Half-step Purgatory

Durin stroked the black cat on the armrest of his chair, sitting on the black leather sofa. Through the glasses perched on his nose, his gaze passed over the long table in front of him and settled on the man kneeling on the carpet:
"I understand, you've made money in Naples, your business has been very successful, and you've led a happy life. You've had those secret police, friends in both the law and the underground, and even the Royal Family speaking on your behalf."
"You don't need a friend like me, I know that. You're afraid of owing me a favor, and you don't want to get involved in troubles."
"But now you come to me and say, 'I beg you, Mr. Durin of the Corleon family, please help me seek justice, so that my life and my family will not suffer and sink into despair.'
Yet, in your eyes, I was nothing more than a second-rate artist involved in movies and music. Even at the brink of death, you still show me such disrespect, not even willing to call me by my title... Keeper of Secrets."

Durin's Diary

Meanwhile, at the Central Diocese of the Wealth Goddess Church.


Kakanif came here with his grandfather, and as his designated heir, Kakanif was still not eligible to join in the speaking sequence of the meeting.


But he was still qualified to be an observer.


Today's meeting had only one item on the agenda—that was whether to pay Durin all the profits he had made in the two exchanges.


It was a very large sum, so large that even the King would feel suffocated.


For Kakanif, it represented a number created by countless merchants and nobles at the cost of their own ruin.


Mr. Durin was not a cold-hearted person, Kakanif understood this because he had visited estates around the land, where the farmers lived a life more comfortable than the Freemen of Sidney, they had free healthcare, just this point alone was enough to make the Freemen of Sidney envious.


Chapter 229: The Prelude to the End