It was already ten at night.

After reheating the dinner for the third time, Amelia Tudor finally heard the heavy front door open. Her husband, Chris Spencer, walked in, the cold night air clinging to his expensive wool coat.

Amelia stepped forward with practiced movements, helping him with his slippers and reaching for his briefcase. She tried to maintain the quiet, efficient role she had played for three years.

Chris let out a sharp, dry laugh. "Two billion dollars to keep a ghost in this house. My money has never been more wasted." His voice, deep and raspy, dripped with a sarcasm that cut through Amelia’s composure.

She froze, the sting of his words familiar but no less painful. She couldn't argue, because the foundation of their marriage was built on a lie she hadn't told, but was forced to pay for.

Three years ago, her mother, Nina Smith, had promised a grand alliance between the Tudor and Spencer families. But instead of the promised dowry, Nina had vanished with two billion dollars of the Spencer family’s capital, leaving Amelia to face the fallout. The scandal had turned Chris—a man of immense pride—into the city’s laughingstock, and his vengeance had been a cold, three-year silence.

"Since the Tudors chose to deceive me, you will bear the weight of their debt," Chris had told her on their wedding night. True to his word, he had treated her with a chilling indifference, as if touching her would be a surrender to the people who had robbed him.

Chris seated himself at the dining table, the silence between them heavy with years of unspoken resentment.

Amelia served a bowl of soup, her hand trembling slightly. She tried to sound casual. "Chris, is there... is there someone else you’d rather have here?"

Chris looked up, his eyes narrowing. "What are you playing at?"

"If you have someone you truly care for," Amelia whispered, "I can step aside. We can end this."

It was a plea for his happiness, and her own freedom. But before he could respond, Amelia’s world suddenly tilted. A dark veil seemed to drop over her eyes, turning the dining room into a blur of gray shadows. Panicked by the sudden blindness, she reached out blindly, her hand catching the edge of the table and knocking several plates to the floor with a deafening crash.

"Amelia! Have you lost your mind?" Chris snapped, standing up.

In the chaos, a small, light-blue pill slipped from Amelia’s pocket and skated across the hardwood floor. Chris picked it up, his expression twisting into a sneer as he recognized the potent, unlabelled sedative-relaxant.

"Resorting to these kinds of tricks now? Are you that desperate to secure your place here?"

"It's not... I didn't..." She wanted to explain that her mother had forced it on her that afternoon, a desperate attempt to manufacture an heir, but the words died in her throat.

Chris cut her off, his voice like ice. "Even if you were the last woman on earth, I wouldn't let a Tudor manipulate me again. Stop dreaming."

Amelia clutched the table, squeezing her eyes shut until her vision slowly, agonizingly returned to a hazy blur. By then, Chris was already storming away.

She knew her condition was worsening. Weeks ago, a doctor had warned her: “Miss Tudor, the retinal occlusion is progressing. If the stress doesn't decrease, you are looking at total permanent blindness.”

Because of her failing sight, her hearing had become hypersensitive. She heard the sharp notification sound from Chris's phone inside his briefcase. Her vision cleared just enough for her to see the name on the screen as she took the phone to the bathroom door.

"Chris? You have a message. It’s from... Leila Ross."

The silence from behind the door was deafening. Leila was Chris's first love, the popular singer who had just announced in a viral interview that she was returning to the country to "win back the one who got away."

The bathroom door swung open. Chris stood there, damp and radiating a sudden, restless energy. He snatched the phone without a word.

"Do you still care for her?" Amelia asked, her voice small.

"Don't touch my things again," he countered, his warning look sharp enough to draw blood.

When he emerged from the dressing room moments later, he was dressed in a sharp gray suit. He looked younger, more rebellious—like the man he might have been before the Tudor family had hardened his heart. Amelia watched him head for the door, the realization hitting her: he was going to her.

"Will you be back..."

The slamming of the door was her only answer.

That night, Amelia lay awake, the memory of her mother’s voice echoing like a curse. “If you can’t get pregnant, you’re useless to us, Amelia. Find a way. Seduce him, or find someone else who can give him an heir so we can keep the Spencer's money.”

Nina Smith saw her daughter not as a human being, but as a transaction. First, she had sold her to Chris for two billion, and then, on the day of the wedding, tried to sell her again to a seventy-year-old creditor for fifty million.

Amelia was trapped between a mother who used her and a husband who loathed her.

Suddenly, her phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number.

When she answered, a sweet, melodic female voice—one she recognized from a thousand hit songs—came through the line.

"Is this Amelia? Chris is a bit... overwhelmed tonight. Could you come and pick him up from my place?"