Chapter 1

I gave up a thirty-thousand-a-month salary to work three years as head chef at my girlfriend's family restaurant, and never took a single cent.

But on the day of our engagement, my girlfriend's father actually pulled out a ledger and said:

"Over three years, you drank three hundred sixty bottles of our water and a hundred bottles of iced tea."

"You ate one thousand ninety-five dinners, and in summer you averaged twenty ice creams a day. During taste tests, you went through a total of eighteen hundred roasted peanuts, thirteen hundred slices of cucumber, a thousand pieces of diced meat…"

"We'll round it off, call it six hundred thousand. Plus the dowry, that's nine hundred thousand total."

I froze for a second, turned to look at my girlfriend, and asked, "Didn't you say meals were included?"

She started to speak.

Her father cut in with a frown. "But you ate way too much. What family could stand that kind of drain?"

Her mother crossed her legs. "Marina, you need to keep your head clear. Plenty of people out there want to marry up into a family like ours."

"Worst case, we swap out the fiancé and swap out the chef too."

My girlfriend heard all this and went silent. She wouldn't say half a word for me.

I looked down at the fresh blister on my hand and clenched my teeth, sick with disappointment.

"If I can't afford to marry up, then I won't."

"Swap out whoever you want."

…

When they heard that.

Marina James, silent a moment ago, jerked her head up as if stung. "Vincent Fox!"

"It's not like you can't come up with six hundred thousand. Just sell the house your grandfather lives in, done. Why do you have to put me in the middle like this?"

I stared at her, shocked, my fist clenching so hard the blister burst.

The pain shot straight to my heart.

"So it's fine for you to put me in a hard spot?"

"However hard it is, that's what a boyfriend is supposed to do."

Every employee in that restaurant knew that to keep from making things hard for Marina, I never took a single thing from the place.

Even my water, I brought myself.

As for the bottled water, iced tea, and ice cream in her father's ledger, all of that was Marina holding it up to my mouth.

She called it a reward for my hard work.

But right now, she was helping herself to my grandfather's retirement house without a shred of shame.

She knew perfectly well I was raised by my grandfather alone, with no one else.

"Vincent, don't think we're giving you a hard time on purpose. After all, we're not one family yet."

Her father, calm enough, gave me a little smile and raised a hand toward the sign on the wall.

"It says right there, employees who damage store property pay triple."

"I've already cut you a deal."

Her mother chimed in. "You don't actually think this place falls apart without you as head chef, do you? Is that why you've got the nerve to give us attitude?"

"Let me be honest with you."

"Two days ago a matchmaker set Marina up with a young man! He's the head chef at a Michelin restaurant, won Chef of the Year eighteen times. Ten thousand times better than you."

Everyone at the banquet turned to look at me.

Some of their faces were full of mockery.

Some looked at me with pity.

I found it beyond absurd.

Three years ago, when the James family wanted to open a restaurant, Marina asked me, head chef at a big restaurant in the big city, to come help.

I dropped everything and came.

Her father clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Vincent, thank you for coming. From now on we're one family, no lines between us."

For the first two years, the family was short on cash, so I paid out of my own pocket for ingredients and hired help.

Adding it all up, it came to well over five hundred thousand.

I'd be in that kitchen eighteen hours at a stretch, my arms about to fall off from the work.

But I never complained once.

Instead, Marina would wipe the sweat off my face and say, "You work so hard," and it would keep me happy for a long time.

Three years later, today, the James family restaurant is known far and wide, and they've bought the luxury car and the villa.

I thought Marina and I were finally going to make it official.

Who would have thought.

The James family was planning to work the ox to death, then slaughter it.

Wasn't this just making a fool of me?

I was about to speak when Marina looked at me and opened her mouth again. "Vincent, I raised my voice earlier, that's all. But even blood brothers keep clear accounts. Just agree already."

"You can't really bear to break up and watch me marry someone else, can you?"

Everyone looked at me again.

All of them certain that I, the workhorse who'd kept my head down and slaved for three years, would give in in the end.