She was handed over to settle another man’s debt.

He was supposed to keep it strictly business.

Neither of them planned on falling.

Tiana Marie Brooks has spent her whole life learning how to need less, ask for less, and take up as little space as possible. Her salon is the one thing that belongs to her—or at least she thought it did.

Until one meeting changes everything.

Her stepfather owes a dangerous amount of money to Malcolm “Saint” Carter, a wealthy, feared businessman with one problem of his own: if he doesn’t marry before the deadline written into his late father’s estate, he could lose everything he has spent years building.

The solution?

Tiana.

One contract.
One year of marriage.
One debt erased.

And the building her mother left behind finally returned to her.

Tiana knows exactly what kind of arrangement she has agreed to. Malcolm can give her security, protection, and a life she never imagined—but she refuses to let his money become another cage.

Malcolm has spent his entire life believing that if he can provide enough, protect enough, and control enough, nothing he cares about can ever be taken from him.

Then Tiana walks into his house and refuses to be bought.

Forced under the same roof, their carefully written boundaries begin to blur. Midnight conversations become dangerous. Small acts of kindness become impossible to ignore. And the woman Malcolm was supposed to marry for an inheritance becomes the one person he cannot imagine losing.

But enemies are watching.

Family secrets are surfacing.

And when Tiana discovers that the truth behind their marriage goes deeper than she ever imagined, Malcolm will have to do something far harder than protecting her.

He will have to let her go.

Because if she comes back, it has to be because she chooses him.

A powerful BBW arranged-marriage romance filled with forced proximity, a possessive protective hero, family betrayal, emotional healing, Black love, and a hard-earned happily ever after.