Reborn to Ruin My Cheating Husband and His Mistress

1.

After the miscarriage, Herman Butler came home carrying a child.

Tabby, his name is Noah. Maudie had him for me.

He kept talking, oblivious to the pitying looks from the nurses.

You were in a coma for six years. I had needs too.

After you woke up, she didn't want to put me in a difficult spot, so she went abroad.

"But the child is innocent, after all."

Just then, my beloved corgi's voice came into my head.

"Master, whatever you do, don't agree to let him in the door!"

"Just bring up how you saved his life back then, and he'll do whatever you say."

In my last life, I did exactly that.

I screamed the question at him until my voice broke: what about the bullet I took for him, what did that count for?

But in the end, he still claimed the child, and he brought Maud Baxter into the Butler family too.

And I, pregnant for the second time, walked in on the two of them in bed, hemorrhaged, and died in misery.

Reborn, I nodded thoughtfully.

The child was innocent, true. The one who deserved to die was someone else.

...

"Tabby, does this mean you agree?"

Herman studied my face carefully, clearly not believing I would agree so readily.

He probed, hesitant.

"If you're not willing, then this whole thing can just..."

"Just what?"

I broke in, pulling up the faintest smile.

"Then, then we could give it more time."

Herman's voice dropped lower and lower, but I heard every word.

I took the child from his arms.

"Herm, your child is my child."

"Once I'm discharged, I'll take him to register the birth."

At the foot of the bed, the corgi suddenly burst into furious barking.

"Master! You really are a hopeless love-brained fool!"

"You'll have your own children someday. Why raise someone else's son for them!"

"The master's heart clearly went soft just now. What on earth are you doing being this stupid?"

Stupid?

In my last life, I was the truly stupid one.

I slept for six full years, and in those six years Herman had long since changed.

Yet I still foolishly believed I was his one true love.

So I brought up how I'd saved his life, over and over again.

"Herman, do you have any conscience left at all?"

The wound in my body tore open again. Getting so worked up landed me back in the ICU, and when I next woke, Herman was gripping my hand tight.

"Tabby, don't be angry. I've already had the child sent away."

In my last life, I did stop him. I kept that child out of the house.

But I couldn't stop him from building another family outside.

He started coming home later and later.

When I heard Maud Baxter was back in the country, I panicked completely.

To win him back, I hired one of those gossip accounts.

They spread the story everywhere, how I had risked my life to save Herman.

I thought it would stir up his feelings for me again.

Instead, Herman's slap knocked me awake.

"You idiot. Do you know how much effort the Butler family spent cleaning up our name?"

"Did you really have to make people remember how I got my start?"

That slap shattered whatever was left between us.

The society wives were the quickest to read the wind, and they piled on, taking their turns to grind me down.

I finally understood that after six years asleep, I had no way out except to cling to Herman.

So I swallowed my pride and went to make peace.

I believed that no matter what, Herman still had some place for me in his heart.

But when I was pregnant the second time, I caught him cheating.

Remembering how wretchedly I'd died in that life, my eyes reddened again before I could stop them.

"Tabby, don't cry!"

Herman gripped my hand, anxious.

"You know I can't stand it when you cry."

I smiled and wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes.

But in my last life, he watched my tears fall all night long with cold eyes.

He clenched his jaw, as if steeling himself for some decision.

"How about, how about I have this child sent away."

Before I could answer, the corgi under the bed suddenly barked twice.

"Master, I told you he has you in his heart!"

"He offered it himself anyway. Master, hurry up and say yes!"

But this time, I was not about to let it have its way.

"No, don't!"

I clutched his hand, tears in my eyes.

If he truly meant to send the child away, then why bother bringing him home at all?

"Your child is my child."

"I'm only sorry our own baby couldn't be saved."

At that, the tenderness and guilt in Herman's eyes deepened.

"Don't worry. From now on, Noah has only one mother, and that's you."

He didn't notice at all the flicker of scorn that crossed my eyes.

Come to think of it, I should thank Herman for bringing me this child. It made it that much easier to keep the son and erase the father.

"Herm, is something urgent going on at the office?"

Herman hung up without a flicker of concern and slid the phone back into his pocket.

"It's nothing. The most important thing I have to do today is be here with the baby. And with you."

He leaned in to press a kiss to my forehead, but I dodged it just in time.

I turned my head and busied myself playing with the baby.

"Herm, if the company needs you, go. I've got him."

Herman gave me a hesitant look.

Right then, his phone started ringing again, insistent, refusing to give up.

"Then take care of yourself."

I looked down at the baby in my arms, so small.

If my own child had lived, he would have been just this precious.

And right then, the Corgi's voice rose in my ear again.

"Master, this ungrateful wretch is going to get you killed someday!"

"I can put an end to his little life for you!"

