The eviction notice looked like it had teeth.

Adam Bennett held the paper with both hands, as if gripping it tighter could keep it from biting. THIRTY DAYS TO VACATE sat in bold letters at the top, calm and cruel, the way some threats are. His cramped apartment smelled faintly of laundry detergent and the cheapest instant coffee money could buy. The overhead light flickered like it was also tired of trying.

On the tiny kitchen table: bills in untidy piles. Hospital invoices from the weeks when his wife, Claire, had been alive but fading. Credit card statements he’d stopped opening. A red-stamped letter from Emily’s school: FINAL WARNING. He could still see the red ink even when he blinked.

He hadn’t slept in three days. Not properly. He’d dozed in five-minute bursts sitting upright, waking with his heart pounding like he’d been running in his dreams. Sometimes he’d wake and reach for Claire out of habit, the hand searching empty air before his brain remembered what his body refused to accept: she was gone. Two years gone, and grief still felt less like a wound and more like a second job.

In the next room, Emily slept with her stuffed bear tucked under her chin. Six years old. Soft hair, long eyelashes, the kind of peaceful face that made the world feel briefly forgivable. She didn’t know the word “eviction.” She didn’t know their home was being taken apart with paperwork.

Adam pressed his palms into his eyes until he saw sparks. He’d worked double shifts at Sterling & Co. Marketing. He’d taken weekend freelance gigs designing campaigns for small businesses that couldn’t pay much but promised “exposure.” Exposure, he’d learned, didn’t keep a roof overhead.

A knock came from somewhere in his memory: the hospital hallway, the doctor stepping out, Claire’s chart in his hands like an apology. Adam swallowed hard and returned to the present, to the paper on his table. Thirty days. A deadline that didn’t care about funerals or bedtime stories.

His phone buzzed.

A message, short and sharp as a blade: Come to my office tomorrow morning. 9:00 sharp.

No emoji. No greeting. No signature. It didn’t need one.

Luna Sterling.

Adam stared at the name like it belonged to a different universe. Luna was the CEO. Cold in a way people romanticized when it wasn’t aimed at them. She moved through the company like a precision instrument: clean, efficient, not built for comfort. In three years, Adam had spoken to her directly maybe five times, and each time had felt like being assessed by a scanner.

He typed back with fingers that trembled: I’ll be there.

Then he lay on his couch fully clothed, listening to the refrigerator hum and Emily’s soft breathing in the next room, and waited for morning to arrive like a verdict.

---

The next day, the top floor of Sterling Tower was silent enough that Adam could hear his own pulse. The hallway outside Luna Sterling’s office had the kind of carpet that swallowed footsteps. Glass walls. Sleek lines. Money that didn’t have to announce itself.

Through the glass, Luna sat at her desk, posture perfect, black suit sharp enough to cut. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe knot. She didn’t look up when he approached, and somehow that felt worse than if she had. The woman had a talent for making you feel like you were interrupting even when she’d summoned you.

Adam knocked.

“Come in,” Luna said, clipped and precise.

He stepped inside. The office smelled faintly of something expensive, not perfume exactly, more like polished wood and controlled air. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the city like it was her private backdrop. There were no photos. No personal clutter. No evidence that Luna Sterling had ever been a child, or loved anyone, or laughed too hard at a joke and snorted.

Luna gestured to the chair opposite her. “Sit.”

Adam sat.

Luna set down the pen she’d been holding. Her eyes lifted to his. Sharp, unreadable. The kind of gaze that made people straighten their posture without realizing they’d slouched.

“I know everything about you, Adam,” she said.

His stomach dropped. “I’m sorry?”

Luna slid a folder across the desk.

Adam opened it, and the world tilted. Copies of his bills. Bank statements. The eviction notice. Medical records from Claire’s hospital stay. Even a report on Emily’s tuition payments.

His throat went dry. “How did you—”

“I had you investigated,” Luna said, as if discussing the weather. “Before you get offended, understand that I don’t enjoy surprises.”

