Leon's POV

I forced back my tears and tried to keep it together.

The ICU bills were high, so I still needed to earn money.

At the same time, I listed my and Allison's marital home for sale.

I was out on the streets peddling snacks when a prospective buyer contacted me. As he toured the house, he marveled at how much love I must have for life and complimented how meticulously clean it was.

When he noticed a familiar figure in a photograph, his eyes immediately lit up.

"Oh, so you're a close friend of Mrs. Welch!" he exclaimed. "Well, that makes doing business a whole lot easier.

"Mrs. Welch is a woman of true character. Any man who marries her is lucky. She's the type who'd willingly put everything she has on the line to support her husband's business venture."

My smile froze on my face. I had no idea what he was talking about.

Laughing, he explained, "Mr. Welch's business is booming right now. He's our biggest supplier, and honestly, I'm relying on him to put food on my table. Just name a price for this place, and I'll take it."

Clarence Welch?

The rough calluses on my hands suddenly felt like a sick joke.

From the rest of our conversation, I learned that Allison had embezzled my money, secretly funneled it to Clarence, and helped him become the largest shareholder in his company. All the while, she had watched me go bankrupt and left our family living in absolute poverty.

My heart throbbed painfully.

I quickly excused myself to the bathroom and splashed freezing water on my face, forcing myself to stay calm.

Allison had lost her voice right after giving birth to Noel. The doctors couldn't determine the cause, and I had been terrified she was suffering from postpartum depression. Because of that, I protected our family carefully.

Even when I got into a car crash, I never stopped working because I was afraid my child and wife would suffer.

There was a time when a car crash broke my leg, and I had to grit my teeth and go to some random clinic to have the bone set, just to save money. To this day, I still walked with a heavy limp.

Back then, I contentedly told myself that as long as I had a home to come back to, there was still hope.

But Allison never saw it that way. She went to such lengths, spending three years fighting back the urge to speak, just to cover up the fact that she was bankrolling Clarence. She did it all so she could step into her place as Mrs. Welch much more smoothly.

A bitter laugh escaped me.

I had treated her like the apple of my eye. In return, she subsidized Clarence with my money, all while treating me like an outsider and constantly keeping me at arm's length.

At the start, she was the one who had promised me a home and to be my wife. She had stepped into my life and made the vows at the altar, but now… she played a cruel joke on me at the most painful, devastating point of my life.

My tears spilled over uncontrollably.

It took me a long time to compose myself, and my voice was still thick with tears when I finally spoke.

When I sent the buyer off, he promised to pay 10% above market value out of respect for Allison. Each time he referred to her as"Mrs. Welch", it hurt like he was hurling stones at me.

The moment the paperwork was completed, I took the advance cash and rushed to pre-pay the hospital bills.

Allison was at the hospital entrance, sketching portraits for passersby to earn extra money. When she saw me, she quickly typed on her phone.

"We'll get through this together. Don't worry; Noel is going to be fine.

"The money will come eventually. I'm just so sorry I can't do more."

It was ironic.

I was about to head off to earn more money when Allison's phone rang. She got so excited that she nearly forgot she was supposedly mute and answered aloud.

But she quickly hung up and typed a message to me. "I have to take care of something. It's an emergency."

She was in such a desperate rush to leave that her customer got mad, grabbed her arm, and refused to let her go. Unable to explain herself, she simply returned all the money she had made that day to the customer.

It amounted to a few hundred dollars, which was equivalent to several days of me peddling my tricycle to deliver packages. But of course, that kind of money was nothing to her.

And this was the same woman who claimed she was doing everything she could to earn money for Noel.

Allison's words were riddled with holes. For three years, she had cut off all social ties and locked herself away like a recluse. But as it turned out, there was an exception to her isolation. It just wasn't me.

I had lost completely .

I walked into a nearby print shop, spent a dollar printing out a set of divorce papers, signed my name, and left it on her desk.

Leon's POV

One night, I was out making food deliveries, my back completely drenched in sweat.

Allison and Clarence were going viral on the Internet, where she sang a deeply soulful song in a video. Every lyric felt like a long-distance love confession.

Though she wore a mask, I recognized her at a glance.

The comment section was flooded with praise.

"Clarence is one lucky guy. Someone always has his back, no matter how much he screws up. His wife spent millions of dollars on a massive fireworks display just to make him smile.

"And now, she's singing to him like a devoted queen. What a life."

The atmosphere in the video was vibrant and full of life. Yet for three years, there was nothing but dead silence between us.

Even in bed, she refused to let a single sound escape her lips during our most intimate moments. Our sex life was mechanical, and our daily routine was robotic. I was the only lunatic desperately trying to keep this marriage alive.

Allison had never been one with high self-control. There was a time when a single smile from me could make her burst into laughter and prompt her to talk endlessly about her day. But for Clarence, she brutally suppressed every desire to speak and never said a word to us.

She wouldn't even speak to Noel, her son.

Noel had always felt lonely. There were several times when he tried to talk to Allison, babbling and cooing, but she would only stare at him with cold eyes until he was forced to give up speaking.

As a mother, she might as well have been dead. How could she be so heartless?

While I was lost in thought, the hospital called.

