I Became the Male Lead's Adopted Daughter-Chapter 72
“...What is all this?”
A few days later.
Ferio pointed at a box sitting atop his office desk.
It was filled with unopened letters.
The moment Ferio spotted the box, he came to a halt. There was an unsettling energy radiating from the letters inside.
“They’re all love letters and marriage proposals addressed to you, sir.”
Tra gestured politely toward the box with both hands.
“And they all arrived just this morning.”
They weren’t letters collected over several days—they were all delivered that very morning.
And that wasn’t the only box. Moments later, the servants brought in two more boxes stuffed with letters.
“For reference, we excluded parcels and anything particularly large.”
“...”
“I figured you’d want to know, so I brought them.”
Tra, too, looked genuinely astonished by the sudden, exponential increase in mail.
Ferio had always been popular, but this level of attention was unprecedented.
Normally, the name “Voreoti” served as a fairly strong deterrent.
“Wow.”
Pop—a round little head popped up over the edge of the desk.
“Are they all for you, Dad?”
Leonia asked with innocent curiosity in her voice.
She was wearing a short-sleeved shirt under a wide-skirted purple ribbon dress, rocking slightly on her heels as she looked on, curious.
Soft smiles appeared on the faces of the adults in the room.
“When did you even get in here?”
Ferio narrowed his eyes at each of his subordinates as he asked the question.
They all looked aggrieved but ended up lowering their heads.
“When they were carrying the boxes.”
Leonia, having finished breakfast, had been casually wandering the mansion when she quietly started following behind the servants moving the boxes.
She’d had a feeling something interesting was about to happen.
And her instincts were right.
“So these are all love letters for Dad?”
“I haven’t checked them all, but...”
Tra smiled gently, implying that was likely the case.
“Wow, I figured you’d lose your charm after having a kid, but I guess not.”
“That would never happen.”
Ferio spoke with certainty. He had a very objective understanding of his dazzling looks and flawless background.
Leonia gave him a frosty sidelong glance.
“...Just help me up.”
With Ferio’s assistance, Leonia climbed onto the desk and began rifling through the box.
Before long, she pulled one out and examined it carefully.
“Looks like a love letter.”
A bright yellow envelope, sealed with wax bearing three flower petals. Even a faint scent of perfume wafted from the gap in the seal.
“Judging by how overly cheerful and light it feels, it’s from some lady who got totally swept up in Dad’s looks. Not love—just a fleeting infatuation like a passing breeze.”
“You figured that out just from looking?”
Lupe stared at the letter and Leonia, visibly creeped out.
“Yeah, this lady’s not it.”
Leonia tossed the letter aside with a flick of her wrist.
Lupe was suddenly reminded of his grandmother, the former Marchioness of Pardus, grumbling and nagging at her husband in her later years.
Tra skillfully caught the discarded letter before it hit the ground.
And so, Leonia entertained herself by examining and deducing from the letters.
Meanwhile, Ferio and the other adults had all quietly returned to their respective workstations.
Leonia eventually got down from the desk and sat on the receiving sofa, calmly organizing the letters.
Letters from families she recognized went to the right. Ones she didn’t went to the left.
Anything that gave off a suspicious or outright dangerous vibe was tossed under the table into a separate box without a second glance.
“Oh, it’s from Lady Hieina.”
At the name, Ferio’s hand paused over his documents.
“She really must like you, huh?”
There had been a bit of a lull, but today she’d sent seven letters.
Without even looking at them, Leonia dropped the letters straight into the box.
A stalker tormenting her dad would be dealt with in the name of his one and only daughter.
“Has she ever come to the estate?”
With this much persistence, one would expect her to have shown up at least once.
“She hasn’t come to the estate.”
Tra added with a motion of his finger across his neck, “Anyone trespassing would be dealt with by the knights immediately.”
Even the boldest stalker apparently valued her life.
“But she has, on more than one occasion...”
Lupe trailed off, his face turning pale as if recalling a trauma.
“She’s tried to ‘coincidentally’ cross paths with the Duke by following his route whenever he leaves the estate. That’s when I learned—yes, even at my age—it’s entirely possible to almost wet your pants.”
Leonia’s mouth fell open.
Lady Hieina was a stalker that exceeded even Leonia’s wildest expectations.
“She tracked Dad’s movements?”
“She just followed him and got ahead of him.”
“She’s insane.”
Leonia rubbed at her arm, which was covered in goosebumps.
“You’re not wrong, young lady,” Tra said with a wry smile, “but maybe let’s not use that word...”
“But when you think about it...”
Leonia rubbed her chin in thought.
“If someone’s going to marry Dad, they probably do need this level of obsession and insanity.”
“You have a point.”
“I agree completely.”
Both Lupe and Tra nodded.