Adam’s hands tightened around the folder. His face warmed with humiliation, the feeling of being stripped down in a room full of glass.

“Why?” he managed.

Luna leaned back, studying him as if he were a chart that had to make sense. “Because I need something from you, and you need something from me.”

Adam couldn’t decide whether to laugh or throw up. “What could you possibly need from me?”

Luna’s expression didn’t shift. “A husband.”

The word landed with a strange heaviness, like it had weight. Adam stared at her, convinced he’d misheard.

Luna continued. “I’m thirty-two. I built this company from the ground up. I’m worth more than most people will see in ten lifetimes. But my parents have given me an ultimatum.”

Adam’s brain tried to keep up. “Ultimatum?”

“If I don’t get married within six months,” she said, “they revoke my inheritance and transfer control of the family empire to my brother.”

The air in the room felt too thin.

“You’re telling me this because…” Adam began, but his sentence ran out.

Luna opened a drawer and pulled out a contract. Thick. Bound in leather. The kind of document you expected to come with a villain’s laugh.

She placed it in front of him.

“I need a husband for one year,” Luna said. “You need financial stability. This is a transaction, nothing more.”

Adam stared at the contract. The words blurred like his eyes didn’t want to cooperate.

Luna’s voice was calm, ruthless in its clarity. “You move into my penthouse. We live together. We attend public events as a married couple. You follow my instructions on how to behave in social settings.”

Adam’s lips parted, but nothing came out.

“In exchange,” Luna said, “I will pay off every cent of your debt. Medical bills. Rent. School tuition. Everything.”

His chest tightened. The numbers in his head started screaming, the amount he owed like a chorus of ghosts.

“And after a year,” Luna added, quieter, “we divorce. You walk away with two hundred thousand dollars and a clean slate.”

Adam heard his own voice as if someone else spoke it. “And my daughter?”

“You can place her with a trusted relative during this time,” Luna said. “I’ll cover all her expenses.”

Adam’s hands shook. Anger, fear, humiliation, hope, all elbowing each other inside his ribs. “You want me to sell myself.”

Luna’s gaze didn’t waver. “I want you to make a smart decision. You’re out of options, Adam.”

He flinched, because it was true, and hearing it out loud felt like being slapped with honesty.

“In thirty days,” Luna continued, “you’ll be homeless. Your daughter will end up in a situation neither of you can recover from. This is your way out.”

Adam swallowed hard. “Why me?”

Luna tilted her head slightly, like she’d anticipated the question and already filed it under “inevitable.”

“Because you’re not a threat,” she said. “You’re not from my world. No one will suspect this is anything other than what I tell them. You’re ordinary. Forgettable. Perfect.”

The words stung. Ordinary. Forgettable. Like he could be erased without leaving residue.

Luna stood and walked to the window, her back to him. The city glittered below, indifferent and beautiful. “I don’t believe in love, Adam. I believe in control. This arrangement gives me what I need. If it gives you what you need, then we both win.”

Adam stared at the contract. Clauses, conditions, legal language that might as well have been written in another alphabet. But the meaning was simple enough: dignity traded for survival.

“What if I say no?” he asked.

Luna turned, and for the first time he saw something like curiosity flicker across her face. Then it vanished.

“Then you leave,” she said. “And we never speak of this again.”

She sat back down, picked up her pen, and looked at her screen like he’d already walked out.

Adam stood on unsteady legs. He carried the folder to the door as if it were a weight he’d been sentenced to hold. His hand closed on the handle.

“One more thing,” Luna said behind him.

He turned.

“If you sign,” she said, voice low and precise, “you follow my rules. All of them. No exceptions. No emotions. No complications. Do you understand?”

Adam nodded because his throat had stopped working.

He left the office without looking back.

---

That night, Adam sat on the floor beside Emily’s bed, watching her sleep like she was a candle he had to keep lit. Her room was small. Toys lined up on a shelf with the careful order of a child trying to make sense of chaos. A half-finished drawing lay on her desk: a stick figure family holding hands. In it, Claire’s figure had a halo, because Emily had decided heaven needed a visual cue.

