I slapped the scholarship boy, now he's my billionaire husband.
Anabella Clinton's heart never belonged to her. It belonged to her family.
That's how it always was. If they needed something, she was the one who gave it up. No questions. So when her mom and dad made her go have dinner with Carter Sterling — this rich heir who kept looking at her like she was some dress on a rack with a price tag — she didn't even argue. Just sat there and took it. She smiled when she was supposed to. She obeyed. That's what good daughters did.
And then, after that awful dinner, she went out to the dark garden to breathe.
He was there.
Waiting in the shadows by the roses.
He wasn't like the boys inside at all. He was quiet. The type that barely talks but you can feel his eyes on you the whole time, you know? His hands were not soft. They were rough, worked, calloused. And he was holding a single red rose. One rose. For Anabella
No one had ever done that. Not without wanting something. And for a second, just one second, she felt something real. Something that was hers.
Hailey Miller ruined it.
Hailey found out about the art school application, the one she did behind her mother's back, the one dream she kept hidden in a drawer.
Anabella was so scared. So terrified of losing the only dream she ever had. Her hands were shaking so bad. So she did it — she walked right up to him with everyone watching and hit him across the face, hard. God, she can still hear that slap sometimes at night when she tries to sleep. And then the rose, the one he gave her like it meant something, she just dropped it on the cold ground and put her foot on it. She kept grinding it with her heel, not stopping, while everyone around them took out their phones and filmed the whole thing.
She broke him. The only boy who ever offered her kindness without a price.
Five years go by and everything she knew just collapses.
Her dad is lying in a hospital bed sick. He needs an operation and they don't have the money. Her brother, he owes money to some very dangerous people. The kind of people who don't care if you are sorry. And the person who holds the papers to their house, to everything they own, is not a stranger.
You know who it is.
It's the boy from the garden.
He is not that quiet boy anymore though. Now? He's a billionaire. And not the nice kind. Ruthless. The kind where the whole city knows his name and nobody would ever dare to mess with him.
He tells her he will fix everything for her family. Hospital bills, all of it, he will pay.
But he wants something in return.
Her.
Not money. Her.
For one year she has to be the woman on his arm, his fiancée. And out in public, she has to sell it — like she's madly, completely in love with him, like she can't breathe without him. She has to obey him, absolutely. Smile. Hold his hand. Be the perfect devoted girl for the cameras.
He tells her he does not want her body. That is not what this is about.
He wants her submission. He wants to see her pretend.
But what happens when the pretending doesn't feel like pretending anymore? What happens when his hand on her back feels warm and his fake touches make her breath catch? What happens when she realizes she is not acting at all?
The thing that scares her most at 2am, the thought that won't leave her alone, is this — what if this monster she just gave herself to is actually the only person who ever looked at her and really saw her? The real her underneath?
That night back in the garden, he never forgot it.
He hasn't forgotten the rose she crushed.
And now he is back to collect.