was from a prestigious family, and so her trip outside was postponed.

Before a maid could even bring out some tea for them to drink, Felice went straight to business.

“Madam Tilrod, did you hear about me from Miss Radis?”

She didn’t know what she was talking about, but the moment she heard Radis’ name being uttered, Margaret felt that something ominous was coming about.

Trying to raise the corners of her lips as much as possible to make a smile, Margaret replied.

“Umm, she’s not at home right now. That child really couldn’t be stopped. I didn’t even hear from her about you, Sir Roschilde. Did she do anything wrong?”

“Forgive me for the discourtesy. I was actually impressed by the young lady. As the eldest daughter of the family, Miss Radis seemed to have deep thoughts about the future of the household. She asked me for a position in the Roschilde family’s subjugation squad.”

“Oh my, is it perhaps David’s…!”

Of course, this was a misunderstanding.

What Radis asked Felice was a position for herself, not for David.

However, Radis had been so nervous that her explanation wasn’t enough, and Felice was under the clear prejudice that a young woman wouldn’t ask for a position in a subjugation squad for herself.

So Felice surmised that Radis made a request on behalf of her brother, not for herself.