로그인When tech billionaire Avalon Pierce’s grandmother dies, her will forces him to marry within 30 days Selene Castellano, the ex-girlfriend who shattered him ten years ago or lose everything to his corrupt uncle. Selene, drowning in debt from her sister’s cancer treatment, agrees to the contract for $250,000, but living together unearths a devastating secret: Selene was pregnant when she left, threatened by Avalon’s mother, and miscarried their baby alone. As they navigate corporate warfare and family manipulation, their marriage of convenience becomes a second chance at love, only if they can forgive the past and choose each other daily.
더 보기POV: Selene CastellanoShe noticed it on Tuesday.He laughed at something James said on a phone call.She was in the kitchen when she heard it through the study door, stopped what she was doing to be sure she heard right.It wasn’t the laugh specifically. It was what the laugh meant. He’d been on the phone with James for twenty minutes and she’d heard the conversation move from foundation business to something else. Something James had said about his first failed company, apparently it was genuinely funny in retrospect.And Avalon had laughed without managing it first.She went back to what she was doing and said nothing when he came out.She just noted it the way she noted things now and filed it.On Wednesday he held the door for a man on the street.This was not unusual. He was courteous in the practiced way of someone raised to be courteous.What was unusual was the thirty second conversation that followed.The man said thank you and Avalon said of course and the man said you havi
POV: Avalon PierceThe emails started Saturday morning. Individual messages from people who had been at the symposium, arriving throughout the weekend, with correspondence from those who had thought about what they wanted to say before saying it.Susan Park wrote about infrastructure. Three precise paragraphs, outlining what the foundation could do to address what her organisation needed rather than what funders typically offered.David Torres wrote one sentence.Dignity is the right framework to build around.A man named Kevin Walsh who ran a youth housing program and had been at the table five wrote four pages. It was an analysis of what he had observed in six years of working in the gap. What worked and what looked like it worked. Selene read every email twice.Avalon watched her do it at the kitchen table on Saturday morning, coffee getting cold, reading with the focused stillness of someone receiving something important.“Kevin Walsh’s four pages,” she said without looking up.
POV: Selene CastellanoShe arrived forty minutes early and stood in the empty room.The community center in the Mission had the quality of places that had been genuinely used. Worn floors that had held thousands of ordinary meetings, adequate lighting that nobody had chosen for atmosphere, acoustics that worked because the walls were the right material for the right reasons.She’d fought for this venue.Amara had wondered whether somewhere more prominent would signal seriousness.Selene had said the venue should signal what the foundation valued. The work, not the performance of the work. The room where things actually happened, not the room designed to impress people into believing things were happening.Amara had sat with that for a moment and then agreed.Standing here alone at seven fifty, Selene was glad. The room felt like it knew what it was for.People arrived in twos and threes. Hovering near the coffee table slightly longer than coffee required. Looking at the room with the
POV: Avalon PierceThe foundation’s first public event was on a Friday. It wasn't a gala or a charity event, Selene had been very clear about that from the beginning.It was more like a symposium, there was open registration. Academics, practitioners, community members and people who worked in the gaps the foundation was built to address. It was a day of conversations rather than presentations.However, the Thursday before, Avalon sat in the study at midnight unable to sleep, he had the feeling of standing at the edge of something real.He’d felt it before.Selene came in at twelve thirty.She was in her robe, hair down and the look of someone who had been lying awake and given up pretending otherwise.She sat in the chair across from his.“You’re doing the ceiling thing,” she said.“I’m doing the lamp thing,” he said. “What’s the difference.”“The lamp is warmer.”She looked at the lamp.“Fair,” she said.They sat in the study quietly.“Are you nervous?” she said.“Yes.”“About wha






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