Chapter 217: Chapter 217

Monte Cristo stayed at the opera until his favorite singer finished the famous aria. Then he rose from his seat and left. At the door, Morrel reminded him one last time, tomorrow morning at seven, he’d bring his friend Emmanuel as a witness. The count nodded, stepped into his carriage, and arrived home within five minutes.

His expression was cold and resolved. Anyone who knew him well would have recognized that look. "Ali," he called to his servant as he entered. "Bring me my pistols. The ones with the ivory crosses."

Ali obeyed without question, carrying in an ornate wooden box. Monte Cristo opened it and examined the weapons carefully, a natural precaution for a man about to stake his life on a bit of gunpowder and lead. These weren’t ordinary pistols. He’d had them specially crafted for target practice in his private study. They were so precise and so quiet that he could fire them without anyone in the adjacent rooms even knowing.

He picked up one of the pistols, searching for his mark on the small iron plate he used for practice. But before he could take aim, the study door swung open.

His butler, Baptistin, appeared in the doorway, but the count’s attention fixed on the figure behind him, a veiled woman who had followed the servant inside. When she saw Monte Cristo standing there with a pistol in his hand and swords laid out on the table, she rushed forward.

Baptistin glanced at his master. The count gave a subtle nod, and the butler withdrew, closing the door behind him.

"Who are you?" Monte Cristo asked the mysterious woman.

She looked around quickly, confirming they were alone. Then she sank toward her knees, hands clasped together, and spoke with desperate urgency. "Edmond... please don’t kill my son."

The count stepped back. The pistol slipped from his grip. "What name did you just say, Madame de Morcerf?"

"Yours!" She threw back her veil, revealing a face marked by time and sorrow. "Your true name, the one perhaps only I remember. Edmond, it’s not the Countess de Morcerf standing before you. It’s Mercédès."

Monte Cristo’s voice turned ice-cold. "Mercédès is dead. I don’t know anyone by that name anymore."

"Mercédès lives," she insisted, her voice trembling. "And she remembers. I recognized you the moment I saw you, no, even before that, just from hearing your voice. Since that moment, I’ve followed your movements, watched you, feared what you might do. I know it was your hand that destroyed my husband."

"Fernand, you mean?" The name dripped with bitter contempt. "If we’re going to dredge up the past, let’s use everyone’s real names."

The venom in his voice when he said Fernand

"What makes you think I want to harm your son?"

"A mother knows," she said softly. "Call it instinct. I figured it out, followed him to the opera tonight, and watched everything from a hidden box seat."

"Then you saw that Fernand’s son publicly insulted me," Monte Cristo replied, his calmness more frightening than any rage.

"Please, I’m begging you-"

"You saw that he would have slapped me across the face if my friend Morrel hadn’t stopped him."

"Listen to me! My son knows who you really are. He blames you for his father’s ruin."

"Madame, you’re mistaken. What’s happening to your husband isn’t bad luck, it’s justice. I’m not the one destroying him. I’m simply the instrument through which he’s being punished for his crimes."

"And who gave you the right to be that instrument?" Mercédès cried out. "Why do you remember when even fate seems to have forgotten? What do you care about some foreign city and its governor? What did Fernand Mondego do to you when he betrayed Ali Tepelini?"

"Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong," Monte Cristo said quietly. "That matter concerns a French sea captain and a Greek politician’s daughter, it has nothing to do with me. You’re right about that. The man I swore to destroy isn’t the French captain or the Count de Morcerf. It’s the fisherman Fernand... the man who married Mercédès from Catalonia."

"God help me!" the countess gasped. "Such terrible revenge for something I couldn’t control! I’m the guilty one, Edmond. If you need to punish someone, punish me! I’m the one who wasn’t strong enough to wait for you, to endure the loneliness-"

"But why was I absent?" Monte Cristo’s composure cracked slightly. "Why were you alone?"

"Because you were arrested. You were in prison."

"And why was I arrested? Why was I imprisoned?"

