I quickly finished breakfast and hurried back to my room.

The atmosphere was suffocating. Just for me though. Dad and brother seemed happy with the situation.

Maybe this is why Lilia was the way she was… maybe this is why she was always so weak and feeble.

Dad and brother, neither of them had any thought of allowing Lilia (me) to know more about business.

It’s the same reaction when I mentioned I wanted to learn martial arts too. Luke didn’t even hesitate before he refused.

Anything that would be beneficial to Lilia, anything that would allow her to gain strength or knowledge… her family members won’t allow.

Under the name of “protecting” her.

I mean, it’s understandable that dad didn’t take my opinions seriously since Lilia never studied anything related to business, but the way he dismissed the topic entirely…

He could have just briefly explained the situation, since I’ve showed interest, right?

Hell, I’m sure any other parent would be jumping for joy, that their child is showing so much interest in the family business.

I sighed.

I used to be really annoyed at Lilia’s character, but looking at how she’s being treated… Her weakness stems from the “protection” she has had, her whole life.

I guess it’s not really her fault?

Well, there’s no use thinking about this anyway. I don’t know what happened to the original Lilia… the only thing I can do now is to try and live this life the best I can.

I need to somehow weasel my way out of this prison of protection.

I bit my lip, a feeling of dread heavy in my heart.

--

I spent the rest of the day researching about Country C. Even though it’s not going to be of use, since dad and brother won’t listen to me, I needed to find out if my thoughts were right. Just to sate my own curiosity.

Based on the conversation during breakfast, dad knows that Country C is going to have a general election soon, but he doesn’t think that it would affect the company’s expansion.

It’s reasonable for him to think so, since on the surface, the political situation at Country C seems rather stable.

But I have my doubts…

Country C is similar to a country from my previous life. One that I tried to expand into, but failed terribly.

That’s right, in my previous life, I did the same thing dad is planning to do, and it was a huge mistake.

Two months after expanding into the country, the government changed and they had a large change in regulations for foreign firms. Due to that, my firm struggled to adapt to the new regulations in such a short amount of time, but the investment we already made was too large for us to simply pull out of the country. The new government knew that, so they deliberately gave us a hard time.

The situation dragged on for more than half a year, in which my brand’s image was tarnished in that country. That was the worst thing that could happen for a luxury brand like my firm… it was one of the biggest mistakes in my career. I wasn’t able to capture the market in that country since that happened, and it even affected my firm’s branding in the neighbouring countries.

In hindsight, I should have just waited for the general election to be over before going into the country. That way, I could negotiate with the new government on a clean state, and there wouldn’t be an imbalance in bargaining power.

Since then, I’ve been paying more attention to the details in political situations when it came to corporate expansion… that failure was a traumatic experience after all.

After scouring for information for a day, I managed to piece together the situation. It was terribly similar to the situation in my past life, so it’s likely that dad will fail if he tries to go through with his plan.

I should stop him… but there’s no way he would listen to me. I can’t just somehow slip him some documents either – he might think that they’re from a rival corporation trying to affect his judgement.

This is such a joke… I have a good proposal right here, and I’m desperately looking for a way for it to be taken seriously. In my past life, people have to pay to listen to my business opinions, you know!?

I decided to print the stack of evidence I complied so far. I even added a summary at the front page, so to make the information easy to digest. We’ll see if I can somehow convince brother or dad to take it.

Maybe I can just lie and say my professor gave this to me? But that would mean I leaked out my family business plans... yep, not a good idea.

Argh.

Whatever. If they don’t take it, serves them right for failing. Ugh.

--

The next few days I spent trying to leak the information I found to my brother or dad.

Even though I repeatedly told myself not to care if dad doesn’t want to listen to me, I couldn’t bring myself to see my family business jump into a black hole just like that.

After all, I pride myself on learning from my mistakes… how can I just let this happen again before my own eyes?

I decided to try and convince dad again. I think he has an important meeting regarding this proposal soon, so I should try to convince him before then.

I walked out of my room, quietly moving towards the study room.

“Dad, I think we should spend more time with Lilia,” I heard Luke’s voice coming from the study room.

I stopped in my tracks, quietly eavesdropping, with no sense of guilt whatsoever.

“Yes, I agree,” dad’s voice rang out, “she’s been asking me to bring her to the office… I think she must be lonely because I can’t spend time with her.”

Stupid. I wanted to go to the office so that I could stuff the information I found to one of the employees. With that, the lucky employee could bring it up to my dad’s attention.

“Yes, maybe we should take the weekend off and bring her on a trip,” Luke replied.

What about, no.

I gritted my teeth in frustration.

“Good idea! I’ve been quite busy recently, so I’m not sure if I can take the whole weekend off, but a day trip would be possible,” dad sounded happy at the suggestion.

“Let’s go on a trip then,” Luke replied, “Let me know when you can clear your schedule, dad, and I’ll plan the rest.”

“Yes, yes,” dad was definitely excited.

It doesn’t sound like they’re planning to ask for my opinion??

Who the hell wants to go on a trip with them?!