I watched the Corgi throw itself desperately toward the bed, and a thread of disgust twisted in me.

In my last life, I hung on its every word.

And it only ever pushed Herman further and further away.

Now it wanted to lay a hand on a child. So it really was nothing good.

I reached out and shooed it off, and in the scramble it caught my arm with a bite.

Seeing it couldn't get to the baby, the Corgi flopped down to the side, seething.

"Stupid woman, do you even know who Herman's on the phone with?"

"Maud's about to use seeing the baby as an excuse to come back into the country."

"By then, crying won't do you a bit of good."

Right then, the door to the room swung open.

"Tabby."

I looked up at him, the baby still in my arms.

"Herm, what is it?"

His eyes moved back and forth between me and the baby for a long moment, then settled on the wound on my arm.

After a long while, he drew a fresh birth certificate from his pocket.

"Starting today, Noah is our son."

I asked around with Herman's assistant.

He had booked Maud a flight back into the country, then canceled it.

That afternoon, Herman came to take me home from the hospital.

Maybe it was the unfamiliar surroundings, but Noah suddenly burst into wails.

"The baby's probably hungry. If it's all right, ma'am, come feed him."

The nanny moved to hand the baby to me.

For a moment Herman and I met each other's eyes, both of us caught in a little awkwardness.

Herman cleared his throat. "I'll find a few wet nurses for the baby tomorrow."

I mixed the formula with practiced hands.

"Why bring in outsiders at all?"

I slipped my arm around Herman's shoulder. "Why not just bring Maudie back home?"

"They're mother and son, flesh and blood. I can't bear to keep them apart."

Herman couldn't help but freeze.

"Tabby... you really don't hold it against her?"

I shook my head, smiling.

Of course I wanted the mistress right under my eye.

That way it would be so much easier to catch her and that scum in one net.

3.

The day Maud came home happened to fall on Noah's month-old celebration.

Herman came back from a phone call with a faint, hard-to-catch tiredness around his eyes.

"Tabby, you know how it is. Maudie's always been timid"

"She's just back in the country, doesn't know a soul, and she keeps insisting I be the one to come get her."

In my last life, Herman never even finished that sentence before I was already fighting with him.

"I already put up with you bringing that bastard child home, and now the mistress wants to move in too? How is any of this fair to me?"

A perfectly good celebration turned into a joke, and that wasn't even the worst of it.

Stranger still, Maud got kidnapped the moment she left the airport.

After she was rescued, she looked at me through a haze of tears.

"Tabby, I know Herm only ever saw me as your stand-in. I'd have stayed abroad my whole life and never come back. Why did you have to have me kidnapped?"

Because of all the hostility I'd shown her before, everyone assumed I was the one who'd done it.

To soothe her, Herman brazenly moved her right into our marital home.

At the time all I cared about was driving Maud out of the house.

I never once realized that kidnapping had planted a seed of wariness in Herman toward me.

He'd owed his life to me, so even though he and Maud were inseparable across those six years, every one of the brothers under him acknowledged only me as the boss's wife.

And my younger brother was Herman's right-hand man at the company.

Right when the company needed to go clean and take itself public, Herman made my brother the scapegoat.

He even made sure the brothers walked in on us during a fight, on purpose.

Little by little, I lost their loyalty at the company too.

This life, I could not repeat those same mistakes.

I patted Herman's shoulder to settle him.

"Herm, things aren't stable at the company right now. You'd better go get her yourself."

"As for the party, Noah's own mother is here. Surely there's nothing left for you to worry about?"

Herman gripped my hand back hard, every trace of suspicion gone.

"Tabby, what I admire most about you is how well you handle the big picture."

He pressed a quick kiss between my brows and turned and left.

The corgi came fawning up to my feet again.

"Stupid woman, gotten addicted to playing the proper wife, have you?"

"Once Maud's back, just you wait to get thrown out of Herman's house!"

I tossed a bone on the floor and it went after it.

An animal was still just an animal.

Its head full of nothing but love and romance, how could it ever understand what I was planning.

Herman and Maud's affair was no secret.

But amid the clinking glasses, everyone could see who the real mistress of the Butler house was.

And everyone understood that only my child could ever be the Butler heir.

"Tabitha Simmons, you really can hold it in."

A long-fingered hand closed around my wrist out of nowhere.

I raised my eyes to Rhys Delgado. He was Herman's biggest rival.

That bullet in my chest had been a gift from him.

Yet in my last life, after I died, he was the one who truly grieved for me, the one who saw to my body.

I turned the tables and closed my hand around his instead.

"That's right. I really can hold it in."

I lifted my glass to him and arched a brow.

"For instance, if Mr. Delgado would agree to work with me, I could let that bullet you put in me slide."

His fingers slid suggestively across the back of my hand.