"I don’t know," Mercédès whispered.

"You don’t know? I hope that’s true. But let me tell you." He walked to an antique secretary desk and opened a hidden drawer. From it, he withdrew a yellowed piece of paper, the ink faded to rust-brown. He placed it in Mercédès’ trembling hands.

"The day before our wedding, while we sat under that arbor at La Réserve, a man named Danglars wrote this letter. And Fernand the fisherman, your husband, personally delivered it to the authorities."

Mercédès read the words, her face draining of color:

"The Crown Prosecutor should know that a man named Edmond Dantès, second-in-command of the ship Pharaon, recently arrived from Smyrna via Naples and Porto-Ferrajo. He carries a letter from Murat to the usurper Napoleon, and another letter from Napoleon to his supporters in Paris. This can be verified by arresting the aforementioned Edmond Dantès, who either carries the letter on his person or has hidden it at his father’s house. If not found with father or son, it will certainly be discovered in his cabin aboard the Pharaon."

"This is horrible," Mercédès breathed, her hand pressed against her damp forehead. "And this letter-"

"Cost me two hundred thousand francs to recover," Monte Cristo said. "A small price to prove my innocence to you."

"And because of this letter..."

"As you well know, I was arrested. But you don’t know how long that arrest lasted." His voice grew darker. "You don’t know that I spent fourteen years imprisoned just a short distance from where you lived, locked in a cell in the Château d’If. You don’t know that every single day of those fourteen years, I renewed my vow of vengeance. And during all that time, I had no idea you’d married Fernand, my betrayer. No one told me my father had starved to death!"

"No..." Mercédès covered her mouth in horror.

"That’s what I learned the day I finally escaped, fourteen years after they threw me into that cell. That’s why I swore to destroy Fernand. Because of what he took from me, you, my father, my entire life. And I have destroyed him."

"Are you certain Fernand was behind this?"

"I’m absolutely certain. But honestly? Writing that letter wasn’t even his worst crime. A Frenchman who switches sides to fight for the English, a Spaniard who betrays his own countrymen, a man who murders the master he served, those are far greater sins. Compared to all that, this letter is just a lover’s betrayal. Perhaps something a wife should forgive... but never the man whose life was destroyed by it." Orıginal content can be found at novèlfire.net

"The French didn’t execute him for treason. The Spaniards didn’t shoot him. Ali’s people didn’t avenge their murdered leader. But I, the man who was betrayed, sacrificed, and buried alive, I rose from my tomb. And I’m here to finish what they left undone."

Mercédès’ legs gave out. She collapsed to her knees. "Forgive him, Edmond! Forgive him for my sake, I still love you!"

She struggled between the dignity of a wife, the devotion of a mother, and the passion of a former lover. Her forehead nearly touched the carpet before Monte Cristo moved forward and lifted her up. He guided her to a chair.

She looked up at his face, still handsome but carved with lines of grief and hatred. "You can’t destroy them," she pleaded. "Not when you’re so close to getting everything you wanted. Please, Edmond... it’s impossible!"

"When I call you Edmond," she tried desperately, "why won’t you call me Mercédès?"

"Mercédès," he repeated slowly, as if tasting the word. "You’re right. That name still has power over me. It’s the first time in years I’ve said it clearly." His voice softened with memory. "Oh, Mercédès... I’ve whispered your name in moments of deepest melancholy. I’ve groaned it in unbearable sorrow. I’ve cried it out in final despair. I spoke your name while freezing in my cell, crouched on moldy straw. I gasped it while burning with fever, writhing on the stone floor. Mercédès, I *must* have my revenge. I suffered for fourteen years, fourteen years of weeping and cursing. Now you ask me to stop?"

Fearing he might give in to the woman he’d once loved so desperately, the count called up all his suffering to strengthen his resolve.

"Then take your revenge!" Mercédès cried. "But let it fall on the guilty ones, on Fernand, on me, but not on my son!"