The ICU costs six thousand dollars a day. By Grandma’s third day there, I had spent my entire twenty-thousand-dollar savings.

Paige’s phone was unreachable, so I sent her a message saying I was about to sign the agreement with Ms. Albright.

Sure enough, like a magic clown, she appeared precisely on time at our designated cafe.

I agreed to marry Ms. Albright’s son, Blaine Albright. Paige, satisfied, received the five million dollars cash, with the condition that she had to contribute half of it for Grandma’s medical treatment.

Paige readily agreed. Despite the annoyance of losing half the money, I believed she was happier to see the miserable state I would be in after marrying Blaine.

A week later, Grandma was successfully transferred from the ICU to a regular ward and was out of danger.

Blaine and I got our marriage license and moved into the small villa Ms. Albright had bought for us.

On our wedding night, I set up my pre-prepared whiteboard, a marker, and a stack of advanced mathematics textbooks.

When Blaine emerged from the bathroom, his face was paler than frost.

I secretly snickered a little.

Oh, you thought you were the only one with a twisted mind? This is what they call fighting fire with fire, putting the freak in his place.

“What are you doing?”

Blaine’s Adam’s apple bobbed twice. Maybe I had turned the bedroom temperature up too high.

He walked to the bedside table, picked up the water glass, and gulped it down.

I lay on the mattress, sitting primly, tilting my head as I calmly watched him. “Of course, we’re playing a stimulating game that only adults are qualified to enter—”

Calculus.

Blaine’s brow furrowed even deeper. I watched him rub his hands together, then stride to the whiteboard, scrawling a bunch of f(x) with the marker.

“Where should we start?” I paused my hand, blinking at him. “Partial differential equations? Differential equations? Or limit derivatives? Newton and Leibniz are just beginner level. How about I give you some more difficult ones? Yang-Mills existence and mass gap hypothesis, or the Navier-Stokes equations. Have you heard of them?”

However, the next second, my mouth, full of those vile mathematical formulas, was fiercely sealed by two warm lips!

“No… wait!”

I was completely confused. Why was Blaine suddenly ambushing me like this?!

I broke free from his soft, invading kiss long enough to take a breath. “You—you shouldn’t do this, Blaine! Our wedding night shouldn’t be like this!”

He propped himself up beside me with a sturdy forearm, his dark eyes gazing at me with an intense emotion.

“Do you know how sexy you looked saying ‘Navier-Stokes equations’? Right now, I just want to thoroughly study the limit of negative distance deviation with you.”

Limit?

Negative… negative distance?

Hold your horses!

The next morning, I woke up in Blaine’s firm embrace.

He was still asleep, probably exhausted from the previous night’s antics.

Sunlight squeezed through the seams of the sheer white curtains, dappling his thick eyelashes.

They fluttered gently with his steady breathing.

I blushed, replaying every detail of last night, and couldn’t help but wonder.

Blaine was the psychopath Paige talked about?

While he was a bit wildly intense last night, he still kissed me gently, diligently checked on my comfort, and thoughtfully carried me to the bathroom afterward.

Aside from his penchant for a Fibonacci sequence rhythm, he didn't seem as terrifying as Paige described, did he?

Had he realized I came prepared, so he deliberately went easy, wanting to test me?

I casually pulled my multi-functional self-defense bag from under my pillow, meticulously running my fingers over the pepper spray, Swiss Army knife, and high-voltage stun gun inside.

Just then, Blaine suddenly opened his eyes.

I forced a stiff smile and said, “Morning.”

But to my absolute shock, Blaine suddenly lunged, eyes bloodshot, hands clamping down on my throat!

“I’m not—I’m not useless!”

“You—you dare say it again! I’ll kill you!”

His sudden attack caught me completely off guard. I slumped backward, my hands gripping Blaine’s wrists tightly.

“No… don’t…”

“Blaine, let… let go…”

Just as I thought I was about to be choked to death, he suddenly pulled away as if a murderous nerve had been severed, returning to a normal mental state.

He picked me up, but I was already coughing, gasping for air.

“Iris, I… I just…”

“Don’t touch me!”