He didn't buy my father's debt. He bought me.
Three years ago, my father mortgaged our family's crumbling hotel to a lender with no name and no mercy. I didn't know the money came from the Accord — the quiet council that runs half the ports, half the politicians, and apparently, now, half my life.
When my father dies before the debt is paid, the Accord doesn't forgive it. They collect it.
Enter Jenas Voss. Billionaire. Real estate titan. The face the city sees on magazine covers and charity galas. The face almost no one knows sits at the head of the table that owns everyone else's debts.
He doesn't want money. He wants the hotel restored — his way, on his timeline — and he wants me under his roof to do it, where he can watch me and the ledger my father hid somewhere inside those walls. A ledger with names in it. His name, among others.
I tell myself it's business. Sixty stories up, in a penthouse with locks I can't work from the inside, it stops feeling like business the first time he corners me against the glass and tells me exactly what he'll do to keep me safe — and exactly what he'll do to keep me.
He is not a good man. I've seen what he does to men who cross him. But some nights, when it's just the two of us above the city lights, I forget to be afraid of him and start being afraid of how badly I want to stay.
The debt has a due date. So does the truth about what's in that ledger. When both come due, only one of us walks away untouched.
A high-heat standalone with a guaranteed HEA.