‘Why on earth.’

For the past four years, I tried my best. Though I couldn’t love my husband since our relationship wasn’t built on love to begin with, I could at least say I fulfilled my responsibilities as a wife.

Of course, the same applied to Alex, but…

What exactly was lacking between us?

Would things have been different if we had a child?

The thought briefly crossed my mind. But what escaped my lips was a hollow laugh.

I knew there was no point in regret now that the water had been spilled.

The relationship between my husband and me was truly beyond salvation. So any further attachment would only eat away at me…

I tried to shake off my pathetic lingering feelings and turned my gaze toward the bed. The soiled bed caught my eye. Why is it so dirty? As I stared blankly, wondering, I soon found the answer and couldn’t help but laugh. How ridiculous that I’d become so absentminded I’d forgotten even such an important fact.

I considered calling a maid for cleaning but knew it would only create more trouble.

Eventually, I went to lie down on the sofa in the corner of the room. As my head touched the armrest, my eyes naturally closed. Feeling the cool autumn air brush against my face, I drifted off to sleep.

❀❀❀

How long had I slept? When I woke again, the world was bright. Just like before I fell asleep.

I was certainly exhausted, but the scenery looked no different from hours ago, which puzzled me.

Yet my body felt lighter and my mind clearer, as if I’d slept well. Then I heard birds singing and finally realized.

‘It’s morning.’

I thought only a little time had passed, but I had fallen asleep during the day and woken up in the morning. Rising from the sofa, I stretched my stiff body and looked around the room. It was still messy. Normally the maids would have cleaned it, but I had deliberately kept them away. My pride wouldn’t allow it. Just imagine—a countess asking someone to clean a bed soiled by her husband and his mistress.

Wouldn’t sleeping in this state be even more embarrassing? Honestly, I wasn’t sure myself what I was thinking.

After falling into such a deep sleep, the events of yesterday seemed dreamlike and hard to recall. Though they were events I’d rather have been dreams.

I clenched my fist tightly before releasing it and surveyed the entire room. Nausea rose within me. But strangely, so did a peculiar sense of elation. A smirk kept escaping my lips. After laughing like a madwoman, when I finally came to my senses, I felt that nothing remained inside my chest. The emptiness seemed as if wind could blow right through it.

Last night, all the trust in my heart had been depleted.

Had Alex anticipated this and still committed such acts? Or did he simply not care? I couldn’t fathom the intention behind his reckless behavior that far exceeded my common sense.

‘But one thing is certain.’

His actions yesterday were tantamount to declaring he was giving up on our relationship.

I caught myself trying to understand him out of habit and stopped.

‘I’m done with this. He’s not even worth understanding anymore.’

I picked up the documents that had fallen under the sofa and immediately left the room. No mental preparation was necessary. I had already completed that over the past year of watching them.

Yesterday’s events provided a definitive answer to what I had been contemplating.

Now it was time to execute what I had been waiting for.

❀❀❀

It was now 10 AM.

The time when my husband would be starting work after just finishing breakfast.

So I headed straight to his office after leaving my room.

I hadn’t washed my face, my hair was disheveled, and I wore the same clothes as yesterday, but it didn’t matter.

Normally, not to appear unkempt among the servants and avoid gossip, I would have tidied myself up, but there was no need for that anymore.

Alex had already abandoned courtesy first. He was the one who openly engaged in an affair in my bedroom on the third floor, with numerous servants watching.

This wasn’t simply a matter of betrayal. He had trampled on my dignity. So why should I…

‘Maintain courtesy?’

What a joke.

With a bitter smile, I flung open the door to my husband’s office.

What immediately caught my eye was Alex attending to official business and Ilina sitting seductively on his lap.

Ah, was he really attending to business? Alex’s shirt had a couple of buttons undone, and Ilina on his lap was similarly disheveled.

And both of them were staring at me with eyes wide as if they might tear. They probably never dreamed I would barge in like this.

Facing them, I smiled and cheerfully said:

“Good morning.”

At that moment, Alex’s eyebrows contorted with displeasure. Sure enough, what burst from his lips was a roar.

“What do you think you’re doing!”

In the past, believing in his decorum, I would have been flustered and quick to apologize when he got angry. But he wasn’t decorous.

Whether he had always been this way or changed after taking in that mistress, I didn’t know, but at least now he was.

Perhaps he had changed.

No matter how thoughtless, he wasn’t the type of man to bring a woman into his office, especially during work hours.

‘Was I mistaken?’

Well, it didn’t matter if I was. After all, he was a man I wouldn’t be seeing anymore.

What mattered now was that I wouldn’t back down as I used to.

