Chapter 1

After seven years of marriage, I was his collateral for a debt, the ATM in my mother-in-law’s eyes.

I had boiled all my love and hope into a bitter medicine made from my trampled dignity.

Until forced kneeling in the chapel shattered my knee, until the call from my dying father was cut off without mercy—

I finally saw clearly that the man who kept saying he loved me had never truly cared whether I lived or died.

This debt settlement called marriage was due to end.

Grace Gardner's POV

“Grace Gardner, this is your seventh year in the Foster family as collateral for a debt, isn’t it?”

At the Christmas family dinner, Mrs. Foster placed an promissory note on the table in front of a full table of relatives, her eyes fixed on me.

The once-lively long dining table fell silent in an instant.

No one responded. One gaze after another stabbed toward me, sitting at the very end of the long dining table, as if they were watching a joke.

Seven years ago, my biological father had pressed my finger down to sign and fingerprint, sending me into the Foster family like a piece of collateral.

From that day on, in the Foster family, I was a debt first, and only then Mrs. Foster.

Ever since then, at every Christmas family dinner, this promissory note would appear on the dining table right on time, becoming the blade Mrs. Foster used to humiliate me in public.

I lowered my eyes, both hands clenching a piece of paper in my pocket.

It was a bank statement, one I had found three days ago in an old box in the storage room.

The transfer records from the past six years matched up, entry by entry.

In the note field of the final transfer, one sentence was written in black and white—Loan Repaid in Full.

The debt had been paid off long ago. The promissory note Mrs. Foster was holding was nothing more than a scrap of paper meant to disgust me.

“Lost your voice? I asked you how many years are left.” Mrs. Foster pressed harder.

I lifted my reddened eyes. I did not take out that bank statement. Instead, I cast a pleading look toward my husband, Zachary Foster, who was sitting in the head seat.

Six years ago, also on Christmas, Mrs. Foster had called me a debt-repayment servant.

Back then, Zachary had overturned the table in front of all the elders, eyes red as he pointed at everyone and roared, “She is the wife I married into this family, not a debt-repayment tool!”

Those words became the only obsession that carried me through seven years of humiliation in the Foster family.

Every time Mrs. Foster humiliated me with that promissory note, I desperately found excuses for him in my heart.

Mother was an elder. It was hard for him to contradict her in public.

He was too busy. The timing was wrong. He would definitely handle it privately...

But today, the irrefutable evidence that the debt was paid was right in my pocket!

As long as he was willing to say one word, even if it was only to shield me for a moment, Mrs. Foster would shut up.

I stared at him, my eyes stinging.

And yet Zachary only leaned against the back of his chair, his long fingers lazily turning a stemmed glass.

Faced with my nearly pleading gaze, his expression did not change. He did not even lift his eyelids.

A few seconds later, he unhurriedly picked up his coffee and took a sip.

As if the woman being trampled underfoot and ground into the dirt in front of everyone was not his wife at all.

Faint laughter rose around the table.

Mrs. Foster sneered smugly. “A debtor with three years left unpaid thinks she’s qualified to sit here and vote? Mr. Walter, remove Grace Gardner from the family council roster.”

This year, Mrs. Foster wanted to stomp me into the mud completely.

My nails dug deep into my palms until they broke the skin.

I did not argue back. Without a word, I endured it until the banquet ended, then stopped Zachary at the second-floor stairwell.

“I have something to tell you.” My voice was trembling.

Zachary lowered his head, scrolling on his phone, not even sparing me a glance from the corner of his eye. His tone was cold and impatient. “I’m tired today. Another time.”

With that, he walked around me without the slightest mercy and went straight back to the study.

Late that night, I sat alone in the cold bedroom.

I smoothed out that crumpled bank statement bit by bit and spread it on the desk.

Then I picked up a pen and wrote, stroke by stroke, in the blank space on page four: Debt Paid in Full.

After a pause, I wrote another line: Zachary Foster was present and did not speak.

The pen had just stopped when Zachary’s voice suddenly came from the hallway.

The study door had not been fully closed. He was on the phone with a friend, his tone carrying a casual chuckle. “It’s not like you don’t know how my mother is. She’s old, so she likes dredging up old grievances. Every Christmas, it’s just going through the motions. Everyone laughs it off and moves on.”

Whatever the person on the other end said, Zachary gave a dismissive scoff. “She can’t even take that little bit of grievance? There’s nothing worth being serious about. Let her be.”

With a boom, all the blood in my body turned cold.

The knuckles gripping the pen slowly went white. It felt as if a huge gash had been torn open in my chest, and freezing wind was howling straight in.

So it wasn’t that he couldn’t protect me.

It was only that, in this man’s heart, the humiliation I suffered and the dignity that had been ground to pieces were simply not worth him getting serious over.

Plop. A tear fell onto the bank statement, blurring the writing.

I raised my hand and wiped the tears away hard, my gaze cooling little by little.