Talia
I see the world in patterns - not to calculate my distance, but to understand the people no one else sees. I don't build walls. I build bridges. Even when it costs me.
So when the Society offers me a contract, one year as the wife of legacy billionaire Stellan Rothwell, I say yes.
His empire is fracturing from within. Someone close to him is leaking secrets, and I'm here to find the fault line before everything collapses.
I wasn't hired to love him. I was hired to anchor him, protect him, and leave when the work is done.
But the longer I stay, the harder it is to pretend that saving him doesn't feel a little like saving myself.
Stellan
I didn't ask for a wife. I asked for containment.
The Society promised me someone strategic - polished, detached. A safeguard, nothing more.
So, they sent Talia Cerny - perceptive, unshakable, disarming in ways I didn't see coming.
She studies without judgment. Moves through my world like she was always meant to find the cracks and hold them together.
I built my life around control. Around silence. But now, all I want is to hear her voice.
She came to protect the illusion of my stability.
Instead, she's becoming the only real thing I have left.