“...You’re both crossing a line.”
Ferio, who had been quietly listening, offered a calm but pointed warning.
Only then did Lupe and Tra shut their mouths and return to their work.
“So what about me? Can I cross the line?”
Leonia grinned brightly and pointed at herself.
“You were a lost cause long ago.”
“Don’t give up on me, Dad!”
“I’m working. Quiet.”
“Quiet!”
Hop! The little beast clapped both hands over her mouth.
Leonia then returned to sorting the letters in silence. With Ferio’s permission, she even opened a few and read through their contents.
[To the Black Beast, Master of the North.]
Leonia grimaced.
Ugh, how childish!
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
It was the kind of opening line that made your skin crawl.
Sure, Voreoti had earned the nickname Black Beast, but Leonia had never once seen Ferio refer to himself that way.
“They called Dad ‘Black Beast, my lord.’”
“......”
Ferio’s brow twitched as he signed a document. Lupe, standing right beside him to pass along the next one, pressed his lips tightly together.
Yep. He hates it.
Leonia resumed reading the letter.
[Whenever the summer sun dazzles my eyes, I recall your gentle smile, my lord...]
Her pitch-black eyes froze halfway down the page.
His smile?
Gentle, even?
“What kind of nonsense is this—like picking your nose with an icicle in mid-July...”
“Haa...”
At his daughter’s sharp and vivid phrasing, Ferio let out a long sigh.
But Leonia was genuinely disturbed.
As far as she knew, Ferio didn’t smile easily. He wasn’t someone who offered warmth or kindness to just anyone.
He only does that with me.
It wasn’t arrogance—Ferio truly only smiled and showed warmth to Leonia.
In the original novel, of course, he smiled only for Varia, the female lead. But for now, Leonia alone had a monopoly on those rare expressions.
Her suspicions were soon confirmed by other letters.
“These shameless women...!”
“It’s shameless, not ‘shamely,’” Ferio corrected, clicking his tongue as he stood up.
Leonia had been waving her little hand excitedly, calling him over.
She handed him several letters.
“......”
Ferio’s eyes sharpened as he began to read.
[The moment I glimpsed you at the bookstore...]
[The hand that accepted the fruit candy...]
[We crossed paths at the restaurant...]
“It was because of me.”
Leonia jabbed her own finger into her chest.
The reason for the sudden surge in letters.
All these women had fallen for Ferio while he was out and about with Leonia.
The sight of the infamous, fearsome Duke Voreoti treating a small child with surprising tenderness had spread through the capital like wildfire.
Updat𝒆d fr𝑜m freewebnøvel.com.
Ultimately, it was Leonia who had made Ferio appear that way—she was the primary cause.
“But why do you think it’s shameless?”
Ferio asked after finishing the letters. There wasn’t anything particularly scandalous in them.
“Wow, listen to this guy.”
Leonia put her hands on her hips, looking at him sideways with a thoroughly unimpressed face.
The senders of these letters had all raved about how touched they were by Ferio’s kindness and attentiveness to his daughter. Some even admitted that was the moment they fell for him.
“But I’m not even in them.”
Leonia, reading each letter carefully, noticed one very strange thing.
In these dreamy, love-sick letters, [N O V E L I G H T] there wasn’t a single mention of her.
It was as if the writers had erased her completely, like she had never existed, or like they’d all agreed to pretend she hadn’t been there.
“...Tra.”
Ferio called out sharply.
The calm atmosphere of the office suddenly shifted—thickening with cold displeasure.
“Check all the letters in here.”
“Understood.”
Tra, who had been assisting with paperwork in the back, silently picked up the box of letters.
“I’ll screen each one and compile a list of any with suspicious or inappropriate content.”
The perceptive butler instantly realized what had made Ferio so furious—and what he needed to do about it.
“Tch, people these days...”
Leonia shook her head with exasperation.
The list of potential stepmother candidates had just been cut down drastically.
***
“There sure are a lot of gutsy bastards in the capital.”
Paavo muttered about the letter incident from a few days ago.
In contrast to his usual knight uniform, he was dressed more formally today—wearing a black ceremonial outfit topped with a crisp white cloak.
From Leonia’s perspective, he looked like he was about to roast alive.
But Paavo claimed it was surprisingly breezy and comfortable despite appearances.
“Anyway, Dad’s super mad.”
“We could tell...”
The entire mansion had been tense since Ferio’s fury had erupted.
Especially near his office—so suffocating that even the servants avoided passing through.
“Sir Lupe even begged me to help spare his life.”
“How does that guy even work as Dad’s secretary when he’s so fragile?”
“Fragile, huh...”
Paavo once again found himself marveling at the vocabulary of this seven-year-old girl.
“Are you doing all right, young lady?”
he asked gently.
