Please Forget Me - Chapter 366

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

The Marquis ignored the questions entirely and instead slandered his supposedly gentle, obedient daughter as a madwoman—no, as a beast.

“I can’t agree with that. Neither a madwoman nor a beast can pull out a tongue already inside someone’s mouth and tear it off.”

He pressed him again, asking how he had ended up with his tongue bitten off by Dana. But the Marquis refused to answer, scribbling instead about liability and responsibility, as though issuing a threat.

At last, Phineas voiced the ugly suspicion that had been circling in his mind.

“Marquis, were you trying to r**e my daughter?”

The Marquis’s eyes turned vicious. He scrawled something on the notepad and held it up.

Doctor, that is an excessive accusation.

“If you’re innocent, answer me. If you don’t, I’ll take it as confirmation.”

The Marquis wrote again.

I am protecting your daughter. The one who asked for a kiss first was not me, it was Dana.

“And before she asked for a kiss, what exactly did you do to her?”

The Marquis’s pen scratched again.

Is it not improper, even for a father, to pry into his daughter’s marital relations?

“I’m asking because I don’t believe she wanted the ‘marital relations’ you’re referring to.”

At this point, the Marquis had effectively admitted—if only indirectly—that he had tried to force himself on Dana and been bitten for it. Far from ashamed, he scoffed and scribbled yet another line.

R**e does not exist between husband and wife.

Phineas was momentarily speechless at the absurdity. And then the Marquis did something even more brazen: he tore that particular note to shreds and burned it with a lighter, while leaving the others intact.

“That may be how the law sees it.”

Phineas said once he recovered, scolding the much younger man.

“But human relationships aren’t governed by law alone. Even between spouses, there is such a thing as decency.”

The pen moved again.

Did your daughter show decency toward her husband?

The conversation had devolved into meaningless wordplay. Phineas gave up trying to reason with him. Still, the Marquis seemed to have more to say, his pen continuing to scrape across the paper.

When can I be discharged?

“In three or four days, at most.”

The next note came swiftly.

Then postpone tomorrow’s ceremony and press conference to the day after my discharge. In the meantime, Doctor, make sure Dana behaves herself.

Phineas couldn’t suppress a bitter laugh.

“And how exactly am I supposed to ‘make her behave’?”

The response was immediate.

That’s for you to figure out, as her father and as a physician. Use a sedative, perhaps. The kind given to livestock.

At the suggestion of drugging his daughter, Phineas’s expression hardened.

“Marquis, my daughter is not an animal. I’ll speak to her. You’re the one in conflict with her, don’t shove your problems onto me.”

The Marquis’s pen flew furiously.

Speak? That woman bit my tongue off and left me unable to speak, and you talk to me about conversation? Are you mocking me?

He flipped the page twice looking agitated.

Doctor, you seem to be misunderstanding your position.

You should be grateful that I am willing to continue living with that deranged beast at all.

If I revoke this marriage, do you think only your daughter will be ruined? The investment I’ve poured into this hospital will be withdrawn in full. Immediately.

The hospital would collapse.

Naturally, I will also demand compensation for the damage your daughter inflicted on me. Not only will the hospital go under, Loveridge itself will be ruined. I could do it right now. The only reason I haven’t is because you are still family. Don’t forget that.

Doctor, this is my final warning. If you don’t want to lose everything you’ve built and end up on the streets, then do whatever it takes to ensure that Dana behaves properly in front of people on that day.

* * *

I wanted to run, but I couldn’t even try.

Whatever my grandmother had mixed into the water she forced me to drink left me dazed all day long. I lost track of how many days passed like that.

“Get up, you wretch!”

One morning, she shook me awake before dawn, scrubbed me clean, and dressed me up, just like the day the Marquis had come for me before. I assumed he was coming again and was already wondering where I should bite this time.

But the dress they put me in was different.

“…A white dress?”

It wasn’t merely white. The decorations were far too ornate to be called plain.

“You idiots! I told you to prepare gloves long enough to cover her wrists!”

As the Marquis had ordered, they hid the wounds on my wrists with long gloves.

The place my grandmother dragged me to, treating me like a doll, was a secluded church on the outskirts of town. When they pulled me into a back room and lowered a veil over my head, I knew.

‘They’re going to make me go through the wedding ceremony again.’