I woke up to a rhythmic thumping against the wall of our luxury apartment. I thought it was just a nightmare, but when I pushed open the bedroom door, the reality was much worse. My fiancé, Ignacio, was entangled with a blonde on the very sofa I had paid for three months ago. When he saw me, there was no guilt in his eyes, only cold annoyance. "I'm bored of the 'good girl' act, Aria," he said, standing up with terrifying casualness. "And frankly, I'm bored of waiting for your stepfather's money to clear." Before I could even process his words, he grabbed my arm and shoved me out into the hallway. He didn't let me grab my shoes or my phone. He just tossed my trench coat at my face and slammed the door, locking me out of my own life. Barefoot and shivering in the October rain, I wandered into a speakeasy and drank until the world blurred. That's where I met him-a man who looked like a prince and radiated a dangerous kind of power. In a drunken, desperate haze, I asked him if he was for hire. I needed a husband to spite Ignacio, and he was the most expensive-looking man in the room. "Marry me," I pleaded, and to my shock, he agreed. We hit a twenty-four-hour chapel, signed the papers, and I passed out in the back of his Maybach. The next morning, I woke up in a penthouse on Billionaire's Row. The man, Burke, stood there in a towel and handed me a bill for fifty thousand dollars for his "overnight services." I was terrified. My family was bankrupt, I was homeless, and now I owed a massive debt to a high-end escort I had accidentally married in a blackout. I fled to a job interview at Justice Group, hoping to earn enough to pay him off and disappear. But when I sat down in the waiting room, the "gigolo" was sitting right there, wearing a suit and holding a newspaper. "Don't tell anyone we know each other," I hissed, thinking he was just another desperate applicant. "Why? Ashamed of your husband?" he teased. Then the HR assistant called our names together, and I realized my nightmare was only just beginning.
