"Sign the contract, play the perfect wife for one year, and I'll save your father's company. But don't mistake this for kindness, Miss Hartley. I despise everything you represent."

Natalie Hartley once had everything—until her father's business partner embezzled millions and framed him for it. Now her father is dying of a stress-induced heart condition, their pharmaceutical company is being seized, and their family name is synonymous with fraud.
She has three weeks before her father loses everything he built—including his will to live.

Enter Dominic Ashford: the youngest billionaire CEO in Chicago, a self-made tech mogul whose empire spans three continents, and the man who hates her family with every fiber of his being. His younger sister died eight years ago from a medication error involving a drug manufactured by Hartley Pharmaceuticals. Dominic blamed Natalie's father and has spent nearly a decade systematically destroying every business the Hartley family touches.

But Dominic has a problem. His grandfather's will states that to maintain control of Ashford Technologies, he must be married by his thirty-second birthday—three weeks away. His board of directors, tired of his ruthless methods, wants him gone. They've found a loophole, and they're ready to exploit it.

Natalie and Dominic need each other. She needs his resources to save her father. He needs a wife to save his empire.

The contract is simple: One year of marriage. Public appearances as the perfect couple. Separate bedrooms. No emotions. No questions about the past. When the year ends, they divorce quietly, and both get what they want.
Natalie signs in her father's hospital room, ink still wet when Dominic's cold lips brush her hand with contempt disguised as affection for the watching nurses.

But someone is watching their contract marriage very closely—Dominic's enemies in the corporate underworld who've been waiting for the ice king to finally show a crack in his armor. The moment they realize Dominic Ashford actually cares about his contract wife, the death threats begin.

First, it's her brakes failing on Lake Shore Drive. Then a near-miss with a falling air conditioning unit. A break-in at the penthouse that Dominic's security barely stops in time.

Someone wants Natalie dead. And they want Dominic to suffer watching it happen.

Now Dominic faces an impossible choice: let her go and watch his only weakness become his greatest regret, or protect her and prove to the world that the man who swore he'd never love again would burn Chicago to the ground for his contract wife.
They thought marriage was their solution. They didn't realize it made them both targets.

Reporters swarm our table like sharks smelling blood. Cameras flash. Questions scream from every direction.


"Mr. Ashford, is it true your marriage is fake?"


"Mrs. Ashford, how much did he pay you?"


"Was this all for the inheritance clause?"


Dominic's hand grips mine so hard it hurts. "We're leaving. Now."


Security materializes from nowhere—massive men in suits forming a wall around us. They push through the crowd, but the reporters follow, shouting questions, shoving phones in our faces.


I can't breathe. Can't think. The walls are closing in.


Then Dominic pulls me against his chest, shielding me with his body as we're rushed toward an exit.


"Don't say anything," he murmurs against my hair. "Not one word."


We burst through a service door into a hallway. More security. A car waiting with the engine running.


Chapter 7 - The War Room