Adam’s chest ached. He thought about the eviction notice. He thought about the debt collectors who called so often he’d started recognizing their voices. He thought about Emily’s birthday last year when she’d pretended not to care about the cheap cupcake he’d bought at a gas station because a full cake was too expensive.

He thought about Luna Sterling’s eyes. Cold, yes. But beneath the cold, something else: a kind of loneliness that had been sharpened into a weapon.

He didn’t want to sell his life.

But he wanted Emily to have one.

By morning, the choice wasn’t a choice anymore.

Adam walked into Luna’s office, silent. He sat, picked up the pen, and signed his name.

Luna watched without reaction. When he finished, she took the contract, slid it into a drawer, and locked it.

“Pack your things,” she said. “You move in tonight.”

Then she handed him a sleek black credit card. It looked like it belonged in a spy movie.

“Use this for anything you need,” Luna said. “Clothes. Transportation. Whatever. You’ll need to look the part.”

Adam took the card. It felt heavy, like a new kind of gravity.

As he stood to leave, Luna spoke again, almost softly.

“Welcome to your new life, Adam.”

He walked out knowing the old one had already begun to dissolve.

---

The penthouse was not warm.

Not cold in temperature, but cold in spirit. Everything was white, gray, black. Sharp edges. Clean surfaces. No photographs. No clutter. It looked like a showroom someone forgot to put people in.

Luna stood by the windows, arms crossed, watching the city like it was an equation. She didn’t turn when Adam entered with a single suitcase.

“Your room is down the hall,” she said. “Second door on the left. Don’t touch anything in my office. Don’t go into my bedroom. And don’t expect me to be here often. I work late.”

Adam nodded.

He carried his suitcase to the room. It was larger than his entire apartment. The bed looked like it had never been slept in. The bathroom had marble counters, a rain shower, towels folded with military precision.

He sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall until his thoughts stopped making noise.

Emily was gone.

He’d driven her two hours away to his cousin’s house that morning. She’d cried quietly, trying to be brave, asking the kinds of questions that sounded small but were actually enormous.

“Are we still a family?”

“Yes,” Adam had said, because truth was complicated and children deserved simplicity.

“When will you come back?”

“Soon,” he’d promised, because sometimes love sounded like lying.

Now he was alone in a stranger’s palace, pretending to be a husband to a woman who didn’t believe in love.

The first week was awkward in the way silence can become a third person in a room. Luna left before sunrise. She came home after midnight. They barely spoke. Adam went to work and pretended he hadn’t moved into the CEO’s penthouse overnight. In the evenings, he wandered the sterile rooms like a polite ghost.

He called Emily every night. His cousin said she was adjusting. “She misses you,” she’d add gently, like that was the most obvious sentence in the world.

On the eighth day, Luna came home at ten, earlier than usual.

Adam was in the kitchen making a sandwich. Bread. Cheese. Turkey. The food of men who didn’t have time for anything else.

Luna walked in looking exhausted, suit jacket draped over her arm. Her hair was slightly disheveled, as if the day had tried to defeat her and only partially succeeded. She set her briefcase down and glanced at him.

“You cook?” she asked.

Adam shrugged. “Not really. Just sandwiches.”

Luna opened the refrigerator, stared into it like it was an unfamiliar language, then pulled out water. She didn’t drink it. She just stood there holding the bottle.

“There’s soup in the cabinet,” Adam offered. “If you’re hungry.”

Luna’s eyes flicked to him. “I didn’t ask you to cook for me.”

“I know,” Adam said, quieter. “But you look like you haven’t eaten all day.”

For a moment, she looked… lost. Not weak, not dramatic. Just like a person who had forgotten how basic needs worked.

Adam took a can of soup, heated it, and set the bowl on the table.

“Sit,” he said.

Luna blinked at the word as if she wasn’t used to receiving instructions that weren’t corporate. Then, without argument, she sat and ate in silence.

