Please Forget Me - Chapter 372

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

But what should be done about the pest that had been allowed to fester, tangled up and clinging on even now?

Phineas replayed his conversation with the Marquis in the hospital room.

‘The more I deal with him, the clearer it becomes that he’s utterly two-faced.’

If made an enemy, he would torment you until death. Even as an ally, he was the sort who might stab you in the back at any moment, leaving you in constant fear. A man who should never have been kept close, yet Phineas had permitted the engagement not because of the man himself, but because of the power and background he carried. That had been the mistake.

‘Now that Dana has turned him into an enemy, she’ll be harassed for the rest of her life.’

Phineas sensed that the Marquis’s insistence on maintaining the marriage wasn’t solely about preserving his dignity. Even now, as his heart tilted toward his daughter—gaunt, frail, painfully thin—the Marquis’s words resurfaced.

If I annul this marriage, do you think only your daughter will be abandoned?

The threat loomed before his eyes. If this marriage were undone, everything Phineas had built over a lifetime would be stripped away. A man who had failed his family and then failed society as well, what would remain? He would be reduced to nothing but a loser.

Doctor, this is my final warning. If you don’t want to lose everything you’ve built and end up on the streets, make sure Dana behaves herself in front of everyone that day, by any means necessary.

The furious warning blotted out his vision, and his daughter seemed to disappear from sight. When he closed his eyes and opened them again, an old, faded telegram hovered in its place.

Don’t let Dana live the way I did.

‘What is the right thing to do now?’

He wasn’t given much time to think.

“It’s time for the bride to enter.”

Someone outside the closed door urged them to hurry.

“No….”

Dana, who had been limp and slumped, struggled to lift her unsteady body. Without thinking, Phineas grabbed her as she tried to flee. The moment he met his daughter’s eyes as she looked back at him, he made his decision.

‘If you’re an adult, you don’t run from the consequences of your own actions.’

* * *

“No… I can’t just stay here like this….”

I had to run. But every time I tried to stand, my legs gave out and I collapsed again. The doctor caught me, pulled me upright, and led me outside. It looked like support, but it was closer to being escorted under arrest.

“No… I don’t want to….”

The d**g was so strong that even the small amount that had dissolved on my tongue left me unable to escape, unable even to push him away. Half carried, half dragged along wherever he went, I resisted with the only thing still working, my voice.

“Did you love my mother, Doctor?”

“That’s an obvious question.”

He didn’t look at me, staring straight ahead with a rigid expression as he answered.

“Then would you have told my mother to assassinate an enemy?”

“Why would I ever do that?”

“But the Marquis told me to.”

It was something I hadn’t revealed in the papers because it involved classified matters. The doctor’s face twisted sharply, he clearly hadn’t known. And foolishly, I felt hope stir again.

“Then would you have tied my mother up like an animal and…”

“Dana. People can hear you. Please be quiet for a moment.”

His steps stopped. I had been looking only up at his face, but when I turned my head forward,

We were standing before the cathedral, its doors wide open.

All this time my vision had been blurred, unfocused. But in that moment, everything became horrifyingly clear. The crowd filled the nave. The altar. The vile fraud standing at its front.

“Try taking me even one step closer. I’ll expose everything and ruin this wedding. You think I won’t?”

I was struggling desperately to pry his arm from my waist when a sudden shout froze me in place.

“Marquis! I will not give my daughter to a fraud! This marriage is void!”

It was his voice, yet words he should never have spoken. Was I hallucinating? Was this a dream brought on by the d***s?

Across the cathedral, the Marquis opened his mouth, let out a sound like a wounded beast, and then snapped it shut. None of it felt real.

“Alright. It’s over. Dana, let’s go.”

“Huh…?”

The doctor turned, still holding me. As he led me away and I looked back, I saw the Marquis striding out of the cathedral, his expression twisted with rage.

‘Please… don’t use that face that looks like my love’s in such an ugly way.’