The Crown's Seduction
Chapter 323: Justice System

Chapter 323: Justice System

Fritz let out a deep sigh as he went out of Zoran’s private quarters. His work of closely monitoring the man was thankfully over now since his patient was a lot more composed now. In fact, Zoran could already literally walk out of his room and mingle with others if he wanted to. It was only around Dahlia that he was still having a few problems, to be honest. In that regard, King Nikolai gave Zoran the order to remain in his private quarters while he continued his training to control his urges around his own wife.

"I pity you, Zoran," Fritz sighed with a shrug.

Still, that was His Majesty’s problem now. He really didn’t want to be stuck on babysitting duty anymore, especially with how boring things got while he was tending to Zoran. He much rather do something more fun, like maybe walking around the place and seeing what holds his fancy at the moment.

As such, he did exactly that, casually walking his way to his own residence as he took in the sights of the city around him. Nothing much has changed, obviously, but there were still some subtle differences that he spotted at some of the more fluid spots around town.

And of course, one such difference was the tower currently jutting out from beyond a few buildings in front of him.

"Huh... I wonder..."

Fritz hummed to himself as he took out his fan and lightly gave himself a brief wave of wind to cool himself. If he recalled correctly, Laura was currently taking office in that exact tower right now. The Justice Hall, it was called, which was weird since it was a tower in the first place.

"I have no idea why they call it that," he chuckled to himself. "But who am I to question the past?"

Shrugging at his own joke, Fritz made his way to the tower itself, casually slipping through the crowds as he thought of what could possibly be going on inside the tower at the moment.

"She should be busy right now," he hummed to himself as he slipped through the tower’s entrance. "That’s assuming she’s doing her job, of course."

He let out another chuckle as he eventually made his way to one of the many courtrooms in the tower. However, this was the main one where he knew where Laura would be working inside. Well, again, assuming that she was working on a case at the moment.

"We’ll see..."

With a smirk, he opened the door, uncaring what awaited him inside.

***

Laura frowned as she looked at the result and verdict on a previous case currently displayed before her. It was the least she could do after that one man all but begged her to look at the case again. It was for his son, and she understood that. The man even offered to do anything for her seeing as he was poor, but she quickly shot that idea down before he could offer her more. Instead, she just said yes, if only so that she could get on with her life. She really didn’t like to fix other people’s work, especially if it wasn’t really her fault, but she supposed that she could spare a bit of time to look into this one.

Unfortunately for her, the more she looked at the case, the more she realized that she had a lot more work waiting for her to do. After all, now that she saw it, she would for sure make sure to look at everything else that came before her, because this was just unacceptable.

"Seriously, what the hell was happening in this place before I came here..."

It was a disaster and a half for her as she nursed her growing headache. Despite the initial fervor that she held for doing her job as the new Ministry of Justice, it did little as she slowly came to realize just how badly the ministry was run under its previous minister. Cases were mishandled left and right, and some of the more hardworking officers under her were practically running around without direction due to how badly the organization of the place was destroyed by all of the corruption.

"The amount of cleaning this place needs," she sighed as she stared at the case still in front of her. "This is just ridiculous."

For starters, she had to go through all of the previous cases now that she saw one that was all but begging for her to fix it. Just thinking about it, she could only imagine how many mistrials were made before she got there.

Groaning, she made a mental note to look into the judge who oversaw the case. She could see a few discrepancies the more she looked at it, and she was going to rip this old man a new one if she ever saw a single thing that could allow her to fire him.

"Ugh... What a pain..."

"What exactly is a pain here?"

Laura blinked as she heard a familiar voice enter her room. Looking up from her work, she was surprised to see that Fritz had just entered her office. She wasn’t expecting him to appear at the moment. In fact, she was pretty sure that some of her staff should’ve notified her that one of the kingdom’s more important lords was coming to see her.

"Lord Fritz. What a surprise," she casually greeted him. "What brings you here today?"

"Just doing a bit of sightseeing," he chuckled back. "Then I remembered that you’re working as the Minister of Justice now, so I decided to check on you."

"So His Majesty sent you then," she quickly concluded. "Well, if the king wants a report, then you can tell him that I’m doing my damn best to fix this place up quickly."

"Oh? What’s with the hostile tone?" Fritz teased her as he leaned on her table. "Are you even doing work right now?"

Laura groaned as she rolled her eyes. "With all due respect, I’m busy at the moment," she sighed. "Can you please not bother me right now? I have an investigation to finish."

"An investigation? Why not let me have a look at it?"

Before Laura could even say no, Fritz had already made himself at home and took a peek at her documents. At that point, she didn’t bother covering them from him, especially since he probably already had access to the files if he wanted to anyway.

"A mistrial, huh... We’ve had a lot of those in the past few years," he chuckled. "At least you’re looking into overturning some of them already."

"I know," she groaned. "There’s so much work already, and I’ve barely even started. This one just landed on my lap because the man complaining was that desperate."

"And you’re compassionate enough to try and look into things regardless," Fritz casually complimented. "That’s a good trait to have as a Minister of Justice, you know."

Laura did her best not to blush at such a casual compliment. Instead, she focused on the work she now had in front of her and how exactly to deal with all of it.

"Thank you, but that’s not my problem at the moment. I need enough evidence to sack the judge that was in charge of this case," she relayed as she diverted the topic back to business. "I already saw a few discrepancies in his accounts based on what little digging I’ve done, but I need more concrete evidence so that it won’t look like I just fired him on a whim. It also looks like the suspect was an acquaintance of the judge as well. Probably bribed him too."

"Already think ahead, I see," Fritz hummed in approval. "Very well. I’ll see what I can dig up. Maybe I’ll run a background check on all the judges just to be sure."

"Hey, isn’t that too much work for you?" Laura pointed out.

"Eh, what’s a few hours to see if everything’s in working order in the kingdom’s justice system?" he chuckled with a shrug. "Rest assured, I’ll have a stack of papers for you ready by the end of the week."

"And I’ll have my own stack of papers for the king ready as soon as I’m done looking over all the previous cases here," Laura replied back with a chuckle of her own. "This is going to be a pain..."

"Don’t you have assistants to help you with this?" Fritz pointed out with a scoff. "Why are you even thinking of doing all of this alone?"

"It’s just safer, I suppose," she shrugged. "Can’t get anything wrong if you do it yourself. Although..."

Laura hummed to herself as the gears in her mind started to turn. Despite everything, Fritz was right in that she couldn’t possibly do everything all by herself. Perhaps she needed someone she could trust with all of this extra work.

In fact, maybe she knew someone who had enough free time on their hands to help her out.