Adam sat across from her. He didn’t fill the air with chatter. He just let her eat, because sometimes help was best served without commentary.

When she finished, Luna set the spoon down carefully.

“Thank you,” she said.

It was only two words, but they sounded like a door unlocking.

---

Two weeks later, Luna called him into the living room and handed him a tablet.

“We have our first public event this weekend,” she said. “A charity gala.”

Adam’s stomach tightened. “What do I need to do?”

Luna pointed to the screen. A list of instructions: how to dress, how to stand, what to say, what not to say. Where to place his hand on her back. When to laugh. How long to hold eye contact.

“Memorize it,” Luna said. “You’ll be playing the role of my loving husband. That means you hold my hand, you smile, you laugh at my jokes even if they’re not funny. You make people believe we’re in love.”

Adam stared at the list like it was an exam he never wanted to take. “Can you do that?” Luna asked.

He met her eyes. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“No,” Luna said. “You don’t.”

The gala was held in a hotel ballroom that glittered like a jewelry box. Chandeliers. Champagne. Dresses that could pay off Adam’s student loans twice over. He felt like a man who had wandered into a movie set.

Luna looked perfect. Dark blue gown, elegant and sharp. She looped her arm through his and moved through the room with practiced grace, smiling at donors and shaking hands with politicians and CEOs.

Adam did what he’d memorized. He smiled. He nodded. He laughed on cue. He held Luna’s hand and tried not to think about how warm it was.

Whispers followed them like perfume.

Who is he?

Where did she find him?

Why would Luna Sterling marry someone like that?

Then a man approached them, tall and broad-shouldered, with the same sharp features as Luna but none of her restraint.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Luna,” he said smoothly. “Introduce me to your husband.”

Luna’s fingers tightened around Adam’s arm, just slightly.

“Derek,” she said. “This is Adam. Adam, this is my brother.”

Derek extended his hand. Adam shook it. Derek’s grip was firm, almost aggressive, as if he were testing how much pressure Adam could take before he cracked.

“So,” Derek said lightly, “you’re the one. I was surprised when I heard the news. Luna’s never been the romantic type.”

Adam forced a smile that felt like it might shatter. “People change.”

Derek’s eyes narrowed. “Do they?”

Luna’s voice cut in, calm and hard. “We should get back to the guests. Excuse us, Derek.”

She pulled Adam away, her posture still perfect but her jaw tight.

When they were far enough, Adam murmured, “He doesn’t believe us.”

Luna’s gaze stayed forward. “He doesn’t need to. He just needs to stay out of our way.”

But Adam had seen it in her eyes. Derek wasn’t just skeptical. He was hungry. And hunger like that didn’t stop until it was fed.

That night, back at the penthouse, Luna stood on the balcony in her gown, arms wrapped around herself. The city lights stretched below like scattered stars.

Adam stepped out beside her. “You okay?”

Luna didn’t turn. “Derek’s going to dig. He’ll try to prove this isn’t real.”

“What happens if he does?” Adam asked.

Luna’s voice went quiet. “Then I lose everything.”

For the first time, Adam saw fear in her. Not the performative kind. The real kind that lived behind ribs.

He didn’t know what to say, so he said the only honest thing he could.

“I’m here.”

Luna swallowed, and though she didn’t look at him, her shoulders loosened like she’d been holding herself too tightly.

After a long silence, she asked, “Why did you really sign the contract?”

Adam laughed once, without humor. “You know why.”

“I know the paperwork,” Luna said. “I’m asking about you.”

Adam looked out at the city. “Because I was scared,” he admitted. “Scared of failing my daughter. Scared of losing the only thing I had left.”

Luna’s voice was barely audible. “I signed because I was scared too. Scared of being alone. Scared of proving my family right, that I’m nothing without them.”

They stood side by side, two strangers bound by fear, pretending to be something they weren’t.

And maybe that was the beginning of something else: not love yet, but understanding, the small bridge that love sometimes walked across.

