Chapter 1

That night, in that cramped, damp little rental room, I took Audrey like a man losing his mind—trying to use the heat of our bodies to fight off the coldness of the world outside.

But before the high had even faded, her mother kicked open the already-flimsy wooden door and brought people in with her.

Icy camera flashes. Cutting insults. They tore apart the last shreds of dignity we had left.

"A filthy construction worker thinks he's good enough to sleep with my daughter? You can't even give her a roof over her head. Tomorrow, I'm marrying her off to Mr. Silas Draven!"

For that three hundred thousand dollars, I pushed myself to the breaking point—and as I lay there, barely clinging to life, I watched her toss three years of our hard-earned savings onto the hospital bed and say coldly, "We're even now."

Three years later, I came back with a fortune worth billions, ready to make her pay for what she'd done. But in a dark basement, I found her—skin and bones—and beside her, a child whose eyes looked exactly like mine…

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