Chapter 1

The room fell instantly silent.

Belinay’s gaze was incredibly intense. Under her gaze, I calmly went over the care instructions for the baby.

“Don’t feed more than 2 ounces at a time. Feed the baby about every three hours, and keep the baby’s head higher than its body while feeding....”

Belinay stared at me coldly. Then, she suddenly let out a derisive snort.

Her voice carried a hint of disdain.

“I thought your month of silence meant you’d come to your senses, but it turns out you’re just cooking up more crazy schemes. Albert Clark, do you really think the child can’t survive without you, her biological father?

“Let me tell you, if you leave, there are plenty of others who’d love to be her father!”

Her cold voice echoed through the villa. The servants looked at me with pity, sighing one after another.

I smirked. I had long grown accustomed to this.

When I uncovered her first affair, she watched me break down and lose my mind as if it had nothing to do with her.

While she leaned against the door with her arms crossed, she spoke indifferently.

“Albert, stop making a scene,” she said. “It won’t do you any good.”

I did not believe her. So, I forced her to break things off with her lover.

However, Belinay simply packed up and fled with her lover. She did not come home for three months.

Her family blamed me and cut off my living expenses.

Even my close friends began to distance themselves from me.

Even the servants looked down on me as they openly mocked me to my face.

In the end, I had no choice but to bow my head and beg her to come back.

Belinay did not make a single move, yet she emerged triumphant.

So, this time, she continued to mock me with utter confidence.

“Albert, I think you’ve gotten too used to the good life. You don’t know your worth until you’ve caused trouble.”

As she spoke, she took a step toward me. The confrontation caused my face to turn three shades paler.

“You should be thanking me, shouldn’t you? After all, if it weren’t for me, my mother wouldn’t have saved you and your mother. Then, your mother wouldn’t have lived another eight years.”

As soon as she finished speaking, I plopped down into a chair.

The child was placed back in my arms again.

Belinay stroked my face with satisfaction. Her voice was tinged with amusement.

“As long as you behave yourself, you’ll always be the master of this house.”

With that, she wrapped her arm around her new lover, Hubert Spencer, and strutted into our bedroom.

The housekeeper could not help but come over to advise me.

“Sir, why provoke the missus? It’s fine as long as she spends her money on you. After all, back then, wasn’t it because…”

As she neared the end of her sentence, a look of embarrassment flashed across her face, and she suddenly stopped.

I knew what she was going to say. Back then, I had married into her family solely for the money.

When I was thirteen, my father had an affair. On a stormy day, he kicked my mother and me out of the house. My mother was already bruised from all the beatings she had taken.

We had no money. My mother was seriously ill, and she was barely clinging to life.

All I could do was kneel on the busiest street and beg.

It was then that Belinay appeared. She was like a ray of light shining down on me. She took my mother and me home.

She would always stroke my head tenderly, protecting me like an older sister.

Later, when I grew up, Belinay’s mother, Maryam Scotch, discovered that our birth charts were extremely compatible. So, she drove away Belinay’s boyfriend, with whom she was deeply in love, and forced her to marry me.

From that moment on, the way she looked at me changed.

She took on one lover after another, even as I broke down and kicked up fusses.

Belinay would simply mock me without batting an eye.

“Isn’t this what you begged for? You’ve lost all your dignity for money.”

She knew that I had agreed to marry her only after extorting a million from Maryam.

However, she did not know that it was the life-saving money I needed to pay for my mother’s liver transplant.

In the end, the surgery went wrong. My mother passed away.

Perhaps it was a destined punishment for my greed. I was left in this zombie-like state. It felt like I was neither alive nor dead.