Isolde Marrok is sold to settle her father's debt, and she walks into Killian Vane's house carrying her mother's scarf, a hidden ledger, and a dead man's switch she will use if they hurt her. Killian has spent 15 years as his father's instrument, performing cruelty until the performance ate the man underneath, and his new bride is the first person who has ever looked at him and seen through the mask. Their marriage is a contract, their separate rooms are a cage, and the garden door that does not lock from the inside is the only exit either of them has. As she maps his father's house and the 2 dead women who lived there before her, she has to decide whether she is the next Eleanor who runs or the one who finally burns the house down. The man she married keeps a knife under his pillow and a list of his father's crimes in his coat, and he is waiting for a reason to use either one. What begins as a conspiracy becomes a partnership, and the partnership becomes something neither of them planned for or can walk away from.
This is a dark arranged-marriage romance about 2 people caged by the same man, and the slow, dangerous alliance that turns into something neither of them planned. It is also a story about the difference between the chains we are given and the velvet we choose, and about a wife who learns the shape of her mother's escape and decides to finish what she started.
Inside, you'll discover:
• The loose floorboard and the ledger that proves the debt was fake
• The note that warns her not to drink the wine
• The changed lock and the door his father forgot
• The aunt on the stairs and the scarf with the monogram
• The wire, the records room, and the confession on tape
• The betrayal that is not a betrayal and the gambit that ends him
• The safe house and the life they build without the cage