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TERMS OF THE HEART

TERMS OF THE HEART

Romance
last updateLast Updated : 2026-10-14
By:  GEORGIE HALE Updated just now
Language: English
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Synopsis

Contemporary

First-Person POV

CEO

Age Gap

Contract Marriage

Flash Marriage

Ivy Bennett has six weeks to save her family's home and eight months to save her father's life — and exactly one option left. Damien Cole, the coldest CEO in Manhattan, needs a wife by his thirty-fifth birthday or he loses everything his grandfather built to a cousin who'd burn it down for profit. It's a business transaction: marry him for one year, sign the papers, walk away wealthy. Except Damien doesn't smile for anyone — until her. And Ivy doesn't know how to stay guarded around a man who watches her like she's the only thing he can't control. As his cousin Vaughn circles with a decade-old scheme to destroy them both, the contract stops feeling like paper and starts feeling like a promise neither of them planned to keep. Then Ivy discovers the truth: Vaughn didn't just try to expose their marriage. He engineered the very desperation that put her in Damien's path years before they ever met. Now Damien must choose between the empire he was raised to protect — and the woman who taught him love was never the weakness he was told it was.

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149 Chapters
CHAPTER ONE — The Numbers Don't Care
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER TWO — An Offer With Terms
The email came from Sofia Reyes, "Executive Assistant to Mr Cole," using the word "opportunity" the way people use it when they mean something other than a job.I went. The building was colder in daylight, all that glass letting the grey March sky in without warmth. Sofia met me in the lobby — sharp bob, sharper suit — and led me to a private elevator."Don't let him rush you into anything before you understand what he's offering," she said. "He does that. Fastest path from problem to solution."Damien's office had a view of the entire island. "Ms Bennett," he said, standing. "Thank you for coming.""Your email was vague on purpose.""Some things are better discussed in person." He didn't sit right away — I'd learn he thought better on his feet. "I looked into your situation. I hope you'll forgive the intrusion." He said it plainly, no apology dressed up as charm. "You need two hundred and forty thousand dollars in eight months, or your father doesn't get the treatment that gives him
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER THREE — The Terms We Set
"A contract marriage," my father repeated slowly in his hospital bed, the right side of his mouth still lagging a beat behind the left. "To a man you've met twice.""It covers everything, Dad. The treatment. The house.""And what does it cover for you? Besides money."The question caught me off guard. "I don't know yet.""Ivy." He took my hand. "I'd rather lose this house than watch you disappear into something that hollows you out.""I'm not disappearing. I'm negotiating." I squeezed back. "I'm doing this with my eyes open, or not at all."Something softened in his face. "Your mother used to say the same thing, right before she did something that terrified me completely." Almost a smile. "What terms are you asking for?""Separate bedrooms. My own money — a stipend I control, not an allowance. No expectations beyond appearances. An exit clause that doesn't depend on his approval.""Smart girl. Make him sign every word of it."Griffith delivered the contract two days later — thirty-one
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER FOUR — Moving Day
The penthouse took up the top two floors of a building on Fifth Avenue. The first time I walked in, I understood I'd spent my whole life in rooms smaller than this apartment's closets."You don't have to keep everything in boxes," Sofia said, trailing me through a living room with a view of Central Park that looked fake, like a screensaver. "There's staff for unpacking.""I've unpacked my own boxes since I was eighteen."She smiled, quick and approving. "He said you'd say that.""He pays attention," she added, like a secret she wasn't sure she should share. "More than people think."Damien found me an hour later in my bedroom — separate from his, as agreed — surrounded by half-unpacked boxes and a photo of my mother I hadn't decided where to hang."You didn't have to do this yourself," he said, leaning in the doorway, tie loosened, sleeves rolled, looking less like the man from the boardroom photos."I like doing things myself. Wasn't in writing, but it's a rule.""Noted." He nodded a
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER FIVE — Charming Is a Warning Word
The restaurant was tucked behind an unmarked door in the West Village — the kind of exclusive that money alone couldn't buy. Damien's hand found the small of my back as we walked in, light, practised, exactly enough for the photographer three tables away to write the story we needed written."Relax," he murmured. "You look like you're walking into a deposition.""I feel like I am."I recognised Vaughn before Damien said a word — same bone structure, same dark hair, but where Damien's face settled into stillness, Vaughn's was built for performance."Damien." Vaughn stood, arms open. "And this must be the woman causing a stir at the office.""Ivy," I said, offering a hand instead of the hug he seemed to want."I have to say," Vaughn said, eyes sweeping over me, "I assumed it was a formality. A woman on paper. I didn't expect this much presence.""People rarely expect things that surprise them," Damien said, pulling out my chair.Dinner unspooled in careful layers, Vaughn's questions arr
