Reborn Three Times: His Murdered Wives Uncovered His Obsession Chapter 02

Reborn Three Times: His Murdered Wives Uncovered His Obsession Chapter 02 A Mole on Her Neck
Ever since Dad passed away, Mom had been the one running the household. She was strict, sure, but deep down she really loved us. Since neither of us wanted to marry Charles, she wasn’t about to force us. So she handed the marriage agreement back to Charles and said apologetically, “Sorry, Lord Barnes. My girls have their own minds. I can’t force my will on them. “Maybe you could go find someone from another family?” Maybe it was because he felt humiliated, but Charles—who’d been cool as a cucumber this whole time—finally got a little pissed. The words just slipped out. “No! “The one I marry has to come from your family.” Then he slammed the marriage agreement down on the table and turned to leave. He only threw out one sentence before he walked out. “I’m giving you three days to figure out which one of you is marrying me. “If you can’t decide, I’ll just draw lots and ask the Empress to issue the decree.” The room was left with just the three of us—Mom, Jasmine, and me. Mom was so stressed that she gave both of us a shove. “Charles’s father, Donovan Barnes, was the Empress’s cousin. All it takes is one word from the Empress to arrange the marriage. “Both of you need to go get the men you like to come ask for your hands right now. “If you wait too long, it’ll be too late.” Jasmine and I just stared at each other with our eyes wide open. We’d spent years fighting tooth and nail over Charles. We’d never paid attention to any other men. The guys who used to like us had either already married someone else or were completely heartbroken. Where the hell were we supposed to magically find a guy who wanted to marry us on such short notice? Mom noticed something was off. She frowned and asked, “You two didn’t just make that whole thing up, did you?” Since we couldn’t hide it anymore, we just told her everything about being reborn three times. It took Mom a while to accept it. She grabbed both our hands and couldn’t stop crying. Of course—what mother wouldn’t be heartbroken hearing that her older daughter got poisoned to death and her younger daughter was turned into a human stump? Mom asked, “So… who does Lord Charles Barnes really love? “Why does he have to marry one of you two so badly?” I shook my head, feeling lost and guilty. “I died too fast. I didn’t hear the end of it.” I looked over at Jasmine. But she just shrugged helplessly. “I know even less than you. “Charles never told me anything.” After racking our brains for most of the day, we finally decided to split up. Mom went out to see if anyone out there would be willing to marry us. Jasmine was in charge of checking every woman in the household for any connection to Charles. And me? Since I knew Charles’s personality better than anyone, I had to go find him and try to fish some answers out of him. When I saw Charles again, he was in his study painting. It was a portrait of a woman, but she didn’t have any facial features. When I leaned in to ask about it, he calmly put his brush down. He gave me that same perfectly measured smile he always had. “Can’t you tell? It’s you, of course.” My heart ached. Charles really loved painting faceless women—in red, green, or white dresses, sometimes playing an instrument, sometimes dancing, sometimes reading. Every time I asked, he said it was me. He said he didn’t paint the face because I was too beautiful in his heart—no brush could do me justice. When I heard him say that, I used to be overjoyed. I never thought twice about how weird it was. But now I saw things differently. The little details jumped out at me. The woman in the painting had a small mole on the right side of her neck. I didn’t. I stopped hiding it and got straight to the point. “Charles, that’s not me, is it?” “I don’t have a mole on my right neck.” Charles went stiff for a moment. That almost never happened. After he recovered, he looked up at me and said, “Heather, do you really want to know who she is?”