"Marry me," my billionaire CEO demanded, trapping me in his office, completely unaware that my father was the man who murdered his parents.
I stared at John Alexander Blackwood, a man who evaluated people like stock options. He was cold, calculated, and terrifying. "A contract marriage," he said with dead eyes. "Three years. In exchange, your family's financial ruin disappears." I should have screamed no and ran out of that top-floor office. But I signed the papers, binding myself to a man I barely knew.
Moving into his sterile, expensive penthouse felt like walking into a beautiful prison. We lived like ghosts, avoiding each other in the hallways. But the ice between us started to crack. Late-night encounters in the kitchen turned into shared whiskey, and his dark, calculating eyes began tracking my every move with a burning intensity. Behind his cold armor, I found a broken man still grieving the parents he lost in a tragic car crash twenty-six years ago. I was falling for him. Hard.
But then, the anonymous envelope arrived.
My hands shook as I tore open the seal, staring at the faded contract inside. Fifty thousand dollars. That’s what my father was paid to sabotage the brakes on the Blackwood family car. The crash wasn't an accident. It was a cold-blooded assassination ordered by John's own grandfather, and my father pulled the trigger.
I was sleeping under the same roof as the man whose life my family had destroyed. If John found out, he wouldn't just divorce me—he would obliterate me.
Was I my father's daughter enough to pack my bags and run, or was I reckless enough to stay and let the truth burn us both to ashes?
