🔊 TTS Settings
Chapter 02 …
If we think about it, it was far more surprising that Charlotte ended up loving Alfonso at all.
Charlotte was the kind of person who viewed anyone—man, woman, young or old—as nothing more than something to be used.
Some called her vicious, others spat that she was utterly heartless. But what could she do about it?
She had been born and raised in House Noha, a ruthless family that stripped even its own blood relatives of their name and cast them out without hesitation if they became useless. That was all she had ever been taught.
‘It’s not exactly a personality that earns love.’
Charlotte acknowledged her own nature calmly.
So even after she inevitably came to love Alfonso, she had never once expected to be loved in return.
Even when Alfonso always frowned at her, even when he said he disliked her.
Even when she learned he had fallen in love with someone else.
‘Adeline Raverus, wasn’t it.’
The woman Alfonso had come to love.
Charlotte remembered her face vividly.
A woman with honey-colored bobbed hair, cute dimples that sank deeply when she smiled.
A completely different type from Charlotte, who had sharp features and long crimson hair—nothing about them overlapped at all.
‘She was the fourth woman Alfonso’s engagement talks had been arranged with, I believe.’
It must have been so, since right after Charlotte ruined that engagement, she spread scandalous rumors and forced herself into marriage with him.
After their marriage, Alfonso began speaking with Adeline through her family’s jewelry business, House Raverus. Gradually, the two of them were seen together more and more often.
Charlotte never knew the details of why they met so frequently.
Only the image remained in her memory—Alfonso walking through the garden paths with that woman, looking far more suited to her than to his own wife.
So one day, Charlotte personally went to Alfonso’s office and asked him.
“You look quite pleased, Alfonso.”
“……I’m not sure what you mean.”
“That woman.”
Alfonso’s lips immediately pressed into a straight line at her words.
“……That woman. Do you love her?”
There was no need to ask who “that woman” referred to.
The moment she said it, Alfonso’s expression crumpled.
As if he had just heard something unbearably painful.
“……What is the meaning of this question?”
“I’m curious. Do you love her?”
“If I said I did? Would you spread rumors about her too? Like you did to me?”
“I only asked. I don’t understand why you’re getting angry.”
“She is someone unrelated to you. Do not touch her.”
“Rather than ‘unrelated,’ ‘the woman you love’ would be more accurate, wouldn’t it? Or am I wrong?”
“Charlotte.”
Alfonso ground his teeth, his expression filled with anger as if telling her to stop.
Yet in the end, he did not deny it.
He only looked at Charlotte as though she were something detestable, then finally said in a pained voice:
“……Please stop making me miserable.”
Was there any confession heavier than that?
If she could, she would have asked:
‘Am I the one making you unhappy?’
But she could not bring herself to say it.
She was afraid of hearing the answer.
Afraid of having to admit the contradiction within herself—loving him while being the cause of his misery.
That day, Charlotte decided to divorce Alfonso.
Not out of anger. Simply because she wanted to correct what was wrong while she still could.
And because she wanted to wish for Alfonso’s happiness.
‘If I divorce Alfonso, everything will return to how it was.’
Alfonso would no longer be unhappy, and he could marry the woman he loved.
Even though just thinking about it felt like her chest was being torn apart, she believed it would be fine if it meant his happiness.
‘It was Father who ordered the marriage with Alfonso.’
But fortunately, her father Dominic had died within those three years, and her half-brother Quincy—who doted on Charlotte terribly—had become the head of the family.
So there should be no major problem in getting a divorce.
Charlotte sent a letter to Quincy requesting that he proceed with it.
After sending the letter, she even felt strangely relieved.
Yes. That was how it was supposed to be.
Fifteen days later.
Alfonso died after being poisoned by an unknown toxin.
“I regret to inform you, but there is no hope for your husband.”
“We attempted to identify the mastermind from the suspect, but he took his own life before we could even interrogate him. At this point, we have no way of knowing who did it……”
An unknown poison. A suspect who died before interrogation.
And Alfonso, who had left without even a chance to respond.
Charlotte’s trembling hands lifted the lid of the angular coffin.
She was not afraid of seeing her dead husband.
She was afraid because everything felt far too familiar.
But the moment she saw her husband lying peacefully inside the coffin—
‘……Ah.’
Charlotte could no longer deny anything.
Even if others might not recognize it, for someone born and raised in House Noha, there was no mistaking it.
The one who killed Alfonso was House Noha.
The moment she realized this, Charlotte ran straight to House Noha.
Tears ran down her cheeks as her dry lips parted.
“……Why did you do it?”
A burning rage rose from deep inside her like a wildfire.
“Why? Was he that much of a threat? Did he oppose our family? Why? There had to be a reason, right?”
She was grasping at straws.
Quincy was the only family she truly trusted, so she tried desperately to believe it.
There must have been a justified reason.
“I wrote it in my letter. I said I loved Alfonso. I told you that……”
Why did they have to kill him?
Even when he told her coldly that he disliked her, he had never once let her leave a carriage without holding her hand.
Even when everyone else called her a villainess without hesitation, he had never once called her that.
He was someone who never even uttered the word “villainess” to her face.
She had never once smiled properly in front of him, afraid he would see through her heart.
Why? How……?
“You said you wanted a divorce, Charlotte.”
“……What?”
“If we simply divorced him, there would be issues like alimony and so on. If we kill him and take House Eduard as well, it becomes simple.”
“……Just for that reason?”
“Just? That is the Noha way. You know that well.”
“I…… said I loved him. I said I loved him……”
“Think calmly, Charlotte. This is for your sake. I know you love him, but—”
“If you knew that, you should never have done it.”
Charlotte spat the words out.
Her venomous eyes shot at Quincy like a snake’s—eyes of someone standing on the edge of a cliff.
“You knew everything. You knew, and you still killed him! You knew, and you killed him anyway! And you dare say this is for me? This was not for me—it was for the family!”
How could they—how could her own family, whom she had given everything for—kill her husband?
She had written again and again in her letters that she deeply loved him.
The tear streaks burning down her cheeks felt like fire.
It felt as though each drop of tears was squeezing out her very blood.
Had crying always been this painful?
Had death always been this horrifying?
She wished what flowed from her were blood instead.
Then only she would suffer.
She wished she were the one who had died.
Then Alfonso would still be breathing in this world.
If only she had never met Alfonso.
If only she had never married him.
Then he would still be alive……
Feeling her tears run down her face like rain striking glass, Charlotte bit her lip hard.
“Go to hell, Quincy.”
For the first time in her life, she resented her own bloodline—the Noha lineage she had never once denied, even as she was called a villainess.
Every moment she had once been proud of her family now felt like sin.
Sometimes love is tragedy. The whisper echoed in her mind again and again.
My love killed him.
That day, Charlotte cried until her voice broke.
She froze Alfonso’s body and preserved it, then traveled across the continent searching for a way to bring him back.
Even when her once-crimson hair turned pale white, even when her carefully maintained hands were ruined, she did not stop.
Because every time she closed her eyes, her guilt tightened around her throat.
“Please stop making me miserable.”
That voice—the first man who had ever taught her what love was—was so vivid.
And yet he was gone.
Charlotte could not stop.
And finally—
“There is a very great price to pay to restore a human life, madam.”
She found an answer.
