Elara Vance is drowning—in medical debt, in despair, in the quiet decay of her mother’s health and her own fading dreams. Her salvation comes not as a lifeline, but as a cold, hard transaction from the city’s most ruthless CEO: Lucian Thorne, the legendary "Beast of the Boardroom." To secure his empire, Lucian needs a wife—in name only. In exchange for one year of her life playing the part of his devoted bride, Elara will receive five million dollars. The rules are clear: separate rooms, no entanglements, no complications. It’s a business deal. A merger. Plunged into Lucian’s world of icy luxury and calculated silence, Elara is treated as little more than a polished prop. But when a defiant spark leads her to his private library—a sanctuary that hides the man behind the myth—the carefully drawn lines of their contract begin to blur. A single, forbidden touch ignites a fire that consumes every rule. What begins as a facade of passion becomes devastatingly real. Elara discovers the wounded man beneath the beast’s armor, and Lucian is shaken by the warmth and strength of the woman he was only supposed to pretend to love. But when a corporate scandal threatens his kingdom, Lucian faces an agonizing choice: protect the empire he built with his soul, or betray the woman who taught him he had one.