try begging
But in my haste I forgot something: Christmas is a public holiday.
What's worse, it had to be Friday. On top of that, the day after Christmas was also a public holiday.
So the Royal Heritage Bank didn't open until three days later, on the 28th, and by the time Grace found her inheritance, flyers asking for her were already posted all over the capital.
By then, I thought that they had already issued arrest warrants in all border areas and ports, so I gave up on trying to escape overseas.
At least for now.
I was thinking of trying again after giving birth. Pregnant women crossing the border are rare, but ordinary young women are common. I was thinking of fooling her by pretending to be blind.
The problem was that she needed enough money to get away until she had her baby. The money she had received from Nancy Wilkins and the money she had stolen from the vault was not enough to sustain her hotel stay until she had her baby.
As of now, it was dangerous to rent a room and stay in one place for a long time. Since there was no one to provide supplies, it was impossible to stay quietly without being noticed by people. If you kept coming and going, you would attract the attention of the residents, and there was a high chance that you would be caught by the man.
So I thought I'd wait until people started getting sick of the flyers and completely lost interest, and then try to find a place to stay in a big city.
In the end, the only answer until then is a hotel, so how fortunate I am to have received such a legacy.
The inheritance left by his mother consisted of thirty two-carat diamonds and twenty one-troy-ounce gold bars. These valuables, which weighed less than a kilogram, were so enormous that, when converted into money, they could buy six modern houses in the suburbs of a large city.
If I added the money I had from selling the gold to the cash I had, I would have enough money to escape overseas. It was a stroke of luck that the price of gold had skyrocketed in the past few years as the economy boomed.
Grace decided to do something more productive while she was forced to wander around the country.
It's about finding the hideout of the remnants and reporting it.
Just let bygones be bygones and move on with your life.
I'll do a little more.
Now, I had tried to live only for myself and not take anyone's side, but when I saw the remnants contacting me through newspaper advertisements and trying to regain power, I couldn't stand it any longer.
The only person who could stop this was himself, who knew their behavior best. So he decided to help that son of a bitch, Leon Winston, until he left.
"Fuck...."
Grace looked down at her towering belly and sighed.
'I wish you would come out soon...'
The child will be left behind.
No matter how much I compared them, there were more reasons to leave them behind than to take them with me. In fact, the only reason I had to take them with me was a proposition that had no certainty or logic: 'Because I gave birth to them...?'
The strange sense of responsibility that came from nowhere was just awkward. After all, it wasn't a child that Grace had created and given birth to in the first place.
Responsibility should be borne by the person who created it of his own free will.
I had a vague idea that I would give the baby to that man after I gave birth. And I already had a feeling that it would be a child that I would have a hard time raising.
The child was quiet when we bought a cheap turkey sandwich for lunch today, but he danced excitedly when we ate the expensive salmon dish in the train dining car.
"This is incredible. I'm just a picky eater... ."
Grace sighed as she continued to mutter to herself.
But can that man really be a good father? He's just a chess piece in the operation to clear out her base, and he's just a child who was created to be used as an anchor to keep her. There's no way he could feel normal affection.
That guy doesn't even know how to love normally in the first place.
Even though he grew up under the care of his father, who was a count, this child was still a motherless illegitimate child. And it was obvious that the man would one day give up Grace and marry the Archduchess, so this child would become a pariah.
Then should I just send it to an orphanage? Or should I find a good home for it myself?
Grace was finally beginning to understand her mother's feelings a little.
"I should have sent him to an orphanage...."
Her mother did not say those words because she hated or disliked her daughter. Just as her mother had hoped for her to live a normal life, Grace also hoped for her unborn child to grow up normally.
Grace also didn't know how to love normally.
There are so many couples in the world who want children, but I felt like it was impossible for me to raise a child in a half-family when I didn't even want one.
Just because you have money doesn't mean you can raise a child well. You can tell that just by looking at the man.
Besides, I had absolutely no confidence that I could love a child. To be honest, it was burdensome and burdensome. The fetal movement was still making me feel uncomfortable.
Birth?
At that moment, Grace realized. Now that she thought about it, there had been no movement at all from the time she got off the train and headed to the hotel.
Why aren't you moving? It's never been this quiet for so long.
Grace pressed hard on the spot where the child frequently kicked.
"What are you doing?"
I tried talking to the child, but there was no response at all. My heart sank.
She quickly got up and took out a box of chocolates from her handbag that had been carelessly thrown on the floor. She picked up one chocolate and put it in her mouth, chewing it quickly without even tasting it.
"What's wrong? Huh?"
Still, there was no response. Could it be that something went wrong?
"Haa... What is it?"
It was a needless worry. After eating the second piece of chocolate, the baby started kicking. Grace rubbed the area around her navel that was cold from being kicked and exhaled deeply.
Was it just sleeping? I was surprised to see that he knew that I was thinking of leaving him again.
Grace pushed the box of chocolates to the side table and lay back down on the bed. Just as the struggles seemed to have stopped, the small, regular movements inside her stomach began to tap, tap, tap.
I now know that these are hiccups.
It was funny that even unborn babies hiccup. It was as if they were sending Morse code from inside their stomachs. Grace, who was trying to interpret the baby's hiccup as a code, burst out laughing when she realized it made no sense at all.
After covering the baby with the blanket and changing positions, the hiccups subsided. Then, as if he was falling asleep again, Grace stroked his stomach and muttered to the baby as if trying to console him.
"I'm going to live my life. You live yours."
Live freely without the yoke of your parents. Even though your parents are so bad...
"Still alive."
º º º
It was not a superstition that a tip was accurate if the informant was a young woman.
When I checked the report records to see only those that actually led to arrests, I found that all of the informants were indeed young women.
Naturally, the informants' names were all different. Furthermore, since the receivers were all different, it was impossible to confirm whether the voices were the same.
Still, Leon was convinced that all of the 'honorary members' of the 1st Special Mission Group were the same woman: Grace Riddle.
The reports were quite detailed. In addition, there was something that all the recipients felt in common. The informants always identified themselves as acquaintances of the remaining party or waitresses at the cafe, but they never showed any anxiety about whether their anonymity would be guaranteed when reporting.
That's the woman.
So far, I have analyzed the locations of the hideouts that the woman reported on a map, but I have not found any trends. I do not know how she found the hideouts, but it seems that she simply moved in the order that I found them.
Among the rebels captured based on that woman's report, was there anyone who had met the woman? Campbell was sent to various camps to interrogate them, and heard some very interesting stories.
If you see a pregnant woman wearing sunglasses, the military will show up within a few days.
There was a rumor going around in the camp that she was a symbol of bad luck, the 'woman in white'.
What is the symbol of bad luck, that woman is the informant.
It seemed like the woman had followed the person herself and confirmed the location of the hideout with her own eyes before making the tip-off call.
Extremely dangerous.
"under...."
That fearless woman. There might be a bounty on Grace Riddle's head among the remnants, and yet she went around doing such things. For the sake of the woman and the child, she had to be caught quickly.
Last Wednesday, when the tip was received, the priority was to track down the informant rather than clear out the hideout. They traced the phone call and found that the woman had called from a bank in Dunwich, but the bank employees did not remember her.
Still, I didn't think they would sleep on the street, so I searched every hotel in the city and got a pretty good result.