CH 1

“W-Why are you doing this? Why did you change…?”

“Change?” I laughed. “What do you mean by change? Acting like I didn’t know my husband was cheating on me? Begging for my husband, who has never treated me affectionately, to love me back?”

“Rachel…”

Theodore, my husband, who had been cheating for seven years and the woman nine years younger, both looked dismayed.

As they should.

Since the woman, who they believed would forgive and continue to love regardless of what was done to her, was now looking down at them coldly.

“I don’t need anything else. Let’s get a divorce.” I flung the documents I was holding all over the room. The papers flew through the air, one cutting Theodore’s cheek and then landing on the floor.

He picked up the divorce documents with trembling hands. “A divorce? I can’t do that…”

“I knew you would say that. The divorce papers are just for formalities so you can tear them if you want to. I have already applied for an investigation to nullify our marriage. Under charges of tax evasion, slush fundraising, and an expulsion from your rank as Count. Do you understand now?”

There was no reply from him.

I took off the ring from my left ring finger and threw it at Theodore before explaining once more, “That means our marriage is over whether you like it or not.”

People end up being one of two things.

As a fool or not a fool. Unfortunately, Rachel Elosa was a fool.

“Ma’am, why don’t you take care of your skin? There is a rumor about a perfumed oil sold at the new general store that will make your skin smooth. If you don’t mind, I’ll give it to you as a gift when I visit next time!”

Those were the first words Jane, her husband’s lover, had said to her when she first arrived at Rachel’s home.

Rachel went to her husband, with a good heart, and told him, “Jane is such a sweet and gentle lady. Could I invite her again next time?”

“Of course,” Theodore had said, smiling widely.

Theodore, who preferred to go out, always stayed in on days Jane came to visit.

Rachel was happy.

Even though it was a political marriage, she truly loved her handsomely tall and kind husband.

However, Theodore did not love Rachel. He simply married her for money and nobility rank. He had only loved Jane from the start.

Theodore was the eldest son of Count Elosa’s family, and his mother, Verengela, was an upright person.

He knew his mother would not accept Jane, who was just a commoner.

Their obligatory duty as a married couple stopped immediately after she gave birth to their son, Graham. Theodore had not even held Rachel’s hand in their recent years of marriage.

Rachel had been clueless, thinking it was simply due to her husband being busy and tired.

As time went by, Theodore and Jane’s affair became even bolder.

When Graham turned five, Rachel witnessed the two of them lying around naked.

It was on the day she and Graham were meant to go on a trip together. Theodore couldn’t join them because he was supposedly busy working.

The butler and workers were also given a vacation.

That day seemed to be full of bad luck with a cup getting shattered in the morning, the pouring rain and even the wheel of the wagon breaking down. Graham also began to get sick shortly after their departure.

Rachel had gotten some medicine for him at a nearby pharmacy, but they hurried back home once she saw there was no improvement.

Since she thought there was no one in the mansion, she took care of Graham alone until late.

At dawn, after the child’s fever had finally gone down, she took a breather and went back to her room to change her clothes.

That’s when she heard them.

“I love you, Jane.”

“I-I love you too!”

Atop the same bed Rachel slept on each night, was Theodore and Jane lying naked as the day they were born.

Everything suddenly fell into place the moment Rachel became aware of her husband’s affair.

Theodore and Jane started dating eight years ago and he only married Rachel seven years ago.

“So you were in that kind of relationship with Jane?”

“What relationship? What are you talking about?”

“I saw everything! The two of you were doing… that…!”

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything wrong because you were too tired from taking care of Graham?” Theodore denied.

Rachel thought she was going crazy.

The betrayal of her first love, the one she believed loved her back, was painful.

All Rachel could do was believe Theodore’s words that it wasn’t true and accept him back.

Just like he said, she hoped that she might have been wrong.

Even if it was true, she hoped at the very least the affair between him and Jane had ended.

The affair made no sense anyways.

But as usual, Theodore still smelled like women’s perfume. There was also a loophole somewhere in the family’s finances.

Rachel couldn’t stand it anymore and said, “I love you, Theo.”

“Why are you telling me that all of a sudden?”

“This was a political marriage, but I really do love you. How do you feel?”

“Me?”

“Do you love me?”

Sadly, Theodore shook his head. “You’re a good wife. Frugal and kind too. You take care of the mansion and even bore a son to inherit my title. But… I don’t love you. That’s how political marriages usually are.”

On the night she witnessed their affair, she had heard Theodore tell Jane that he loved her.

But Rachel realized that she had never once heard him tell her that.

She hired a tail to follow Theodore around.

Theodore and Jane met outside the mansion frequently and would openly show affection for each other.

According to the tail, there was no one who didn’t know about the two lovers.

When asked how many times they had said ‘I love you’s’ to each other, he had replied that it was too many to count.

It was hopeless.

At that point, Rachel found life  meaningless and hung herself in Theodore’s bedroom.

During that time, Graham had just turned six and received the biggest shock of his life.