---

Over the next few weeks, the penthouse changed in ways Adam couldn’t explain with interior design. Luna started coming home earlier. Not always. But sometimes. And when she did, she’d drift into the kitchen like she didn’t realize she was doing it.

Adam cooked. Pasta. Stir-fry. Chili. Food that felt like warmth you could swallow.

One night, Luna ate every bite of a simple bowl of pasta, then looked at him and smiled. Not the practiced gala smile. A real one, small and startled, as if it had escaped her face without permission.

“This is good,” she said.

“It’s just pasta,” Adam replied.

“No,” Luna said softly. “It’s more than that.”

She didn’t explain. She didn’t need to. Adam understood: it wasn’t about the food. It was about someone noticing she was human.

A few days later, Adam got a call from his cousin. “Emily’s doing okay,” she said, “but she misses you. She keeps asking when she can come home.”

Adam’s chest tightened. He told Luna that night.

Luna listened, surprisingly still. When he finished, she went into her office without a word.

A few minutes later she returned holding her phone.

“I’ll arrange for you to see her this weekend,” Luna said. “A car will take you.”

Adam blinked. “You don’t have to.”

“I do,” Luna replied, firm. “You shouldn’t be separated from your daughter.”

That weekend, Adam drove two hours and held Emily so tightly she squealed. She asked him a hundred questions, and he answered with gentle half-truths because the whole truth was too sharp for six years old.

When he returned to the penthouse, Luna was waiting. She didn’t ask how it went. She just handed him a cup of coffee and sat beside him on the couch like she was learning how to do comfort by copying someone else.

“Thank you,” Adam said.

Luna nodded once. Then, after a pause that felt like she was negotiating with herself, she said, “You’re a good father.”

The words hit Adam harder than any insult ever had.

Because they were the kind of words he needed and never allowed himself to ask for.

---

But Derek was still circling.

At a family dinner, he cornered Adam in a hallway lined with portraits that looked down like judges.

“You think you’re clever?” Derek murmured, voice low and venomous. “You think you can waltz into this family and take what’s mine?”

Adam kept his voice steady. “I’m not taking anything. I’m just here.”

Derek leaned closer. “You’re a nobody, Adam. A poor, desperate nobody. And when this falls apart, and it will, you’ll go back to being exactly what you are. Nothing.”

The words stung because part of Adam believed them. Old shame had a way of recognizing its own language.

Then one evening, Adam came home and found Luna on the couch, laptop open, face pale.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.

Luna turned the screen toward him. An email from Derek. Attached: Adam’s financial history. Debts. Eviction notice. Everything.

“He’s going to use this,” Luna said. “He’ll show it to the board. To my parents. He’ll prove this is fake.”

Adam’s stomach dropped. “What do we do?”

Luna closed the laptop. Her hands were steady, but her eyes weren’t.

“We can’t let him win,” she said.

Two days later, Luna’s mother invited them to dinner at the family estate.

“It’s a trap,” Adam said quietly as they rode in the car.

“Yes,” Luna agreed. “But we can’t refuse.”

The estate was a mansion that felt like it had been built to intimidate weather itself. Cold stone. High ceilings. Silence that smelled like old money.

Derek was already there, sitting at the head of the table with a smug smile as if he’d been waiting for his favorite show to start.

Dinner was tense. Derek asked questions that sounded innocent but weren’t.

“So, Adam,” he said, swirling his wine, “how exactly did you and Luna meet?”

Adam glanced at Luna’s face. She smiled politely, but her eyes were warning him: stick to the script.

“We met through work,” Adam said smoothly. “She needed help on a project. It turned into more.”

Derek’s smile widened like a crack. “How romantic.”

Luna’s father watched without expression. Her mother watched everything, the way a person watches a chessboard, not a dinner table.

After dessert, Luna’s mother suggested a walk through the garden. Luna and Adam followed her outside, leaving Derek behind.

When they returned, Luna went upstairs to her childhood bedroom to retrieve something. Adam followed.

The room was pristine, untouched, like a museum curated for nostalgia that never got visited. Luna opened drawers, searching.

