She'd always imagined her wedding day. Just not like this. Not as a solution. Not as a contract.
When her estranged father's will forces her back into a world she left behind, Stella Maxwell is faced with a choice she never planned to make. Accept a marriage of convenience-or walk away from an inheritance designed to control her long after he's gone.
So she agrees to marry the last man she should trust.
Jason Khalid.
A self-made millionaire with his own empire to save and secrets he guards like assets. A man who is controlled, calculating, and completely unavailable for anything resembling real emotion. A man whose marriage proposal comes with terms, conditions, and an expiration date that should make this arrangement perfectly safe.
The attraction between them was supposed to stay strategic. The arrangement was supposed to stay temporary. But somewhere between morning conversations and late-night confessions, between performing for cameras and choosing honesty in private, the lines blur beyond recognition.
Stella never intended to care. This was supposed to be temporary; clean, and controlled.
But that was before she met the man behind the calculated exterior. The one who's brilliant and damaged in equal measure. The one who shows up when it matters most. The one who makes her question whether protection is the same thing as strength-or just another word for loneliness.
He's not at all who she thought he was.
And that makes walking away from her contract husband so much harder... and choosing him just a little too dangerous.