A constant knocking sound disturbed my peaceful sleep. I groggily came to my senses and realized the sound was someone quietly knocking at the door. I lifted my head up slightly and noticed that Becca was still sound asleep. I wanted to ignore the person knocking and continue sleeping in Becca's warm embrace, but the knocking didn't seem to be stopping even after I ignored it for over a minute. I slowly got out of Becca's embrace as quietly as possible. She looked too peaceful so I wanted to see what the person was knocking for and only wake her up if she was needed.
I realized I was still wearing the same clothes I had on in the morning, but it wasn't a big deal. They hadn't brought our luggage over when we fell sleep, so we could get changed later. Instead of opening the door, I decided to teleport to the other side to make as little noise as possible for Becca. As I was decided exactly where to teleport, I could tell that the person knocking on the door had a silhouette that perfectly matched Becca's Father. I wondered why he personally came himself instead of asking one of the servants to wake us up. Regardless, I teleported in front him.
He was shocked for a second, but luckily he was too scared to make a sound. "Hello Father-in-law, what can I do for you?"
After recovering from his shock, he scowled at me. "It's always 10. I came for the private talk you promised. We won't be needing Rebecca, so let's go."
I was suddenly thrown into this stressful situation! I needed time to mentally prepare!
However, this was the exactly scenario I was hoping for to get to the bottom of how Becca's Father truly feels about her. I was just not expecting it to fall right on my lap so suddenly!
"Oh, sorry that we overslept. Let's get going and give Becca a little more rest."
Becca's Father still had a scowl on his face as he turned around and starting leading the way. "I will take us to my office. No one will be able to listen in on us from there."
It seems like he specifically pointed out that no one would be able to hear us because he wanted to talk about something secretly. Unfortunately, Becca's Father and the original Nicolas probably had plenty of conversations in the past, so I have to improvise the best I can to not get caught that I have no memories.
After several twists and turns, we finally arrived at Becca's Father's office. He pulled out a chair for me at a table in the middle of the room. He then moved to the other side of the table and sat in his own chair. "Come sit."
I sat down obediently and asked, "so, what did you want to talk about?"
"I'm trying to understand what your goal is for coming here with my daughter and pretending like you two are happily together. Are you planning to go back on our deal? You promised you would quickly create an heir with her, then completely leave her alone. It doesn't look like you are trying to leave her alone! Are you trying to negotiate even more from me now that you have my daughter in your hands?!"
Becca's Father and the original Nicolas agreed to some kind of deal in the past? He actually wanted Nicolas and Becca to have a strained relationship where they were husband and wife, but never talked to or even saw each other. I guess it must be because Nicolas was such a horrible person that the best possible option for their relationship was for Nicolas to promise not to harm Becca in any way. Becca's Father wanted it so much he was willing to propose a secret deal with Nicolas. What exactly did he offer? His actions so far makes it seem like he cares about Becca, but the details are still a little unclear, so I'm not entirely sure…
I ended up sitting there in silent trying to piece together the situation. While I was doing this, Becca's Father thought I was using my silence as a negotiating tactic. Still lost in though, his exclamation brought me back to reality.
"25% of my steel business is already the most I can give! If I give any more, I'm not sure if I can keep the county running smoothly…"
Becca's Father had his head in his hands in exasperation. I felt bad for the guy. 25% of his steel business did seem like a ridiculous number, especially since he already gave 25% to the King to become a noble.
"How much would 25% of your business get me currently?"
"Currently, my business is valued at 1 million gold coins. So 25% of that would be 250,000 gold coins. But you won't get that sum specifically unless you wanted to sell your share of the business to someone. Annually, we make about 50,000 gold coins of profit, so you would get about 12,500 gold coins each year. If that is too small a number for you, I promise I'm working on multiple new steel products that should hopefully increase our profits substantially! I will keep working hard, so please accept the 25% and follow through on our deal!"
Looking at the scale of things, I suddenly realized how ridiculous of a gift my 1,000 stamina potions were. No wonder James was so against it when I told him. Now that I knew what the original Nicolas got out of the deal, the only thing I needed to know was what Becca's father got out of the deal.
"Ok, but what if I say I don't want to leave your daughter alone once we have an heir?"
"Please don't joke around Duke Harrison! You never liked her in the first place! You even hurt her feelings every chance you got. I know her personality would be hard for any noble man to accept. That's why, in our deal, I'm not asking you to love or specifically be kind to her. I'm just asking you to do the simple task of leaving her alone and providing her with acceptable accommodation. That way, even if she can't have a loving relationship, she can at least have a peaceful life. That's all I ask of you."