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER SIX — Two A.M.
I woke at two in the morning to light bleeding under my bedroom door, thin and gold, and the particular quiet of a very large apartment that meant only one other person was awake.I found Damien in his study, sleeves rolled, tie gone, a spreadsheet open he wasn't really looking at. He looked up, and something in his face — tired in a way the boardroom never allowed — made him look younger than thirty-four."Couldn't sleep?" I asked."I don't sleep much. Never have." He said it like weather, not confession."That sounds exhausting.""It's efficient." The same word I'd used to describe my own life, weeks ago. He seemed to hear the echo the same moment I did. "You're up too.""Bad habit. My father worked nights before the stroke. I'd wait up to make sure he got home okay." I stepped further in, drawn by the rare unguarded quality of him at three a.m., undefended. "Can I ask you something?""You can ask.""Vaughn said Cole men don't forgive people who make them look like fools. Is that yo
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER SEVEN — Paper Trails
Sofia called an emergency meeting the next morning. By nine a.m. I was watching Damien pace while Griffith spread printouts across the table like a crime scene."Vaughn filed a records request yesterday," Griffith said. "Marriage license application, six days after you two allegedly met. He's flagged it as 'irregular' to two board members already.""It's not illegal to move quickly," Damien said."It's not illegal. It's exactly the kind of detail that makes a trust committee start asking whether the marriage satisfies the spirit of the clause." Griffith glanced at me, apologetic. "Vaughn only needs enough doubt to delay the vote past the deadline. He doesn't need proof. He needs friction."Damien stopped pacing, jaw tight. "Then we remove the friction. Move the wedding up. Two weeks. Small ceremony, immediate family, press access controlled by us instead of leaked through his version.""Two weeks," I repeated, the number landing strangely — not fear exactly, but the sudden compression
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER EIGHT — What We Choose
The morning of my wedding, Priya zipped me into a dress that cost more than a year of my old rent and burst into tears before finishing the zipper."Stop that," I said, laughing, my own eyes stinging. "You'll ruin my makeup.""I'm allowed to cry. My best friend is marrying a billionaire in a garden that costs more to maintain than my apartment building." She stepped back. "You look like you stepped out of something Grace would have loved."My mother's name landed softly in the room. The dress was simple, deliberate — Damien had insisted I choose whatever I wanted rather than what photographed best. Ivory silk, my mother's pearl earrings, the only jewellery of hers I'd kept."Are you nervous?" Priya asked."Terrified. Not about the ceremony. About how much I want it to be real."Priya went still. "Does he know that?""I don't know what he knows. He's not exactly easy to read.""For what it's worth," she said, straightening my veil, "the way he looks at you isn't the way men look at wom
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER NINE — The Folder
The call came four days after the wedding, while I was still learning the geography of a marriage that had somehow become real — which side of the bed he favoured, that he drank too much black coffee, that he touched the small of my back now even with no cameras watching.Sofia's voice was tight when she asked to see us both in the study."Vaughn sent this to three board members an hour ago," she said, sliding a folder across the desk. "He's giving us until Friday's vote before he sends it to the press."Damien opened it, and his face went very still — not the composed stillness of the boardroom, something colder."Read it," he said, handing it to me without looking up.Private messages, from the week I'd first agreed to the contract. Terms finalised. She signed without pushback. Should satisfy the trust language cleanly. Clinical, stripped of everything that had grown between us since."He's had these the whole time," I said quietly."A paralegal on retainer, most likely." Damien's v
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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CHAPTER TEN — The Vote
The boardroom on the fortieth floor had never felt small, but on Friday morning, packed with twelve board members and Vaughn sitting with the calm of a man who believed he'd already won, it felt like the walls were closing in."Before the scheduled vote," Vaughn said, standing, a folder in hand, "I think it's only fair the board sees the full context of my cousin's marriage.""Vaughn." Damien's voice, a warning wrapped around one syllable."Simply ensuring transparency," Vaughn continued, sliding copies down the table. "Messages, dated the same week he claims to have fallen for Ms Bennett. Should satisfy the trust language cleanly. Doesn't sound like love. Sounds like a man closing a deal."Murmurs moved around the table. My pulse climbed into my throat.Damien didn't reach for the folder. He stood, slow and deliberate, and the room's gravity shifted toward him. "You're right," he said. "It did start as a deal."Silence. Even Vaughn's composure faltered."I needed a wife to satisfy a
last updateLast Updated : 2026-07-08
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