“What exactly are you two doing? I believe this is work hours.”

At my words, he seemed to realize his position and cleared his throat a couple of times in embarrassment. Then he whispered something in Ilina’s ear as she sat on his lap.

Seconds later, Ilina got off his lap, adjusted her clothes, and went outside.

With Ilina gone, only Alex and I remained in the room. Alex was the first to break the silence.

“Barging into my office without knocking—what kind of manners are those? Is that how your family taught you?”

Come to think of it, Alex had a specialty: trying to lecture me by bringing up my family and parents’ dignity.

Once, deceived by his seemingly proper demeanor, I truly believed I was in the wrong. I thought it was right to follow his words, if only to avoid tarnishing my family and parents’ honor.

But now I saw it was nothing more than patriarchal pressure.

Otherwise, in a situation he himself would find indefensible, he wouldn’t try to put me down instead of reflecting or making excuses.

I would no longer be intimidated by him. I deliberately raised my chin to meet his eyes and slowly opened my mouth.

“I wonder. Perhaps that is my family’s custom. But I’m also curious about your family’s customs.”

At my words, Alex tilted his head with an incredulous expression.

“Curious about what?”

“Yes, something curious. Actually, I witnessed something interesting yesterday.”

I spoke with my eyelids lowered, as if reminiscing about a distant memory. When I felt Alex’s slanted gaze upon me, I opened my mouth again.

This was also the beginning of my counterattack.

“The head of the household and his mistress having an affair in the legitimate wife’s bedroom…”

Before I could finish, his pupils dilated as he stared at me. Meeting his gaze, I shot back clearly, though casually:

“…Is that the custom of the Floredo family?”

The provocation was successful.

“You…!”

Alex immediately raised his voice and stood up. Gripping the desk as he rose, he glared at me as if he could kill me.

He was clearly furious. At his contradictory anger, I bit my lip to suppress a laugh that threatened to escape.

Alex had deliberately left traces of his affair for me to see. But he couldn’t tolerate having himself and his family name criticized for it?

In a way, I found myself pathetic too.

With just one remark from me, Alex was this angry, yet I had been listening to similar comments from him for nearly four years.

Despite that, I never talked back and just kept suppressing my feelings.

‘Why did I do that, really?’

But now, it didn’t matter anymore. Today would be the last day I’d feel pathetic because of Alex.

I looked straight into his angry eyes and curved the corners of my eyes into a smile. At my smile, inappropriate for the situation, Alex’s face hardened.

The verbal attack came soon after. After roughly chewing his lips, he let out a sigh of disbelief and said:

“Ha, you seem to be forgetting something. The Floredo County is your family too. Because you are my wife. But that statement just now…”

The explanation began again. It was always like this. Though he was only a year older than me, he tried to teach me as if he had lived a full life.

When I believed Alex was wise, I simply thought I had made a mistake. That’s probably what I thought.

But wise? As I just realized, he was full of contradictions and a complete patriarch stuck in old-fashioned thinking.

“Then I should stop being that.”

There was no reason to listen further. I spoke before his words were finished. Alex’s expression hardened simultaneously.

Looking at me, his eyes showed disbelief. After all, I had never interrupted him before. Perhaps he was a little taken aback.

But the shock was yet to come.

“Stop being what? What are you talking about? And interrupting me—where did you learn such…”

Ah, here we go again.

I sighed involuntarily at his impending lecture. But I had to endure. The goal was right in front of me.

Gently fingering the documents in my hand, I opened my mouth.

“You needn’t worry about my unlearned habits. We won’t be seeing each other anymore anyway.”

“What does that…”

“I won’t be doing it anymore. Being the esteemed Countess of Floredo, that is.”

Cracks began to appear in Alex’s confident eyes. After finishing my words, I handed him the documents I had been clutching since entering his office.

Alex glanced at the papers and then stared at me with an expression asking what they were. But I didn’t want to exchange any more words with him.

“Open it.”

That was enough. Alex frowned at me for not adding a kind explanation. But that didn’t last long. Soon his hand opened the envelope containing the documents.

Upon seeing the papers carefully placed inside, Alex’s expression hardened.

As if he was extremely taken aback.

Blankly looking back and forth between the documents and me, he finally spoke in a faltering voice.

“…Le, Levedi. W-what is this…”

Seeing his eyes filled with obvious shock, I smirked.

“Why are you so surprised?”

Wasn’t showing me traces of his affair with his mistress a signal for me to leave? I was just fulfilling his expectation. Giving him the divorce he so desired.

But Alex seemed more surprised than I had imagined. Just as I was about to open my mouth to ask why…

“…This is quite sudden.”

