One night, I was a girl seeking vengeance in a velvet mask. He was the stranger who took me against a cold stone wall, his touch a silent, lethal promise. Now, he is Caspian Blackwood—the most feared architecture professor at Aethelgard. When my "perfect" boyfriend, Dominic Calloway, cheats on me and sabotages my degree, Caspian offers a lifeline with a razor-thin edge: Be his silent, nude model for thirty days. The rules are absolute. I must wear a silk mask and a weighted collar. I must never speak. I must hold the poses he demands until my muscles scream for mercy. In the lecture hall, he ignores me with arctic indifference. In the studio, his gaze is a physical weight, stripping me faster than his hands ever could. But as the charcoal scratches against the paper, I realize the "deal" isn't just for art. It’s for the soul I accidentally gave him in the dark. Will the deal destroy his career, or consume me first?

Three years ago, Roman Reed was the boy I would have died for. Then he broke my heart and disappeared, leaving me to piece my life back together while I climbed to Hollywood stardom. Now I am the nation's rising star, and my mother has finally found her happy ending with a tech billionaire. But when I walk into our new Malibu estate, the man standing there is not a stranger. It is Roman. My ex-lover. My new stepbrother. At Northcrest, he is the Blacklisted King. Cold, ruthless, and feared. He hates my fame, he hates my face, and he tells me to stay out of his sight. But under the same roof, the air between us changes. He watches me from the shadows. He judges my red-carpet gowns with a dark possessiveness that feels like a threat. He warns me, "Do not start something you cannot finish, Scarlett." The paparazzi wait for me to slip. My parents watch our every move. As the hate begins to melt back into the fire that once burned us, the biggest scandal is not my past. It is the man I am living with.

Anna Miller has spent her life as a "spare," a secret kept in the shadow of her twin sister, Maria. When Maria vanishes on the day she is to marry into the powerful Brandon family to settle a debt, Anna is forced into the gown. Veiled and silent, she is meant to be a temporary fix. But James Brandon isn't the man her family thinks he is. A private investigator with a dark past, James believes the woman he is marrying is the savior who pulled him from a wreckage years ago—and the woman who holds the key to the crime that destroyed his life. He uses his power to force her into a marriage she never chose, intending to use her as a pawn in his revenge. But as the veil is lifted, the "mistake" begins to unravel a truth neither of them expected. In a marriage built on a lie, James might just be the only man truly worth her vow.