Graham grew up alone in a huge mansion where neither a mother nor father existed. His heart soon became closed off.

He didn’t believe in love and became a cold and cruel murderer.

Fortunately, Graham met the sweet and warm Princess Dolorosa. She was a persistent, firm and upright person.

She couldn’t leave Graham, who had a huge scar in his heart, and embraced him and his flaws.

Her sincere heart melted Graham’s frozen heart, and the two eventually fell in love and lived happily ever after.

That was the plot of the novel titled ‘What is love?’

In the novel, Rachel was such an irrelevant character that even I couldn’t feel pity for her.

In my opinion, she was an excessively good natured and vulnerable person, who made a tragic decision because she couldn’t handle the pain.

A mother who traumatized Theodore. Nothing more, nothing less.

But thanks to some bad luck of mine, I ended up in her body.

Before I ended up in her body, I was probably the person who understood Graham more than the real Rachel.

Growing up, I had watched my cheating father and his lover torment my mother, which is why I despise him.

Why did I have to transmigrate into the wife of a cheating bastard like my father?

It would have been nice if I had ended our relationship before the marriage, but Graham had already been born.

Also, Theodore and Jane were already in a passionate relationship.

In addition, tomorrow would be the day Theodore brings Jane home for the first time.

I had no other choice since it had come to this.

I had to tarnish the sacred name of love and marriage and make him pay for the crime of deceiving his wife.

Fortunately, Theodore and Jane looked down upon Rachel, leaving evidence of their infidelity everywhere.

Which made it easy to prepare for divorce.

However, as I saw in the book, Count Elosa’s family affairs were a mess.

Even if Rachel and Theodore divorced like this, it would be difficult to properly divide property or even receive child support.

I didn’t want to be helpful to Theodore, but I had to check the financial status of the mansion before divorce.

‘Others get transmigrated and live great lives, why do I have to deal with all this trouble?’

At such a late night, I was thinking about how to deal with my cheating husband.

“Mom, I need to pee,” said the four-year-old Graham as he entered through the huge door. He was hugging a soft teddy bear tightly.

When he suddenly saw the bright light, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, his small forehead frowning, perhaps because his eyes were dazed.

I couldn’t believe that such a cute kid would eventually lose his mother and become a cruel and fierce killer.

I quickly got up and held the child’s hand.

“Okay, let’s go pee. Where is Marcia?”

“She must have gone to sleep. I can’t find her.”

Marcia, Graham’s old nanny, was a lazy person.

Marcia had told Rachel that Graham was a very difficult and troublesome child.

Rachel took Marcia’s words as truth and thought she was having a hard time.

She even paid her more than twice her salary every time.

However, when I transmigrated, I found Graham to be a gentle and sweet child. Furthermore, Marcia often disappeared without taking care of the child properly.

I was going to watch for a few days, collect evidence and then kick her out of the mansion.

“Mom?”

“Oh, sorry. I was thinking about something else for a second. Now, go pee and come out when you’re done. I’ll wait here.”

“Okay. Could you please sing for me? I’m scared.”

“Alright.”

I hummed, waiting for Graham to come out after doing his business.

After hearing the sound of him washing his hands, Graham walked out of the bathroom.

“I peed and washed my hands clean.”

“Really? Good job, Graham.”

When I complimented him, the child smiled, his cheeks turning red.

‘So cute.’

Holding hands, I walked Graham to his room and tucked him in bed.

Marcia seemed to have disappeared without even organizing after their evening play. The room was a mess of toys.

Rachel clicked her tongue inaudibly and put the things on the bed away.

“Mom, could you come here for a second? I want to tell you a secret.”

“A secret? What is it?”

As I held out my ears close to Graham’s face, the child kissed Rachel’s cheek as she got closer.

“I love mom so much.”

Rachel smiled and whispered in Graham’s ear.

“How did you know? Mom loves you a lot, too.”

“We’re the same.”

“You’re right.”

I patted Graham’s head and left the room.

There was one more thing as important as divorce.

This Rachel had no intention of hanging herself as she originally did, leaving Graham with trauma and turning him into a murderer.

In other words, it meant that the female protagonist, Dolorosa, would not pity Graham. It was highly likely that the two would not be together.

That wouldn’t make sense. Graham and Dolorosa looked so good together.

I looked at Graham’s closed door and spoke out loud to myself, “Don’t worry, Graham. No matter what happens, I’ll make sure you meet Dolorosa.”

At dawn, Theodore brought Jane, his mistress, to the mansion.

“Hello, Countess Rachel. My name is Jane,” she greeted with a fake bright smile on her face.

“Rachel, she’s the one who helped me buy you a present at the general store last time. Although she has no title, she’s the daughter of a dignified middle class family. When I talked about you, she said you seemed to be a really good person and so I invited her because she wanted to meet you. That’s okay with you, right?”

Theodore had never bought Rachel a gift at a general store.

He seemed to have mistaken the gift he gave Jane as his wife’s.

Rachel smiled brightly at her foolish husband. “Of course it’s okay. Welcome, Jane. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”