"Tabitha Simmons, I don't make losing deals."

At that same moment, on a deserted little road beside the airport expressway, an utterly clumsy farce was playing out.

Maud had switched off her phone on purpose.

She tousled her own hair and tore the hem of her clothes.

Making herself into the picture of a pitiful woman who'd been kidnapped.

She was certain I wouldn't let Herman leave the party, so she'd timed it all in advance.

By the time Herman learned she'd been taken and rushed over, he'd catch her exactly like that, a pear blossom in the rain.

What she wanted was Herman's tenderness, his guilt.

What she never expected was that I would send Herman away early.

Herman's assistant told me about it while I was seeing guests off at the hotel entrance.

Looking out at the wrecked banquet hall, I picked up the red wine on the table and gently swirled the crimson liquid in the glass.

Watch him raise the tower. Watch him feast his guests.

Watch the whole thing come crashing down.

The corgi at my feet was utterly lost, its heart full of disbelief.

"How could this how could she be so stupid, playing a good hand this badly!"

Then, as if it caught itself, it hurried to change its tune.

"This is wonderful, now my master won't have to suffer, that scumbag has finally seen her true colors!"

I lowered my eyes, indifferent, ignoring all its excitement.

Did Herman really not know what Maud was up to?

At the end of it, he simply chose to indulge her.

4.

That night, Herman came home very late.

While I was loosening his tie, I caught the faint trace of perfume on him.

"Everything went smoothly?"

His hands paused for a beat, and only after a while did he give a low "Mm" through his nose.

Inside, I let out a bitter laugh.

He was the same in my last life.

When my brother threw the truth about Maud's staged kidnapping onto his desk, he only glanced at the photos.

Then he swept them straight into the trash.

"Maud's just too insecure. That's why she does these things."

Just like that, in a few easy words, he brushed aside everything I'd suffered.

"As long as you're all right." I turned and put the tie away.

"Maybe we should just move Maud into the house."

"Tabby!" Herman wrapped his arms around me from behind. "What are you saying? This is our home."

Yes. It really was our home.

Every last detail in it had been my careful design.

But in my last life, after all the endless bitter medicine, after countless fertility shots, I'd finally managed to get pregnant.

I couldn't wait to tell Herman the good news.

I pushed open the door to the master bedroom, and found the two of them lying there together.

Our wedding photo still hung above the headboard.

As if it were laughing at how foolish I'd been.

"Herm, if you keep her somewhere outside, it'll only start gossip. People will say you're keeping a mistress tucked away."

"Woof! Woof woof woof!"

The Corgi suddenly broke into frantic barking, and its inner voice poured straight into my head.

"Master, even if you're testing the man of the house, there's got to be a limit!"

"Once she's got a foot in the door, your position as the lady of the Butler house won't be safe!"

Then it barked at Herman twice more, as if crying out on my behalf.

But in my last life, after I died, I'd heard with my own ears Maud call it her system.

And it had rushed right over to fawn on her.

Herman frowned and shooed it out of the room with his foot.

Just then something moved across his eyes too.

"Tabby, I've put you through a lot."

"Herm, there's no 'put you through a lot' between us."

After all, every wrong you've done me, I'll pay back a hundredfold, a thousandfold.

Maybe he really did feel guilty.

After Maud moved in, Herman even went out of his way to keep his distance from her.

On the surface the Corgi bounced around, all happy for me, but inside it was frantic, spinning in circles.

Watching it put on that show against everything it actually felt, I couldn't help laughing.

This pet was turning out to be rather entertaining.

My phone buzzed twice. A message from Rhys Delgado.

I held down to delete the chat history, then reached out and stroked the soft fur along the Corgi's back.

So your master's already losing his nerve...

Don't worry. I'll make sure your good master gets his chance.

Saturday afternoon, I took Noah to his early-learning class and came back to the hillside mansion.

At lunch Herman had a business function and drank a good deal, and I was certain Maud wouldn't let this chance slip by.

Sure enough, when I pushed open the door, clothes shed by a man and a woman were scattered across the living room.

Maud came sauntering out of the master bedroom, her collarbone covered in suggestive kiss marks.

There was no need to guess what had just happened between her and Herman.

"Tabby, since you've seen it, I'll be honest with you."

Her voice was soft and sweet, yet every word carried naked gloating.

"Herm has always loved me. You, guarding another woman's childisn't it pathetic, being Mrs. Butler like that?"

But I only stood in the doorway, my expression calm.

Seeing that, Maud fell back on the same old trick.

She smashed a glass dish in the living room and slashed two vicious cuts into her arm.

Then she went sobbing and rushing into the bedroom.

"Herm, save me!"

"Tabby's going to kill me!"

But the next second, when she pushed open the bedroom door.

Every sound died in her throat.