Chapter 2

The Male Lead and Female Lead Broke Up

It was the same bottle Mary had been curious about in the carriage earlier.

I carefully pushed the bottle just beneath the bed, leaving it exposed enough that anyone could notice it at a glance.

It would be best if Kane discovered it himself first, but I didn’t mind if one of the servants found it and reported it to him.

Either way, the purpose of this action was simply to make Kane aware of the bottle’s existence.

I succeeded!

Today, I had once again successfully added another obsessive, unquestionably insane act to my record.

With that satisfying thought, I left the bedroom and headed toward the reception room.

The original story had already begun three months ago.

For three months after becoming Bellita, I had continuously carried out the obsessive behaviors that Kane would hate.

Then, one day, an invitation to the banquet that marked the beginning of the original story arrived.

The banquet was being held at the Imperial Palace for the first time in a long while, and just as Bellita always had, I stayed glued to Kane’s side throughout the entire event.

Watching Kane at every banquet was Bellita’s most important duty, so even though it was bothersome, I had no choice but to do it.

Bellita reacted sensitively and intensely whenever Kane so much as looked at someone—or whenever someone so much as looked at Kane.

Especially on days when she was in a particularly bad mood, she would openly cause a scene like a madwoman, preventing anyone from approaching him.

Bellita really lived such an exhausting life.

After watching Kane for three months whether I liked it or not, I discovered that he was exactly as I had expected.

He wasn’t attractive in the slightest.

He always had the same hairstyle.

His expression constantly radiated enough coldness to make it seem as though not even a drop of blood would come out if someone stabbed him.

His clothes were always perfectly neat, without the slightest wrinkle.

His daily routine was the same every single day.

If boredom and dullness could be personified, that person would have been none other than Kane Maxius.

And that was the man who had encountered his first love.

Despite Bellita watching him with such fierce vigilance, Kane and Adela met for the first time at that banquet.

Adela had been physically weak since childhood and had spent almost all her time recuperating at home until she became an adult.

She had been born frail, making treatment difficult as well.

But on one particular day—just one day—her health miraculously improved, completely unlike her usual condition.

That day happened to be the day of the banquet at the Imperial Palace.

Since she was feeling well, Adela, who had never attended a banquet in her entire life, finally attended one for the first time.

I hadn’t actually witnessed the moment the two of them met.

But if I vaguely recalled what had been written in the novel, Kane had apparently fallen in love at first sight when he saw Adela taking care of a cat wandering around the Imperial Palace.

Adela had found it difficult to adjust to the unfamiliar banquet, so she briefly left the ballroom and wandered through the garden.

At the same time, Kane had escaped to the garden to avoid Bellita’s suffocating surveillance.

The two of them met there as though it had been fate.

It was also the first time Adela had ever seen a man around her age, other than her younger brother—especially one who was so handsome and well put together.

Moreover, the novel said that she had developed a deep affection for Kane because he approached her in such a warm and gentle manner.

Warm and gentle…?

Ridiculous.

From everything I had experienced as Bellita, Kane was not warm or gentle at all.

Of course, it was possible that he had hidden his true personality because he disliked and was annoyed by Bellita.

But as I had said before, he was a dry, boring, cold-blooded man whose emotions never showed on his face.

In any case, from that day onward, the two of them secretly nurtured their feelings for each other.

The relationship between the Maxius and Bayon families wasn’t particularly good, and Adela also knew that Kane already had a fiancée.

But Kane was different.

After awakening to his love for Adela, he treated Bellita as though she had never existed in the first place.

He showered Adela with endless displays of affection without caring who saw him.

Adela, on the other hand, was troubled by the relationship between Bellita and their families, so she continued pushing him away.

But after three months of Kane persistently courting her, Adela eventually couldn’t push him away anymore and accepted his feelings…

And that was today.

The day Kane would mention breaking off his engagement with Bellita for the first time.

And the day Bellita, after fiercely refusing, would become consumed by resentment and decide to seriously begin tormenting Adela.

For the past six months, I had imitated the actions that the original Bellita had taken in an attempt to win Kane’s heart.

Of course, I put in a little more effort than the original Bellita had, specifically to maximize Kane’s negative feelings toward me.

Before I possessed her body, Bellita had visited the Maxius Ducal Residence only two or three times a week.

