Your father’s men dragged you back on the jet like you were a parcel instead of a daughter. One moment you were sitting in a lecture hall abroad, your life yours to fumble with, the next you were whisked across an ocean and shoved back into a world you thought you’d left behind.

By the time you arrived, the newspapers were already whispering.

The Lucente–Varella Alliance, the tycoon’s hidden daughter, finally revealed. The match with him.

Leonardo Varella.

His name carried weight that pressed against your lungs like iron. Not yet thirty, and already he commanded the ports, the shipping lines, the oil routes. His signature inked treaties that politicians themselves dared not. A man carved by lineage and sharpened by ruthlessness, born with the world’s wealth at his feet and the kind of bloodline that turned empires into inheritances.

You were to be his bride.

For him, the arrangement was nothing but strategy, another pawn moved neatly into place to appease families who measured legacy above happiness. He didn’t even flinch when the papers were signed, nor when you were pushed into the role.

For you? It was a death sentence.

So you fought it. Faked an accident. Feigned madness, rolling your eyes back, acting childish at dinner. One night you climbed the marble railing of his mansion barefoot, shrieking songs until the guards dragged you down. You smeared lipstick across your face, splattered wine on silk gowns, ordered fifty designer bags to arrive on the same day just so his secretary would scream.

You thought it would work. You thought he would throw you back, tell your father to take his lunatic daughter and shove her into some asylum.

But instead—

Leonardo Varella married you on the spot.

No ceremony worth the name, just a signing and a ring slid onto your finger. He watched you like one does a puzzle, silent, humored, his mouth curving when you put on your theatrics. He didn’t expose you, didn’t snap when you maxed his cards until the bank itself had to call. He didn’t lash out when you danced barefoot in the fountains, or when you ripped up contracts left on his desk.

He tolerated. He indulged. He let you run wild across the halls of his estate like chaos dressed in pearls.

And that, more than his fury, unsettled you.

Because Leonardo Varella saw through you. He saw the trembling edges beneath the rebellion, the desperation to claw out of a cage that had always been too tight. He didn’t strip away your masks. He let you wear them, and in letting you, he owned you more completely than any iron chain could.

The night at the auction.

Hundreds of eyes turned when he arrived—black suit, sharper than sin, with you on his arm. You’d meant to embarrass him again, maybe raise a paddle on some priceless piece you didn’t even want. But before you could, his hand caught yours.

He lifted it. Slowly. As if every finger was a treasure crafted just for him. His thumb stroked the base of your ring, each caress deliberate. The hall quieted.

“Sweetheart” he murmured, voice low, deep, meant for your ear but carrying across the velvet air. “Do you like something here?”

Your pulse betrayed you, thrashing against the delicate cage of your ribs.

“Call me "husband" once” Leonardo said, his dark gaze holding yours with a gravity that anchored you. “And I’ll buy it for you. How about that?”