Ch 3

ANASTASIA POV

It's been a week since I came out of that secret room; my health is stable a little right now, though the bruises are still hurting. Now I only do laundry and cleaning, far away from Duke's eye, of course. Since my memory came back, I'm noticing everything differently, like the Duchess, who I was scared of, is nothing but a broken character to me; the maids here are only doing what they're made to do. The Duke is the male lead, but now I really don't even want to respect him. Even if that Duchess showed no mercy to me and is merely using me to kill me in a more brutal way, I still can't help but feel pity for her.

As I know from the novel's context and this life information about her, she was the eldest daughter of the marquis; she was adored and loved at first, but just as her younger sister was born, all her parents' attention was shifted to her, as she was fragile and cuter. Her sister mostly spoke sweet words while she spoke the way she saw things, never hiding her thoughts and opinions. So her parents started to not like her the way they did, as they often compared her younger sister to her. It was the first time her insecurity and jealousy grew because she thought anyone could steal her things and she couldn't change herself to be like her sister, so she just wanted to remove her sister from her life. She tried lots of things for that but never hid her ways or intentions, so everyone just thought of her as a wicked being who wanted to hurt even her sister. But she loved her sister too; even if she tried to hurt or bully her to scare her so that she'd be scared enough to stop getting in her way of getting her parents, she also protected her from any harm or bad people other than her. But as in the novel her role was of a villainess obviously people never saw her care or good deed, even if her younger sister defended her when she heard some maids talking bad about her, those maids just pitied her for being way too innocent.

Well, Valeria's (Duchess) insecurity grew even more after growing up when her friends with other nobles and relatives also started favoring her younger sister and mostly started hating her. But after reaching adulthood, she stopped using tricks toward her sister, as her love won over the jealousy for her. Therefore, she never cared how people saw her, so she never defended herself or tried to convince her friends that she's not that bad they think she is. But as soon as she was about to get a character development, her fiancé at that time, Carl Lancaster (Duke), was starting to give attention to a new girl at her academy, known as Baron's daughter, Lila (the female lead in the novel). Because Valeria already grew up being insecure, seeing her fiancé, who never even spoke gently to her, speaking gently and a lot to some other girl just made her turn more wicked as she was. Therefore, even though no one knew the pain she was going through by seeing the man she loved the most in the world smiling and loving, another sweet and loving girl, people just saw the wicked side of her bullying Lila and torturing her the way she did to her sister. Lastly, growing up with these kinds of emotions and insecurities with no love or care, she just became more ruthless, making the Duke get more apart from her. She also started to bully every single girl who caught the duke's attention in any way. From the things I know and saw, I just came to know she has lost all the hope and confidence she is worthy to have. She asks nothing from the Duke, neither time nor love or care; she just wants him not to leave her or cheat her. But even though they are married, she came to know that the Duke, even though he doesn't cheat on her, is still in love with the Baroness Lila, and now she just wants to kill her. Sometimes I hear her crying at night when the Duke meets the Baroness, even though just for work purposes, but those cries are never seen as despair in the dukedom from the eyes of anyone other than me, because all they think is she is crying because of some little things that are not going her way or trying to get attention from people. But only I saw her trying to kill herself multiple times because of the helplessness she gets from her emotions, but she's way too scared. I don't know what scares her—the pain of death, the afterlife, if the Duke will remarry, or that no one is there to cry or remember her after her death.

I know I'll be also like other people thinking badly of her , but I saw her helplessness one day way before my memories came back . One day , I was in the kitchen taking some bread for me to eat at night, then I heard cries near Valeria's room, I was hella scared, because that was not just a normal cry , but a very heartbreaking one , even though the noise her crying was not loud because of her trying her best to hide it , but those cries were just too heartbreaking to hear , it's as if someone she loves alot was leaving her , or as if she was dying a painful death or as if her whole body was being cut in pieces. It may sound over exaggerating but for real , those cries were that much deadly , even my eyes started tearing as I peeked through the narrow gap of the door , seeing her tearing endlessly with a knife in her hand , desperately wanting to stab herself but not being able to do so.....

I saw a scene like that several times when I accidentally woke up sometimes at night , just that the tools she was trying were changing , from pills to trying to jump from the balcony and sometimes there was no crying sound just an expressionless face , with no life inside eyes as if she's already dead from inside .

I tried to ignore it before , minding my own business also that I was scared from her but after regaining my memories , I could not help but see is as my business, because the Bittersweet lies, the novel I am in was the one I was the author of , and Valeria was a character I made as a spitting image of mine .Thinking of it, I think I should've been inside her body more than this one , but I guess it's the karma I get for ruining a character's whole life because of my depressed state of mind I had before . The cries , the story, the fate of hers was all what I wrote for her , based on myself and the end of her was what I wanted mine to be like in that life because I hated myself so I decided to end Valeria by making her die at the duke's birthday this year while saving him from an assassination....

To be continued............

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