"Mr. Russell, your card was declined, and it seems like your bank account has been frozen. We'll have to stop the treatments once the current balance runs out. You need to look into this at once."

I was stunned. That was when I remembered that over the years, I had handed every dollar I earned over to Allison to manage.

With Noel's life on the line, I dared not delay another second. I quickly called her, but the line was constantly busy. She never replied to my texts either.

I had no choice but to track down the address from the news and rush to the venue.

The ballroom was spectacular, while I looked completely out of place. The judgmental, mocking stares from guests felt like sharp knives, but I didn't have time to care. I grabbed anyone I could find and desperately asked if they knew Allison.

Finally, I found her on the rooftop, dressed in an incredibly expensive outfit.

I grabbed her and demanded, "Where's my money, Allison? Give me back my money and cards! Why the hell did you freeze my account?"

Even behind her mask, I could see the panic in her eyes. She shoved me away to put distance between us.

"I don't know who you are, sir," she said. "You have the wrong person."

That was the final straw. Gritting my teeth, I snapped, "Drop the act! I know it's you, Allison Strong. I know everything! I just want my money back from all these years. Do you have any idea that was Noel's life-saving money?"

The more I spoke, the more I fell apart. Three years of lies and humiliation completely crushed my pride, and now, I only wanted what was rightfully mine. As for the money she had embezzled years ago, I would think of it as a loss.

Still, Allison refused to admit it, so I moved with lightning speed and reached out to rip the mask off her face.

She went deathly pale. "Leon, let me explain."

I slapped her hard across the face. "I don't want to hear any of it! I don't care if you played deaf and dumb for three years, and I don't care that you stole my money. I just want my card back."

Clarence stepped in and feigned a friendly demeanor as he held me back. "This is all my fault, Leon. Allison grabbed the wrong card by mistake, and I accidentally got yours frozen while spending the money.

"And don't blame Allison for not talking to you these past three years. It's all because of a joke both of us made back then. I told her that if she dared to have a baby before I did, she wouldn't be allowed to say a word for three years.

"She gave birth to a baby for you and for three years, kept her mouth shut for me."

A loud ringing filled my ear. It never crossed my mind that something that ridiculous was the reason behind Allison's muteness.

Leon's POV

All those years of suffering alone, all the maternal love Noel had been denied, had turned out to be nothing more than the price for a ridiculous joke.

Then what had Noel and I been to Allison? What were we to her?

I stared at Allison in disbelief, while she frantically tried to grab my hand.

"Leon, I admit this wasn't fair to you and Noel, but the three years are over now. I've officially paid back everything I owed Clarence, and from now on, our family can live a happy life together."

I avoided her touch as if she were filthy. The nauseating truth felt like a knife ripping through my chest, leaving a bloody, gaping wound.

When I spoke, my voice was completely raw and hoarse. "Just give me my card back. I don't want anything else."

Allison was about to reach into her bag when Clarence tripped over his feet for no reason and scraped his arm. One small cry from him was enough to steal all her attention.

She shoved me aside and rushed to help him up.

The crowd instantly split into two. Only I smashed a wine bottle against the wall and stood blocking the door with broken glass in my hand, screaming hysterically, "Give me back my card!"

"Don't you dare push it, Leon," Allison hissed. "It's just a few thousand dollars. You're delaying us over a pittance.

"I've had my assistant transfer money into Noel's account every day. You're just using this as a pathetic excuse to get back on Clarence!"

With that, she shoved past me, completely ignoring the glass that cut her arm, and ordered her men to hold me down.

But I grabbed the hem of her pants and desperately begged, "That's not true! Noel never received the money!

"Please, Allison. Give me my money back. If I don't pay by tomorrow, they're turning off the machines keeping him alive."

But Allison didn't even look back and walked away, not even willing to spare a few minutes for me.

Before leaving, she assured me that she would unfreeze my bank account and make sure Noel's medical bills were covered.

Even after I returned to the hospital in a daze, they never received a single payment. Allison had most likely forgotten about everything.

The nurses and doctors looked at me with pity.

"ICU care costs 1,000 dollars a day, and that's not even including the medications. The money in the account will soon run out, but don't worry, Mr. Russell. You've done everything you can."

I sat at the door to Noel's room like a madman and couldn't stop thinking about how my own mistake had harmed him. I didn't deserve to be a dad.

In desperation, I reached out to an illegal blood broker.

The cold needle pierced my vein and drained my life until my face turned a shade paler. I grabbed a lip gloss to add a little color to my lips, forced a smile, and headed to the next hospital to sell more blood.

Two blood draws only yielded a miserable 3,000 dollars. When I demanded to continue, even the broker backed away in fear.

"You'll die if you keep going. 800ml is the absolute human limit. Think about your kid. If you die, who's going to be there for him?"

When I buried my face in my hands and broke down in tears, he slipped me an extra 100 dollars.

Meanwhile, over in the hospital's VIP suites, Allison had summoned every dermatologist just to ensure that Clarence's scrape wouldn't leave a scar.

Noel's life meant nothing to her. He wasn't even worth her attention.

My heart died right then. I knew that if Noel didn't survive this ordeal, I was done living, too.

Just then, an ICU doctor came running toward me. "Mr. Russell, come with me right now."