Camilla sat alone on her balcony. She frowned deeply as she looked at the letter in her hands.
It was not a nice letter. The paper was cheap, rough, and slightly dirty around the edges. It was folded ssily. It was completely plain and totally unpresentable for a noble house.
There was no fancy wax seal. There was no beautiful handwriting on the outside. It looked like a piece of trash soone had picked up off the street.
"Who sends a letter like this to a noblewoman?" Camilla thought, turning the rough paper over in her fingers.
She broke the simple fold and opened the letter. The handwriting inside was rushed, dark, and very ssy. It looked like it had been written with a broken piece of charcoal instead of a proper ink pen.
Camilla narrowed her eyes and began to read the short, blunt ssage.
Lady Camilla Kennedy,
Your brother, Lord Zade Kennedy, is in our custody. You have till the sun goes down today to bring a thousand gold coins to the Old Man’s Rye Tavern in the lower city. Co alone. If you don’t bring the gold, or if you bring the General’s guards, we will kill him.
Camilla finished reading the short, violent threat. She slowly lowered the rough paper to her lap.
She sat perfectly still in her chair. She blinked her eyes once. She blinked twice. She looked completely and utterly confused.
"Lord Zade Kennedy?" Camilla asked out loud, her voice full of genuine confusion.
She repeated the na slowly, tasting the syllables. "Zade Kennedy? Zade? Zade? Zade?"
She raised her right hand. She tapped her ink-stained index finger against her chin, her mind working furiously to search her mory. She was a modern assassin trying to rember the minor plot details of a two-hundred- plus Chapter web novel. It was difficult to keep all the nas straight.
"Who on earth is Zade?" she thought, her internal voice sounding deeply puzzled. "Did Damon have a brother? No, Damon was an only child. Is he a cousin? An uncle?"
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced her brain to focus on the early Chapters of the book, the Chapters that described the original Lady Camilla’s tragic backstory.
Suddenly, a mory sparked in her mind. Her eyes flew open.
"Oh, yes!" Camilla exclaid out loud, hitting the wooden table lightly with her palm. "Zade! I rember now. How silly of ."
The details of the fictional family tree flooded back into her brain.
"He is the female lead’s younger brother," Camilla said to herself, nodding her head as the pieces fit together. "Kennedy. They are both Kennedy. He is her only living family. I completely forgot about him."
She leaned back in her chair and looked at the dirty ransom note again. The tragic backstory of the Kennedy family played out in her mind.
"Let recall," Camilla thought, staring at the sky. "After their parents died in that terrible boating accident, Camilla and Zade only had each other in the world. They were very close as children. They were raised by distant, greedy family mbers who stole most of their money until they finally beca adults."
She rembered the political situation of the original characters.
"When Zade finally ca of age, he officially beca Lord Kennedy," she continued summarizing the plot. "He took over the remaining pieces of the family’s failing estate. He tried to rebuild their wealth. He tried to be a good brother."
Then, Camilla rembered why Zade had completely disappeared from the main storyline of the novel. She frowned in deep annoyance.
"But then," Camilla grumbled out loud, feeling a wave of disgust for the original female character, "the original Lady Camilla t the Tyrant General. She forced the marriage contract. She moved into this massive mansion."
Camilla shook her head, pitying the poor brother who was left behind.
"When Camilla married Damon, she completely lost her mind," Camilla thought, her internal voice dripping with harsh judgnt. "She beca way too love-obsessed with her cold husband. She spent all her ti crying in her room and plotting how to get Damon’s attention. She completely stopped contacting her younger brother. She ignored his letters. Eventually, they both just grew apart. He was written out of the story."
Camilla picked up the dirty ransom letter again.
"And now," she concluded, looking at the threat to kill him, "it seems little brother Zade has gotten himself into so very serious, very dangerous trouble. And he needs his big sister to bail him out."
She read the demand again. A thousand gold coins. That was a lot of money for a normal person, but it was just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the hundred thousand gold coins sitting in the heavy wooden chest in her bedroom—the gold Damon had offered her for the divorce.
She looked at the location. The Old Man’s Rye Tavern in the lower city. The lower city was a dangerous, dirty place filled with thieves, rcenaries, and cutthroats. It was not a place for a noble lady in a silk dress.
Camilla sat quietly on her balcony for a long ti. The warm morning breeze ruffled the torn pieces of paper on her table.
She had a choice to make.
She could ignore the letter. She could throw the dirty paper into the fireplace and go back to drafting her escape plans. Zade was just a minor fictional character in a book. He was not in anyway related to her. She did not know him. If he died, it would not affect her ultimate goal of getting a divorce and leaving the book.
But then, Camilla thought about her own life before she transmigrated. She thought about her dangerous missions as the Black Widow. She thought about the corrupt, greedy n she had hunted down. She hated bullies. She hated people who kidnapped the weak and demanded ransom. It went against her personal code.
And more importantly, sitting in this mansion doing absolutely nothing was incredibly, painfully boring. She was a woman of action. She missed the thrill of a mission. She missed the feeling of a weapon in her hand.
A slow, confident, highly dangerous smirk began to form on Camilla’s lips. The Black Widow was ready to go to work.
She slowly folded the dirty ransom note and tucked it securely into the pocket of her light blue dress.
"Well," Camilla sighed out loud, but her dark eyes were sparkling with hidden excitent. She stood up from her chair. She stretched her arms over her head, preparing her body for a physical fight.
"Since I am stuck here in this body," Camilla said to the empty balcony, her voice completely calm and deadly serious, "and since the General is conveniently out of town, I guess I will have to go down to the lower city and save him."
She turned away from the sunny garden and walked back into her bedroom. She needed to change out of her silk dress. She needed to find sothing that would make her blend in, sothing practical, and sothing she could easily fight in.
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