She was drowning in poverty. He was paralyzed by grief.

Emily Greene is barely surviving, working multiple jobs to care for her sick mother and seven-year-old daughter. When billionaire Victor Hawthorne offers her an impossible salary to be his caregiver, she can't refuse. Even if the wheelchair-bound recluse treats her like the enemy.

Victor Hawthorne spent five years building walls no one could breach. The last thing he needs is a compassionate woman who sees past his cruelty to the broken man beneath. 

But when his company's board demands they need stability by him getting married or lose everything, he makes Emily an offer, become his wife in name only. Three years. No emotions. Just business.

What begins as a cold transaction transforms into something neither expected. 

As Victor learns to walk again, both physically and emotionally. Emily discovers a strength she never knew she had. But when shadows from his past supposedly return and betrayal threatens to destroy them, Emily must build her own empire and Victor must prove he's worthy of a second chance.

Because real love is never just business.

Not I love you too. Not I'm glad you're alive. Not even welcome home.


I lay in the dark long after his breathing evened out, staring at the ceiling of a room I'd never slept in before, in a house that had been mine for years, and I turned those two words over and over in my mind like a stone with a sharp edge.


I'd expected walls. I'd prepared for walls. Victor had always built them, and I had always known how to dismantle them, brick by patient brick. That was the thing about us — that had always been the thing about us. I knew him in ways no one else did. I knew what his silences mean, the exact language of his withdrawals.


Which meant I needed to start as I intended to go on.


Chapter 59 - Taking Back What's Mine