The Unexpected Heiress & Her Ruthless Protector

Down-on-her-luck barista Maya Lin is one rent payment away from losing everything—until a corporate titan steps into her coffee shop, buys out her lease, and shatters her reality. ​Julian Vance is cold, calculating, and terrifyingly powerful. As the head of an elite private security firm, he carries a dead man’s secret: Maya isn't just an orphan scraping by, but the sole heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Vance-Harrington shipping empire. Her grandfather was murdered, and the killers are already moving to eliminate Maya before she can claim her legacy. ​To keep her breathing, Julian enforces a single rule: total obedience. He locks her away in his high-tech penthouse, but Maya refuses to be any man’s prisoner. As her treacherous half-brother circles for the blood in the water, Julian executes a desperate power move to protect her—announcing to the world that Maya is his fiancée. ​Forced into high-stakes fake dating, every touch for the cameras blurs the line between duty and obsession. Julian is trained to control every variable, but he never calculates the danger of falling for the woman he sworn to guard. Locked in a maze of corporate sabotage and deadly secrets, they must learn to trust each other before the enemies in the shadows tear them and the empire apart. ​