NOVEL WEB Chapter 34 : Crime thriller
Baron Solaris' POV
March 23 853. It was a peaceful late morning in his mansion in a small town where Baron Solaris opted to stay for the time being. The town was located close to the border of DeMontfort territory. He initially planned to take Emily back to his Mansion in his city but was forced to stay back yesterday because of the unexpected illness of his daughter. However thanks to the skilled doctor, he was able to open the heart of his long-lost daughter be it a little bit. He was sitting across from Emily who couldn't help but stare at the exorbitant food on the outdoor tea table. " All of this is for Emily?" she asked him.
The Baron responded with, " Yes my dear. You eat as much as you like. You are my precious daughter after all." She looked exactly like her mother. He was initially very thankful when he found her but yesterday's incidents instilled some skepticism. There was no way that Emily would be so afraid of just guards holding their cores unless the orphanage owners tormented her. He decided to do some digging yesterday. He had not funded any orphanage in his Barony. Who owned the orphanages and who supported them?
Eventually, he was able to figure out that the orphanage was owned by a small merchant who had lost his son to human trafficking. He immediately felt bad for trying to blame the orphanage owners. But his heart wouldn't settle. If not the owner, perhaps those who ran the orphanages tried to harass his daughter. Also, another startling information came out. The orphanage had received funds from House Demontfort for operations every now and then to ensure that it never closed. Were the Demontforts helping the orphanage out of kindness of their heart or was there an ulterior motive? He started pondering.
If it were any other noble, they would have had another wife and children by now and tried to pawn off Emily as a political marriage tool. But Baron Solaris was different. He had loved his wife and daughter dearly. Not a day went by when he didn't miss them. There were even several instances where he wanted to end his life for not being there to protect them from the accident. Fortunately for him, his butler helped him come out of those hard situations by showing him how the people of his barony needed him or there would be more deaths from riverbed flooding and other accidents.
He wanted to give up on everything and pass on the territory to his faction once his life was over. But fate had other plans. He was finally reunited with his daughter. Now that he was reunited with his daughter, there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. He wanted to show her all the love and affection he had failed to give her for the past twelve years.
"Thank you... uhm... Father" she replied. 'Father' 'Father' those words kept resonating in his ears. He made a vow. He would protect his daughter come what may.
Just then, the butler came in and whispered something in the Baron's ear which interrupted their quality time. " Sorry, dear. It looks like I have to go to town. I will bring you back a present when I come back in a few hours. What would you like? A doll? A puppet?" he asked his daughter.
"What is a doll?" she asked the Baron. The orphanage didn't even have dolls? What kind of orphanage was it? The baron started fuming again. Should he talk to the merchant to do a better job of maintaining the orphanage? "I'll get you one sweetie. Dolls are made of clay. You can play with them" he answered her.
With that, he headed into the town. His butler reported that there was a murder with the victim's body found not too far away from the town's mansion. This sent all sorts of alarm bells to the people. Most of the town folk knew each other. Who dared to kill someone? By the time he reached the place, he could notice that a crowd had already gathered.
"Did anyone identify the victim?" he asked the guards as they were inspecting the crime scene.
"No milord. The victim had a small core up his sleeve. If someone attacked him it must have been an assassin" the guard replied.
"But isnt this a small town? Dont the people literally know eachother? If he has a core, then he must be a knight or a high ranking guard" he asked the guard
" Milord the people told me this fella is not from here. We had sent a couple of men to fetch the owners of the inn nearby. Perhaps they could tell more information" he added.
Just then, a guard arrived with the inn's owner. " Do you recognize him?" The Baron asked the owner of the inn to which he started sweating profusely.
The inn owner did indeed know him. In fact he had been turning blind to these people who traffick humans as he wanted to keep his inn running. The last time he saw the man was early morning right before a maid paid her bill. No. The maid couldn't have killed him. Besides he belonged to a dangerous crew that had access to cores. If he wanted to he could have taken down the maid easily. The young master the maid was traveling with looked ill. They must be from a small merchant family that barely scrapes by. There is no way they had the means to kill him.
As the merchant was pondering over what happened, the Baron losing his patience asked again, " Can you answer me or do you want me to beat the answer out of you? Do you or do you not recognize who this man is?" the Baron asked firmly. The Baron wanted to ask him who the man was but instead slipped up and asked him as if he were interrogating a criminal. The slip-up turned out to be lucky.
The inn owner went blue. Did the Baron figure it out? Is this his end? He knew he shouldn't have worked with these people. He started panicking and fell to the Baron's feet.
" Please forgive me, my lord. Times were tough and I was threatened by these people. I had no option but to provide them what they asked for or they would kill my family." he started begging.
The Baron understanding the scale of the situation, immediately asked the guards to seize him and conducted a thorough investigation. The man who was found dead was a serial kidnapper who kidnapped and sold women aged 15 -35 to the human trafficking network that sold them as slaves to the Caliphate. They had been conducting these operations for a few years now ever since the new empress came to power.
' Woman aged 15-35? Then if the pig who died had laid his eyes on his precious daughter he might have never met her again?' It was then that he realized an alternate future where he would have never met Emily. Moreover, sold as slaves to the caliphate? Slavery was banned in the Aurelian empire but it was not so the case in the caliphate. He could only imagine how gruesome it would have been for his daughter.
'While the orphanage folks might have tormented my daughter, they never sold her or anyone from the orphanage off. They were doing the best what they could with the money they got' He chose to forgive the orphanage. Perhaps he would donate to the orphanage from now on and threaten them with money to make sure they treat all the orphans nicely. But as for these kidnappers? He could never forgive them.
Further investigation of the dead man revealed some shocking truths. It looks like before he was killed a short interrogation happened and whoever killed the man gave them a present. Information on the hideout of the kidnapped women. He had to act fast or they would be sold off to the caliphate soon. With that, he took the rest of the day raiding the kidnapper's lairs one after another till they rescued over a hundred women who were held captive. The women from all over the empire were held up in his Barony before they were shipped off. He was thankful he was able to save these people. Perhaps he should hire a couple of the kidnapped women as maids and ask them to serve Emily. It wasn't a bad idea. Knowing it was his daughter, they would do everything they could to care for Emily.
The Baron who was focussing on all of this forgot to get the doll he promised Emily. When he returned home with the maids who were rescued and told Emily that these maids were her present.
"What dolls are humans? But you said dolls are made of clay. I heard to get clay pottery you have to burn it in the fire kiln. Don't hurt them. Don't Emily doesn't want a gift that hurts others" She started crying
It would be a while before he convinced her that the maids were not dolls and that he forgot to get her a doll from the market.