Four hundred and twelve dollars, a sister in the hospital and a landlord’s fist already at the door. Emma Carter has run out of ways to survive on her own. Then a stranger’s text arrives, cold and impossible to ignore: You need money. I need a wife. Damian Blackwood doesn’t do love. He doesn’t do weakness, either and after burying his grandfather, he has eighty-six days to marry or lose everything he’s built. He needs a wife on paper. Convincing. Discreet. Disposable in eighteen months. He needs someone who won’t fall for him. He picks Emma because she’s the only one who hesitates. She signs for the money. For Lily. For a life she’s spent two years trying to hold together with nothing but stubbornness and unpaid bills. She tells herself it’s just a contract. But contracts don’t make your pulse spike when he says your name like a warning. They don’t make you memorize the way his control slips — just once, just for a second — every time you refuse to be afraid of him. Damian Blackwood has never lost a negotiation in his life. He’s about to find out what it costs to fall for the one person who was never supposed to want him back.