She tilted her head, a cruel, mocking smirk playing on her lips.

"The servants would still bow to that dog. The nobility would still toast to it. The entire country would treat that dog with the exact same respect they give you. Because the one who matters in this equation is not the dog. And it is certainly not ’you’. It is ’me’."

Heena leaned back onto her silk cushion, completely unbothered by the heavy, tense silence in the room. "So banish that ridiculous little thought from your head, my ’dear fiancé’. Do not come in here talking nonsense. If you honestly think that I need to please you or act like a good person for your sake, then please—get lost."

Orion paused. For a long, tense moment, his beautiful mask cracked, revealing the calculating, cornered viper underneath. He took a slow breath, forcing his expression to smooth out.

"It looks like my lady is simply too tired from her journey," Orion deflected, his voice a little stiffer than before.

Heena didn’t even blink.

"You know what?" she stated flatly, her dark eyes completely devoid of warmth or mercy. "I am actually so freshened up right now that I could literally kill you where you sit without blinking an eye."

"You know what?" Heena said, a sudden, dangerous spark lighting up her dark eyes. "You have actually made me curious. Come, let’s go. I will show you exactly what is wrong."

Before Orion could even process her words, Heena reached out, grabbed his perfectly manicured hand, and yanked him up from the cushion. She didn’t let go as she forcibly dragged him toward the sliding wooden doors, throwing them open.

Samuel was standing right outside at perfect attention. When the doors slid open, his eyes immediately dropped to Heena’s hand tightly gripping Orion’s.

Samuel’s massive fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned bone-white, his heart burning with an intense, suffocating jealousy. But true to his role, he didn’t utter a single word of protest. He just fell into step right behind them, his towering frame radiating a dark, terrifying aura as Heena literally dragged the pretty Third Groom down the pristine corridors.

"You! And you!" Heena suddenly shouted, pointing at the passing staff. "Five guards! Seven servants! Follow me right now!"

Her tone was so absolute, so dripping with the unquestionable authority of the estate’s true master, that not a single person dared to hesitate. They instantly dropped what they were doing and scrambled to form a line behind her.

Heena marched her impromptu battalion straight toward the grooms’ quarters. There were four separate courtyards given to these bastards. She stopped right in front of Kavien’s quarters first. It was ridiculously luxurious—second only to her own.

Without breaking stride, Heena lifted her leg and violently kicked the heavy wooden door down.

’CRASH!’

Kavien, who had been lazily sleeping the day away in his lavish bed, jolted awake in terror. He stared at the broken door and shouted, "Who the hell—?!"

Heena casually strolled into the room, dragging a stunned Orion behind her, and flashed a brilliant, ruthless smile.

"Your wife," Heena declared brightly. "Oh, I mean your future wife. Or maybe your master. You can even call me young lady or the Lady of the House."

She shoved Kavien back onto the mattress and turned to the trembling servants. "Clean up this whole room! Check everything that is expensive—sell it. Everything that looks like it belongs to the estate, get it back to the treasury right now!"

Kavien’s face turned red with fury and shock. "What do you mean?! You cannot do this! This is ’my’ room!"

Heena turned to him, her smile vanishing into a cold glare. "When did my house become your room? This property belongs to my grandmother. I definitely do not remember my grandmother giving you this estate. Our title has not changed. I am still the Marquis’s daughter. Did my father somehow change his DNA so that you became his blood son and I became the stray? No? Then shut up."

Everyone in the room was entirely stunned.

"You have five minutes!" Heena shouted at the servants. "Clean and check this room completely!"

She didn’t give Kavien another second of her time. She turned around, dragging Orion right back out the door. Panicking at the sight of his luxury being stripped away, Kavien scrambled out of bed and literally ran off toward the Marchioness’s pavilion to complain. ’Good,’ Heena thought. ’Saves me the trouble.’

’Crash!’

The second door was kicked open just as violently. The Second Groom was sitting at a table inside, loudly playing mahjong with his punk noble friends. They truly treated her estate like their personal playground.

Heena didn’t even look at them. She shouted the exact same orders. The servants, entirely terrified of Heena, didn’t even blink. They just rushed inside and started grabbing the expensive furniture and decorations, completely ignoring the stunned noblemen who sat there entirely speechless.

Since she was already dragging Orion—the Third Groom—along with her, Heena skipped the third courtyard and marched straight to the fourth.

As she pushed the gates of the Fourth Groom’s quarters open, a warm, peaceful breeze brushed past her. But the moment Heena looked inside, her eye twitched.

The entire courtyard had been planted with a dense bamboo forest.

’What the heck?’ Heena thought, staring at it with pure, modern common sense. ’Anyone with a brain knows that planting bamboo in a confined stone courtyard is like playing with kerosene! The roots are going to spread and burst straight out of the ground in a few years, destroying the entire foundation of the estate!’

Sitting calmly in the middle of this architectural disaster was a man dressed in a short, practical swordsman’s outfit. When he saw Heena and her entourage enter, he didn’t panic. He just glared at them with such intense, sharp hostility that the servants behind Heena actually trembled.

This time, Heena didn’t even bother talking to him. She just turned her head toward the tall, masked guard standing faithfully at her shoulder.

"Beat the shit out of him," Heena ordered flatly. "And make sure this whole courtyard is cleaned of this weed."

Samuel froze.

He looked at the highly trained Fourth Groom, and then he looked down at Heena. Beneath his wooden cat mask, his eyes were practically screaming, ’’My lady, how the heck am I supposed to beat up a titled nobleman in front of everyone? I am just a lowly guard!’’

Heena looked at Samuel’s nervous hesitation, letting out a sharp, exasperated sigh. If her guard was too worried about being beaten to act, she would simply do it herself.

Before Samuel could even blink, Heena reached out. With a swift, incredibly fluid motion, she grabbed the hilt of his heavy broadsword and drew it completely from its scabbard. The sharp, metallic ’shing’ of the lethal blade filled the air as she easily lifted the massive weapon.

She turned and leveled the razor-sharp tip of the sword directly at the Fourth Groom’s chest.

"You fucking dare to look at me like that?" Heena snarled, her voice completely devoid of any aristocratic grace.

The entire courtyard gasped in unison. The seven servants, the five guards, and even the pretty Third Groom standing beside her completely froze in absolute shock.