Inheriting a Lost Bloodline, My First Task is to have heirs?!

Chapter 712 - Visiting the in-laws: Port City of Hurley (Part 2)

The first thing on our agenda was to get all the evidence needed to make a strong case for all the officials that are to be removed from their positions. The next one was confiscating all the ill-gotten wealth that the corrupt officials have taken all these years since the start of the current duke’s leadership. It would be the perfect way to add more into the duchy’s budget. They would be categorized as part of the unpaid taxes and fees anyways.Lastly, we will be replacing all fired officials with talented people that will work for the greater good of Lumeleira. I am saying "greater good" because I technically don’t care where their loyalties lie as long as they do their job properly. It is about time to at least hire people based on their abilities and not their connections. One thing I have learned in being an outsider to the nobles and royals is that there isn’t a single one of them that is squeaky clean.

Just hearing the benefits that they can get from the first three things in my agenda, I can literally see the sparkles and stars in the eyes of the duke and duchess. With the beautiful picture that I described and instilled in their heads, they started to help me in full force to achieve the goals for my visit the soonest. They even thought of a great idea to curry favor and to pay back for the information I recently provided. They prepared a group of their trusted business and government assistants to assist me in everything I needed to do.

I do not mind the additional personnel since it will make me less busy and I do not have to pay them anyways. I usually get about 2 assistants at most but in this duchy, I got a team of 8 people, all working under my leadership! Delegating tasks would be a breeze this time around!

After I was introduced to my new team, we started focusing on the identified moles, proxies and puppets of the Hurley family. At the same time, we also did not forget the other corrupt officials from other families. I do not want the audit to lose its credibility by me seemingly bullying just a single family. I am honest in doing my job too!

Based on our investigation, the cases were mostly on bribing, falsification of official documents, the use of false identities for the puppets and the proxies, embezzlement of public funds and meddling on the hiring process for jobs in the port areas. There were also a few cases of murders to cover up tracks which is honestly not a surprise for me. What came as a surprise is that the number of deaths were fewer than expected.

I guess, the Hurleys were greedy for power and for money but not that evil to kill indiscriminately. Though none of the Hurleys made the kill or illegal things themselves as per all the evidence my team has gathered, they still used other means to make them happen. The easiest way was of course, paying off other people to do all the dirty work for them. The Hurleys knew all the shady dealings but they tolerated them and even profited from all of them while appearing to be law-abiding citizens and leaders to the public.

In the spirit of fairness as per the duke and duchess, they took initiative to also clean up their own turf and the members within their own households to ensure that they themselves were following the laws of the empire. They also did not tolerate any relatives that are corrupt and decisively relieved of their current position and punished them to the highest gravity possible, both the ones working for the government and ones who were managing the private businesses.

My gut feeling was right that the leader of this territory was different. There were definitely not neutral nor passive or pushovers. They were downright ruthless in protecting their current status and they do not care who has to be sacrificed.

With a team of 8 people and even the full cooperation of the duke and duchess, it did not even take 2 days for us to get all the information we need to build the impeachment cases and ensure that we will win every one of them. We waited for the next day to leak information about the upcoming cases and passing of judgement but we made sure to send all the evidence to the capital for official review the night before that in a very discreet manner so as to avoid it from being intercepted. If you would put in effort and money on something, might as well ensure that you would get some kind of ROI (Return on Investment) from it.

I am a worrywart and was still having doubts that everything would turn out fine and that all the evidence would be sent intact to the intended recipient in Hoffen City so I secretly replaced the contents of the package that we were about to send through a trusted messenger with some random stacks of paper with scribbles and mostly, blank ones. The safest option will still be to put all the evidence inside my shared storage with Aurum. It will not only arrive quicker but there is also no chance for any outside interferences that could stop it from being received.

With a bigger team for the current list of tasks, the investigation, paperwork, personnel changes and giving the penalties and punishments were a lot quicker. Given how fast and in sync Aurum and my other four husbands worked when they need to do something, the response from the central government was just as swift. It only took me roughly 4 days to do all the clean up in Lumeleira Region.

As usual, I plan to let the duke and duchess do everything else regarding the official hiring of new personnel since I have already made a list of qualified ones. I also gave a list of advise in order to handle some of the issues for the dukedom together with a little threat to make sure all punishments are meted out.

I am quite happy with how the results were achieved quickly since it simply means that meeting my in-laws will also happen much earlier than expected. Of course, no one would be more excited about this upcoming visit than my husband, Xenos.