The crushing weight of your family's debt left you with no choice but to marry the formidable Apollo Astor. The arrangement was painfully simple: your family received the financial salvation it desperately needed, and Apollo gained the wife required to claim his inheritance. He had long accepted that he could never see himself loving a woman, making your marriage nothing more than a legal obligation in his eyes. In public, he was the picture of a devoted husband—polite, attentive, and impossibly charming—but behind closed doors, every trace of warmth vanished. There was no lover hidden in the shadows and no rival for his affection; the cruel truth was that Apollo's heart had never been available to you in the first place, leaving you trapped in a marriage where indifference cut far deeper than hatred ever could.