Adam’s eyes caught on something in the corner of the bookshelf: a tiny black dot, almost invisible.

A camera.

His blood went cold. “Luna,” he whispered.

She turned. He pointed.

Her eyes widened. “Derek.”

If Derek was watching, if he recorded them acting like strangers, like business partners, the lie would collapse.

Adam didn’t think.

He crossed the room, wrapped an arm around Luna’s waist, and pulled her close. Then he kissed her.

For a split second, Luna froze.

Then she kissed him back.

Not a staged kiss. Not a gala smile. Something real that made Adam’s entire body feel awake.

He broke away just long enough to reach for the lamp and switch off the light, plunging the room into darkness.

The camera would see nothing now.

They stood in the dark, breathing hard, the space between them charged and terrified.

“Adam,” Luna whispered, his name like a warning.

“I know,” he whispered back.

Because somewhere along the way, the arrangement had changed shape. The contract had been ink, but what was happening now was blood and breath and fear.

That night back at the penthouse, they didn’t speak about the kiss.

Luna retreated to her room. Adam to his.

He lay awake staring at the ceiling, the memory of her mouth on his like a bruise he didn’t want to heal.

He was in love with her.

The realization hit him like a punch. Not gentle, not gradual. Immediate and inconvenient and terrifying.

He was in love with a woman who’d hired him to play a role. A woman who claimed she didn’t believe in love.

And he didn’t know what to do with that.

---

The next morning, Luna moved like her body had forgotten how.

She made coffee with mechanical precision. She avoided Adam’s eyes.

“We need to talk about last night,” Adam said carefully.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Luna replied too quickly. “We did what we had to do. That’s all.”

But her voice wavered on the last word, and Adam heard the crack.

He stepped closer. “Luna, I—”

“Don’t,” she said, lifting a hand. Her eyes were pleading, vulnerable in a way he’d never seen. “Please.”

Adam stopped, because he understood: if she let him say it, she might not be able to deny it. And denial was the armor she’d worn all her life.

A week later, Derek made his move.

An emergency board meeting was called.

Luna read the notification late at night. Her hands shook.

“He’s going to do it,” she said. “He’s going to show them the contract.”

Adam sat beside her. “Then we tell them the truth.”

Luna laughed softly, bitter. “What truth? That we started as a lie?”

Adam took her hand. “That we started as a lie,” he agreed. “But it’s not a lie anymore.”

Luna pulled her hand away. “You don’t understand. If I lose this, I lose everything.”

Adam stood. “Then we fight together.”

Before Luna could answer, her phone rang. Derek’s name lit the screen like a threat.

Luna answered, voice cold. “What do you want?”

Derek’s voice was smug. “See you at the meeting, little sister. Bring your husband. This should be fun.”

The line went dead.

Luna looked at Adam, fear and determination warring in her eyes. “This is it.”

Adam nodded. “Then let’s end this.”

---

The boardroom was sterile and bright, the kind of room designed to make emotion look foolish.

Men and women in expensive suits sat around the table, eyes sharp with curiosity and judgment. Adam felt like an insect under a microscope.

Luna sat beside him, face carefully blank. But Adam could feel tension radiating from her like heat.

Derek stood at the head of the table with a stack of documents, looking like a man who’d already picked out the victory speech.

Luna’s father sat at the far end, expression unreadable. Her mother sat beside him, hands folded, calm as a storm that hadn’t decided whether to strike.

Derek began without preamble.

“I’ve called this meeting because I have evidence that my sister has been deceiving this family and this company.”

He slid documents across the table. Board members flipped through pages, murmurs rising like a tide.

Adam saw copies of the contract. His debt. The eviction notice. Every private humiliation turned into public ammunition.

Luna’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t speak.

Derek continued, voice dripping false sympathy. “Luna hired Adam Bennett to pose as her husband. A contract marriage. A transaction. She’s been lying to secure her inheritance.”

He turned to Luna, smile sharp. “Do you deny it?”

Luna stood slowly. Her voice was steady, but Adam heard strain beneath it. “No. I don’t deny it.”