But lately, I had practically stamped my attendance there every single day, making sure Kane saw my face without missing even one day.

Wow.

Even thinking about it now, that had been incredibly exhausting.

I had traveled back and forth for an entire hour by carriage just to see someone I didn’t particularly want to see.

But for the sake of my future, I endured it and kept coming and going from the Maxius Ducal Residence.

On top of that, I even bribed one of the servants in the ducal household so that I could receive reports about Kane’s every move during the twenty-four hours I couldn’t personally remain there to watch him.

Of course, that method was discovered before long.

Naturally, that too had been part of my plan from the beginning.

And I made sure to generously compensate the servant who had been fired after spending several days acting as my spy.

There were many other things I deliberately did so that Kane would catch me.

But the thing I had put the most effort into was using an aphrodisiac.

Actually, I had agonized over this method quite a bit before carrying it out.

It was an incident that also occurred in the original novel, but I spent several days worrying over it because of thoughts like:

Do I really have to go this far?

and

What if this method doesn’t work?

If the method failed, there was a very real possibility that I would have no way out and might actually end up sleeping with him.

Even now, just thinking about it sent chills down my entire body.

It had truly been the most dangerous gamble I had ever taken.

Fortunately, Kane was the head of a family that wielded the power of water, so he immediately recognized that the drink I offered him contained an aphrodisiac.

As a result, the normally almost emotionless Kane became so furious that he was enraged to the very tips of his hair.

I couldn’t even see him for quite some time afterward.

What else did I do again?

I had been obsessively clinging to Kane to such an excessive degree that it was difficult to remember everything I had done.

And the results had always been successful.

By now, just seeing my face caused his expression to turn cold, and even when I spoke to him, he barely acknowledged me.

But contrary to my expectation that tormenting him to that degree might make him bring up breaking off our engagement a little sooner, he hadn’t given me even the slightest indication that he intended to do so.

Perhaps because I had focused solely on Kane and hadn’t bothered Adela, my presence was still within the level of annoyance he could tolerate, regardless of how much he disliked me.

But this engagement would finally end today.

That was why I had placed the bottle filled with blood beneath his bed.

While I was lost in these thoughts, sitting in the reception room and drinking tea as I waited for Kane, he finally entered.

And, as expected, he must have discovered what I had done, because he looked at me with an even colder and more murderous expression than usual.

“Has your guest finally left? I’ve been dying to see you all day, Your Grace.”

I spoke to him in a voice filled with indescribable happiness, as though I had been desperately waiting for the man I loved and was overjoyed that I could finally see him.

But when he didn’t answer and simply continued staring at me, I lowered my gaze and glanced at the object in Kane’s hand.

It was the bottle I had placed beneath his bed earlier.

Since everything had proceeded exactly as I expected, I wasn’t at all shaken by how quickly he had discovered it.

“What… is this?”

Rarely had I ever heard anger so clearly present in his voice.

“Oh, uh… that… You found it?”

I deliberately dragged out my words, but answered with an expression that suggested being caught was no big deal.

Perhaps my attitude angered him even more, because Kane clenched his hand tightly.

The bottle shattered in his grip.

“Your Grace…!”

The situation had become much more extreme and violent than I had anticipated, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react.

For a moment, my eyes darted around rapidly.

Then, after quickly assessing the situation, I sprang from my seat and hurried toward him.

But perhaps even my approach was unbearable to him, because he took one or two steps backward with an expression of utter disgust.

“I-I believe I already told you.”

He gritted his teeth and spat the words out.

Judging by how openly he was displaying his emotions, I could tell just how furious Kane was.

“Your Grace, you need to treat your hand immediately!”

In truth, I didn’t care in the slightest about the wound on his hand.

But right now, I was a woman who loved the man standing before me.

I reached out, intending to touch his glass-shredded hand with a worried and sorrowful expression.

But before I could even touch him, he abruptly pulled his hand away.

“Lady Heitz.”

He stared at me with icy eyes.

“That’s not the issue right now—”

“Lady!”

He raised his voice as he called out to me.

Only then did I stop what I was doing, raise my head, and answer him.

“I believe I told you never to do something like this again.”

“I know. I know that. But…”

I made my expression as aggrieved and pitiful as possible, looking as though I had some unavoidable reason for what I had done, and my eyes began to well up with tears.