Chapter 2

Or rather, he allowed it to happen in silence.

In this moment, he wasn't my lover. He was his mother's accomplice. A silent conspirator in this carefully orchestrated shakedown.

A wave of immense disappointment and icy cold washed over me from my feet up, engulfing my entire being.

I took a deep breath, forcing down the sob in my throat and the rage churning in my gut.

Crying? Screaming? Demanding answers?

That would only make me look like a hysterical mess, playing right into her hands.

I slowly lifted my head, forcing a polite smile onto my face, even though inside it felt like a blizzard had ravaged my heart.

I looked at Willow's face, every inch marked by cunning and calculation, and shot back with an icy calmness.

"Mom, which house's market price are you talking about? About how much is ours worth now?"

My tone was deceptively level, like a stone tossed into still water, sending ripples across the surface.

Willow was left speechless by my comeback.

She'd probably mapped out a hundred possible responses for me—tears, shouting, wounded pride—but she never anticipated I would respond by calmly discussing market value.

Her smile froze on her face, her eyes flashing with astonishment and irritation.

Not giving her time to recover, I followed up with my next line, delivered as casually as if we were discussing the weather.

"Sure, let's settle it at market value then," I replied.

I kept my tone casual, like we were just talking about the weather or something equally trivial.

Willow's face flickered from shock, to suspicion, and finally to a faint, smug satisfaction.

She probably assumed I was caving in, forced to swallow my pride and compromise under pressure.

She put on her victor's smile and nodded with satisfaction. "That's more like it. Between family, it's better to keep things clear."

She didn't notice the cold gleam that briefly flickered in my eyes after I finished speaking.

Finally, this breakfast was over.

I returned to the bedroom alone, closing the door and shutting out all the noise.

I didn't cry. I didn't even feel the urge to shed a tear.

Instead, with a chilling calm, I opened my phone, went into various rental apps, and typed in the name of our residential complex, meticulously filtering for listings with our exact layout.

Line after line of prices were listed out clearly on the screen: $1,200, $1,300, $1,400...

The most expensive one, fully furnished with top-of-the-line appliances, was still only $1,500.

So, the so-called 2,000 was nothing but a carefully calculated extortion rate, tailored precisely to my salary.

I took screenshots, one after another, and saved them. Then, I opened a browser and searched for relevant legal statutes: pre-marital property, marital joint property, gifts...

Each cold, clinical clause of the law acted like a scalpel, methodically stripping away the last of my lingering, naive illusions about marriage.

I recalled how, before the wedding, my mother-in-law had repeatedly probed about my salary, obsessed over the minutiae of the bride price, and nitpicked every detail about the wedding house's furnishings...

All those seemingly casual details, today, finally connected to form a complete noose of financial entrapment aimed directly at me.

On the second day of my marriage, my husband and my mother-in-law had teamed up to give me the most vivid lesson in "Marital Economics" imaginable.

Did it hurt?

Hurt wasn't the word for it.

It was a bucket of ice water, sharp with jagged ice shards, dumped over my head just as my hopes for a new life were at their peak, freezing me to the core.

My husband's silence chilled me far more deeply than his mother's greed.

That warm, romantic wedding felt like a grand, elaborate farce.

And I was the fool who had walked into the trap, smiling in my wedding gown.

But did they really think it was over?

I looked at the Counterattack Plan I had just drafted on my phone screen, a slow, cold smile curling my lips.

No. This was only the beginning.

I was not a lamb waiting for the slaughter.

Saying "let's settle it at market value" wasn't surrender. It was the signal that the fight was on.

This was a war, and I was ready to see it through to the very end.

I wasn't going to lower myself to a screaming match with her. That was too basic and exactly what Willow loved.

Modern battles deserved a touch more finesse.

I spent an hour organizing all my findings into a PDF, packed with screenshots and handy highlights.

The title was simple and to the point: "Analysis of Market Rental Prices."

Inside, I carefully listed screenshots of over a dozen listings in the same complex, same layout, each with different floors, décor styles, and directions, showcasing the monthly rent ranges in bold, eye-catching red.

I even pulled expert realtor data to figure out our place's fair market rent, calculated to the exact penny: about $1,205 a month.

At the end, I included a helpful heads-up page, with legal references pulled straight from the law, covering premarital gifts and both spouses' rights to their shared home.