LOGINBlurb She was dragged out of her cousin's house in the rain and handed over like she was worth nothing. She did not choose this marriage. She did not choose Cassian Virelli, the cold, powerful man who looked at her on their wedding day like she was a problem he had been handed and did not want. He gave her rules. She followed them. Then she broke them, one by one, not out of rebellion but out of survival. But the more she learns about the secret that brought them together, the more she realizes that nothing about her life has been an accident. Her father knew the Virelli family. There is a deal buried in the past that nobody has fully explained. And she is, somehow, the key to all of it. Cassian does not want to feel anything for the woman he was forced to marry. But she will not break the way he expected. She will not beg or disappear or make herself small enough to ignore. And the more he watches her survive everything his world throws at her, the harder it becomes to pretend he does not care what happens to her. They were both trapped when this started. Only one of them knows yet that love is the one thing that could set them free.
View MoreThe Secret Behind the MarriageIt started as a feeling before it became anything else.I was being watched. Carefully and consistently, by people who were very good at making it look like something else.Certain staff members would be in the middle of a sentence when I came around a corner and they would pause just briefly before continuing, the pause so small you might not notice if you hadn't been paying close attention. Alaric had appeared at the house twice without any announcement, both times disappearing into Cassian's study for long stretches and leaving again without speaking to anyone else. A woman I didn't recognize had stood near the end of the upstairs hallway for several minutes one afternoon, watching me walk toward the library, and by the time I looked back she was gone.Nobody explained any of it.I got up early on the third morning, before the house was fully awake, and made my way to the small library on the second floor. I had been using it as a refuge in the mornin
Rules, Secrets, and HumiliationThere was an actual list.I found it in the morning, slid under my door sometime before I woke up. A folded piece of paper, thick and cream-colored, the kind that costs money. Someone had knocked twice and walked away quickly. I picked it up off the floor in my dressing gown and stood by the window in the early grey light and read it.Do not speak unless spoken to in company. Do not interfere in his professional or personal matters. Do not embarrass him publicly, in any setting, by any means. Be present when your presence is required. Be invisible when it is not.There were six more points beneath those. Smaller things. Specific things. What to wear to certain types of events. Who in the household staff reported to whom. What rooms were not to be entered without express permission.I read it all the way through twice. Then I folded it neatly and placed it on the dresser and stood there for a moment in the quiet of the room.Then I got dressed and went d
The mansion made itself known slowly, the way certain things do when they want you to feel the full weight of them.First the iron gates, then the long driveway lined with trees so old and tall they made the sky look narrow. Then the house itself, appearing through the rain-damp windshield in the early afternoon light, grey stone and tall windows and a roofline that went on longer than felt reasonable.I stepped out of the car and straightened my spine and tried very hard to look like I belonged there.It didn't work. I could feel it not working.The front door opened before anyone knocked. A woman in a pressed uniform appeared at the top of the steps, tall and neat and composed in the way of someone who has been running a house like this for a very long time. She looked at Cassian with a small, professional nod. Then she looked at me, and there was a pause, brief enough that most people might not catch it, but I caught it."Welcome home, Mr. Virelli," she said. "I'll have someone sho
They gave me a room that was worth more than everything I had ever owned added together and multiplied.I know that sounds like an exaggeration. It isn't. I stood in the center of it and I looked at the high ceiling and the long curtains and the bed with its white pressed sheets and I felt completely out of place in a way that was almost funny.I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think clearly.Running was the first thing that came to mind. It always is. The window was tall and the night outside looked very dark, and even if I could have gotten it open, I was somewhere I didn't recognize, with no money, no phone, and no idea how far from anything I was. The drive from Dorian's house had taken long enough that I had lost track of direction entirely.So I sat there instead.A woman came in before the sun was properly up. She was efficient and brisk in the way of someone who has been given a job to do and intends to do it without unnecessary conversation. She moved through the room












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