C.O Winter
Emma Winston marries Will Hammer to get inside the Hammer family and
prove that Richard Hammer ruined her mother's shipping business. For years she has
pursued that goal as The Widow, leaking documents that cost Hammer Holdings two major
contracts and, through one wrongful accusation, cost a former analyst her job. Will proposes
the marriage himself, hoping a stable public image will help him push the Larkspur terminal
deal through a divided board. Neither knows the other's real purpose, and both believe they
hold the advantage. Neither expects to want the other. Fourteen months later, when an
archive reindex briefly exposes a restricted folder, Emma copies it, and Will ends the
marriage within the hour. Emma leaves with a drive containing a consent memo bearing her
mother's signature and a notary register entry dated on a morning when court minutes place
Helen in Larkspur. As a federal inquiry opens and a security breach forces Emma and Will
together while their divorce is pending, they discover that the record was falsified, that
Richard Hammer's role was not what either believed, and that the cost of the truth falls on
both of them.
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