The room erupted. Voices overlapped, shocked and angry.

Derek’s smile widened.

But Luna raised her hand, and the room fell silent, because even in chaos, Luna Sterling could command attention.

“We did start with a contract,” Luna said. “Adam needed help. I needed a solution. It was a business arrangement.”

Derek leaned forward. “So you admit you lied. You manipulated this family.”

Luna’s eyes turned cold. “I admit I made a choice. A choice to protect what I built. A choice to survive in a family that values power over people.”

She turned to the board. “Judge me if you want. But don’t pretend this company cares about romance. It cares about results. And I’ve delivered them. Forty percent growth in three years. Contracts no one else could secure. I earned my place here.”

Derek slammed his hand on the table. “This isn’t about results. It’s about integrity.”

Adam stood.

He didn’t plan to. His body simply decided it was done being silent.

“She didn’t lie,” Adam said.

Every head turned.

Derek’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, spare us.”

Adam’s voice steadied as he spoke. “She told you the truth. We started with a contract.” He turned to the board. “I signed it because I was desperate. Broke. About to lose my home. My daughter. I didn’t know her. I didn’t care about her. I just wanted to survive.”

He looked at Luna then, really looked at her, and saw her holding herself together with sheer will.

“But then I lived with her,” Adam continued. “And I saw who she is when no one is watching. Not the CEO. Not the ice queen. A woman who works until she’s exhausted because she cares about what she built. A woman who has spent her whole life proving she’s good enough. A woman who is terrified of being alone.”

Luna’s breath hitched. Tears filled her eyes, but she didn’t interrupt.

Adam’s voice softened. “Somewhere along the way, it stopped being an arrangement. I stopped pretending. And I think she did too.”

He turned fully to Luna, the room disappearing behind his heartbeat.

“I love you,” he said.

Silence crashed into the boardroom like a wave.

“I don’t care about the contract,” Adam added. “I don’t care about the money. I love you because you’re the strongest, most stubborn, most brilliant person I’ve ever met. And if that makes me a fool, then I’m a fool.”

Luna stared at him, tears spilling. Her mouth opened, but no words came.

Derek scoffed, breaking the spell. “This is pathetic. You expect us to believe that a broke desperate man fell in love with one of the richest women in the country? It’s just another lie.”

Before anyone could respond, the boardroom doors opened.

Luna’s mother walked in.

She crossed to the center of the room, calm and commanding. The kind of presence that made even Derek hesitate.

“That’s enough, Derek,” she said.

Derek frowned. “Mother—”

“I said enough.”

She turned to the board. “I’ve been listening.” Her eyes swept the room. “And it’s time I clarify a few things.”

Luna’s father leaned back, unreadable.

Luna’s mother continued. “I knew about the contract from the beginning.”

The room erupted again.

Derek’s face went pale. “You what?”

Luna’s mother didn’t flinch. “Luna came to me before she made the arrangement. She told me everything. I approved it.”

Luna’s eyes went wide. “You knew?”

Her mother nodded. “I did.”

Then she looked at Luna with something like regret. “You spent your whole life thinking strength means shutting people out. That love is weakness. That you have to do everything alone.” She inhaled slowly. “I wanted you to learn you were wrong.”

She looked at Adam. “And I wanted to see if someone could love you for you, not your power.”

Luna’s throat worked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you needed to figure it out yourself,” her mother said gently.

Then she turned to Derek. Her voice cooled into steel. “As for you, you’ve spent years trying to undermine your sister. You think this company should be yours because you’re the oldest, because you’re a man.”

Derek’s face flushed. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s true,” her mother said. “And it ends today.”

She faced the board. “As of this moment, Derek is removed from the board. His voting shares are transferred to Luna. He will have no further involvement.”

Derek stood so fast his chair scraped. “You can’t do this!”

Luna’s father finally spoke, calm and final. “She can. And I support her.”

Derek looked around for allies. No one met his eyes.

He grabbed his briefcase and stormed out, the door slamming behind him like a tantrum.