A cold voice, somehow strangely tinged with mockery, reached my ears. Alex’s expression as he looked at me was somewhat crooked.

Though he wrapped it in aristocratic language, I wasn’t dull enough not to understand what his words “quite sudden” meant.

It implied that my request for divorce stemmed from some ulterior motive.

“Sudden, you say?”

I couldn’t believe it.

Who was it that blatantly showed me traces of sleeping with his mistress? He could have ordered the maids to clean up before I came in. But he didn’t.

If that wasn’t a declaration of war asking for divorce, then what was it? Therefore, I had ample justification to demand a divorce. Wasn’t that what he was aiming for?

So I thought his shock was simply because I had demanded divorce too quickly.

But…

“Perhaps you’ve found another man?”

“Ha.”

The moment I heard his absurd question, I realized. His shock, his disbelief at my demand for divorce—it all stemmed from his confidence.

Confidence that I would never demand divorce no matter what. In other words, the affair he showed me, the traces of it he left behind…

“Maybe I have. You’re playing so freely with your mistress, so why shouldn’t I have someone too?”

…was a kind of threat. A threat to subdue me.

Why me of all people?

I had done nothing wrong to him. I had never neglected my duties as a wife and countess for a single moment. Did he have to drag my dignity down to the ground like that?

And after all that, did he expect me to stay by his side? After the initial disbelief, I felt relieved. I was almost grateful to him for being such trash until the end.

It was a relationship that was going to end anyway—now I would have no lingering attachments.

“What did you say?”

Alex frowned, showing his displeasure at my words. I bowed my head toward him.

It was time to end the conversation. Now that I realized he was a worthless piece of trash, further dialogue would be meaningless.

“Then I’ll take my leave.”

“Where do you think you’re going now?”

“I’m returning to my family home. By the time your divorce papers arrive at my father’s mansion, Ophelia’s investment in your merchant company will also have been withdrawn.”

At that moment, Alex’s face contorted. Seeing his eyes filled with crisis, I flinched for a moment, but whether he turned pale or actually died, I no longer cared.

It was over between us.

“Just in case, don’t invite me to your wedding. Why not keep the ceremony quiet? I’d be too embarrassed if news spread that my ex-husband remarried a slave.”

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

“Why? Weren’t you sincere about that woman and considering marriage when you did such things?”

“You… really, you don’t care at all.”

I heard him muttering behind me. Ignoring his meaningless words, I reached the door.

That’s when a mocking voice penetrated my ears.

“Divorce by mutual consent? Don’t make me laugh. Do you think I’ll agree to that?”

“Why? Do you have a better solution in mind?”

“Do you think this situation is normal? I have no intention of giving you a divorce.”

“Well, you must know the law. When a spouse seriously damages the other’s honor, it constitutes grounds for divorce, and without amicable agreement, half of all assets must be allocated according to that clause.”

Among the Empire’s divorce laws, there is a provision allowing divorce when a spouse has damaged the other’s honor.

I heard this law was typically applied when husbands wanted to expel wives for being extravagant or treating servants harshly.

In reality, such cases were extremely rare, and it was mostly used as justification by men like Alex who wanted to discard their legitimate wives after having affairs.

What about for wives? In most noble families, since social perception of divorced women was poor, most women in my situation would endure and continue living with their husbands.

But I was different.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t afraid of the criticism that would come, but I thought it was better than living with such trash.

“Ha, this is truly laughable.”

Alex responded to my words as if he found them absurd.

“Yes, laugh while you still can.”

“What?”

Seeing Alex flare up, I couldn’t help but laugh. I could clearly envision his laughter turning into tears of blood. Half of all assets—could Alex, who valued money so much, remain sane after paying such an amount?

In the first place, the reason he proposed marriage to me…

“I’ll be going now.”

The unnecessary thoughts came because I had engaged in this pointless conversation for too long.

Yes, from the beginning, it was a marriage based purely on money, without any love.

Just…

‘That’s all it was.’

Looking at Alex’s changed gaze, I swallowed my needless sentimentality.

❀❀❀

When I returned to my room after confronting Alex, my personal maid Sherry was sitting in a chair.

Upon my entrance, Sherry hurriedly stood up and bowed her head.

“Oh, you’re back?”

I gestured for Sherry to sit down. As the daughter of a fallen baron’s family, unlike other servants, Sherry was almost like a sister to me.

“No, stay seated.”

“Ah, then I’ll sit for a moment. But madam, where did you go so early in the morning? I was worried when I couldn’t find you…”

At Sherry’s question, I was secretly troubled about where to begin my explanation. In the end, I uttered a single sentence.