Lahat ng Kabanata ng Married to the Cold Billionaire After Betraying Him: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 9

Amelia Hart counted the money twice before she believed it.Four hundred and twelve dollars. That was all that stood between her mother's next round of medication and nothing. She sat on the edge of her bed in the small apartment on Ninth Street, the bills spread out on the blanket like a losing hand of cards, and she did the math again anyway, because some part of her still hoped she'd made a mistake the first time.She hadn't.Outside, the city was loud in the way it always was at six in the morning, garbage trucks and delivery vans and someone's car alarm going off two blocks over. Amelia barely heard any of it. She was thinking about the letter from the hospital, folded into a small, tight square at the bottom of her bag, and about the man who had called her twice this week already, a man named Ferris who spoke in a voice so calm it made her skin crawl.Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She looked at it and felt her stomach drop before she even read the name.Ferris.She let it

There was no white dress.Amelia had thought about that more than she expected to in the days leading up to it silly, given everything else she had to think about, but it kept coming back to her at strange hours, usually right before she fell asleep. She'd pictured her wedding exactly once before in her life, years ago, the way most girls do without meaning to, and it hadn't looked anything like this.What she got instead was a pale gray dress a stylist picked out for her in under an hour, tailored overnight by someone whose name she never learned, delivered to the penthouse the morning of the ceremony in a garment bag with no note attached. It was beautiful. It was also, she couldn't help but notice, the exact color of Damian's eyes.She wondered if that had been on purpose. She decided it probably hadn't. Men like Damian Blackwood didn't think about things like that. Or if they did, they'd never admit it.The ceremony itself took eleven minutes.It was held in a private room at the

The invitation arrived on a Tuesday, delivered by one of Damian's assistants in a cream envelope so heavy it felt like it belonged to another century. Amelia turned it over in her hands at the kitchen table, reading the elegant script twice before she fully understood what she was looking at.*The Blackwood Foundation Annual Gala. Formal attire requested.*"This is in four days," she said when Damian walked in that evening, holding the card up like evidence. "You couldn't have mentioned this sooner?""It's been on the calendar I gave you." He loosened his tie, dropping his bag by the door with the same tired motion she was starting to recognize as routine. "Page six, I believe.""I didn't memorize the calendar, Damian.""You should start." He said it without malice, more matter-of-fact than anything, but it still made her bristle. "This one matters. Board members, major donors, half the city's press. It's the first time we'll be seen together publicly as a married couple. People will

The rhythm of the household began to shift after that night on the balcony, small and quiet at first, the way seasons change without anyone quite noticing the exact day summer became autumn.Amelia started leaving little things around the penthouse without thinking too hard about it a book she thought Damian might like on the table by his favorite chair, a note on the mirror reminding him to eat lunch on the days she knew his schedule was brutal. He never mentioned them directly, but she noticed the book had moved from the table to his nightstand within a week, its spine cracked in a way that meant he'd actually read it.He started doing the same for her, in his own careful way. A driver waiting outside whenever she had an appointment across town, so she'd never have to worry about a cab in the rain again. Fresh flowers on her dresser every few days, never with a note, like he wanted her to have them more than he wanted credit for them."You don't have to keep doing that," she told hi

The call came on a Tuesday evening, right as Amelia and Damian were finishing dinner, and Amelia knew something had shifted the moment she saw the name light up on his phone."Victor Blackwood," the screen read, and Damian's whole posture changed before he even answered his shoulders squaring, his jaw tightening, the easy warmth of the last hour draining out of him like water through a cracked glass."Excuse me," he said quietly, standing and walking toward the balcony to take the call.Amelia stayed at the table, pretending to busy herself with her plate, though she couldn't help straining to catch pieces of the conversation drifting in through the open door. She couldn't make out words, only tone Damian's voice clipped and formal, nothing like the man who'd carried sunflowers through a farmers market a week earlier.When he came back inside, his expression had settled into something carefully blank, the mask she remembered from their very first meeting in his office."Everything oka