Silence settled again.

Luna’s mother stepped closer to her daughter. “Luna, you don’t need my approval anymore.” Her gaze softened. “But you do need to stop being afraid of letting people in.”

She glanced at Adam. “This man loves you. And unless I’m very much mistaken, you love him too.”

Luna looked at Adam, walls crumbling in real time, mask shattered. No CEO now. No contract wife. Just a woman standing in front of a man, terrified and real.

“I do,” Luna whispered. “I love him.”

Adam crossed the room in three steps and pulled her into his arms. Luna buried her face in his chest, shoulders shaking, like she’d been holding her breath for years and only now remembered how to exhale.

One by one, the board members stood and quietly filed out, as if they’d accidentally stumbled into something sacred.

Luna’s parents were the last to leave.

Her mother squeezed Luna’s shoulder as she passed. “Be brave,” she murmured.

Then the door closed.

It was just them.

Luna pulled back, wiping tears with the heel of her hand, embarrassed by the evidence of emotion.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I could control this. Keep it separate. But I couldn’t.”

Adam cupped her face gently. “You don’t have to be scared anymore.”

Luna let out a breath that sounded like a laugh trying to be born. “I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to be soft.”

Adam smiled, small and steady. “Then we’ll figure it out together.”

He kissed her, and this time there was no camera, no audience, no reason to pretend.

Only the truth.

---

Six months later, Adam stood in the penthouse kitchen flipping pancakes. Emily sat at the counter swinging her legs, chattering about a science project and a new friend at school.

She’d moved back home after Luna and Adam’s quiet wedding, settling into the life like she’d been waiting for it, like kids often do when love finally stops being fragile.

Luna walked in wearing one of Adam’s old T-shirts, hair in a messy bun, eyes soft in the morning light. She kissed Emily’s forehead, then wrapped her arms around Adam from behind.

“You’re going to burn those,” she murmured.

“I’ve got it under control,” Adam laughed.

Emily grinned. “Are you guys going to be all lovey-dovey again?”

Luna ruffled her hair. “Probably.”

Emily scrunched her face like she was disgusted, but she was smiling too, because children can spot safety like a bloodhound.

Later, they had a small ceremony redo, just family and close friends. No press. No performance. Luna wore a simple dress. Adam wore a suit that actually fit. When the officiant asked if they took each other, they both said yes without hesitation.

This time, it was real.

Two years later, Luna stood in a nursery holding their newborn son, Daniel, while Adam wrapped his arms around them both. Emily peeked in like the world’s most serious older sister.

“Can I hold him?” she asked.

Luna nodded, and Emily climbed onto the chair carefully, cradling Daniel with practiced tenderness.

Adam watched and felt something settle inside him: the quiet miracle of a life repaired.

Five years later, on a quiet evening, Daniel looked up from a pile of blocks and asked, “Mom, how did you and Dad meet?”

Luna and Adam exchanged a glance.

Luna smiled. “We met because of a contract.”

Daniel frowned. “A contract? Like work?”

Adam nodded. “Sort of. Your mom needed a husband. I needed help. So we made a deal.”

Emily, now eleven, looked up from her book and rolled her eyes. “This story again.”

Daniel’s eyes widened. “So you guys didn’t love each other at first?”

Luna shook her head. “No. We didn’t.”

Daniel thought hard. “Then how did you fall in love?”

Adam took Luna’s hand. “We fell in love,” he said, “because we stopped pretending. We stopped trying to be what we thought we should be… and we let ourselves be real.”

Luna squeezed his hand. “And because sometimes the best things begin in the worst moments.”

Daniel nodded like this was important information for future block-building strategy. Then he went back to his tower.

Emily smirked. “Still weird.”

Luna laughed, and the sound filled the room, warm and unafraid. “Maybe. But it’s ours.”

Outside, the city lights glittered. Inside, the family sat together, safe and real.

Because the best love stories don’t start perfectly.

They start with two broken people choosing, every single day, to become whole.

THE END