Chapter 189: Chapter-189

Damien’s father didn’t even ’look’ at his wife. He was already tired of this woman. He just turned around and left with his mistresses.

The four wives stood there in their places, humiliated.

And it was Damien’s stepmother—that fierce military general’s daughter—who broke the silence.

She turned her head to the side and ’spat’.

“’Toop!’”

Then she said loudly, “Disgusting men.”

Heena gave her a mental thumbs up. ’Wow.’

—

The System looked at Heena and said, “Host, if I’m not wrong, you see this type of drama all the time. Why are you so interested now?”

Heena raised her hand. “Of course I see this drama every day in novels and stories. But think about it—these are my ’mothers-in-law’ and my ’fathers-in-law’. The drama is between ’them’. Of course I’m interested!”

The System was still in disbelief.

Heena smiled wickedly. “Fine, fine. Let’s break some houses now.”

She slowly walked forward, deliberately making her presence known.

The mothers-in-law heard footsteps, turned around, and saw Heena.

They immediately bowed slightly. “We greet Your Majesty.”

Heena raised her hand, her expression completely serious now—no playfulness like moments before.

“Are they always like this?” she asked gravely.

The wives didn’t want to lose their dignity, so they started to say, “No, they’re not always—”

Heena raised her hand, cutting them off mid-sentence.

“What I saw today, I can only describe as ’disgusting’. Men who swore to protect you cannot even fulfill their vows.”

The mothers-in-law were about to respond when Heena continued:

“You are my mothers-in-law, so I’ll speak to you as family. If my mother were alive and my father had done this, she would have broken his legs, his head, and killed him completely.”

Lucian’s mother clenched her fists, clearly at her limit. She looked at Heena with tears still in her eyes and said, “But we are not the Empress.”

Heena nodded. “You speak the truth. You’re not my mother.”

She paused.

“But you also don’t have the restrictions my mother had to follow as Empress. You can get divorced.”

This time, Damien’s stepmother looked at Heena with a knowing smile and said, “Oh my, daughter-in-law, what exactly do you want us to do?”

She deliberately called Heena “daughter-in-law” instead of “Your Majesty”—making this a ’family’ conversation. Now Heena couldn’t rebuke her for informality, and whatever was said here couldn’t be used as evidence outside this room.

’Smart woman,’ Heena thought. ’Of course—what else would you expect from a general’s daughter?’

Heena looked at her and said, “Not much. It’s not my place to say, but let me tell you this:”

She looked at all four women.

“If your sons had done what your husbands did, I would have killed them.”

Damien’s stepmother rebuked immediately: “Oh really? But if I’m not wrong, there are rumors about your consorts—”

Heena looked at her with a smile. “Mother-in-law, do you really think your so-called sons went to ’prayer and reflection’ all that time?”

Everyone paused.

Of course they were mothers. Of course they knew what their sons were truly like. When they’d heard their sons had gone into “prayer,” they’d known it was a lie.

They’d given birth to these sons. Raised them. They ’knew’.

And after watching them follow in their fathers’ disgusting footsteps, inheriting those same terrible genes…

As mothers, how could they not know their sons had suffered during that “prayer” period?

And strangely—surprisingly—they weren’t angry at Heena. They weren’t even questioning what had happened.

On the contrary, they felt… quite proud.

Because finally, ’finally’, someone had disciplined their spoiled, entitled sons.

Someone had made them face consequences.

And that someone was the Empress.

Their daughter-in-law.

Who was currently standing before them, essentially asking: ’Why do you tolerate this? Why don’t you fight back?’

The four women looked at each other.

And something shifted in the air.

Something dangerous.

Something that promised change.

Heena smiled.

’Perfect.’

It was Adrian’s mother who had been silent all this time, tears glistening in her eyes, who finally spoke.

“Your Majesty,” she said, her voice trembling but firm, “it is easy to say these things when they’re not happening to you. You are the Empress. You can say anything you want. Do anything you want. Yes, my sons are married to you, and you can even whip them—no one would say anything. If even a scratch comes to you, thousands of people would protect you.”

She looked down at her hands.

“But for us? That’s a different story. We are bonded by so many expectations from this world. We cannot say anything, nor act how we want.”

Heena paused, studying her with a grave expression.

“So just because we are women,” Heena asked slowly, “does this mean we can never live our own lives?”

All four women froze.

Heena looked at each of them in turn.

“You were daughters that any father would want. You became mothers of sons. You became duchesses and perfect mistresses of great houses, ideal wives, perfect women in society’s eyes.”

She leaned forward slightly.

“But let me ask you: what did you ’gain’ from all of this? After living until now, fulfilling everyone’s expectations—do you think that if you live your whole life like this, you’ll somehow earn another life? That if you die today, you’ll be reborn into a world where everyone loves you and all your wishes come true?”

She gestured broadly.

“Just like in those stories where the heroine, after being betrayed by her family, becomes the best woman, then suddenly dies and her husband follows her to the crematorium crying? Or do you think people will say at your funeral, ’Look, that woman was truly ideal’?”

She turned to Kieran’s mother specifically.

“If I’m not wrong, you were always called an ideal princess. But wasn’t it true that when you hesitated to marry the Duke, those same people called you selfish? Said you didn’t want the kingdom to flourish, that you wanted it to destroy? And then what? You married. You’ve suffered in pain all this time. Who came to your rescue? Did any of those people ever see your pain?”

She turned to Adrian’s mother.

“People say you took your sister’s place. That if ’she’ were the Duchess, everything would be better. Even your husband believes it. But let me ask you: didn’t you also give up your future for this man? Did you really want to marry him, or weren’t you also forced into this marriage? You became the ’best daughter,’ but your parents—for whom you sacrificed everything—still love your dead sister more. Why? Because she was ’best’? No. It’s because in their minds, they projected all their dreams onto her. They made a perfect picture of her. But you were her sister. You ’knew’ how she really was.”

She looked at Damien’s stepmother.

“You were a great general’s daughter. If you hadn’t met Damien’s father, you might have married into your own family as a son-in-law’s wife and still been the proud daughter of the general. Your brothers doted on you. But after marriage, that doting lessened, didn’t it? You were married off, and who didn’t see what happened? Even I, sitting in this palace completely removed from rumors, still hear what goes on in your household. Do you really think your family doesn’t know?”

She looked at all four of them together.

“I’m not going to say you should divorce them, beat them, or make them regret. I’m not here to give you empty platitudes.”

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