Isla Marchetti thought her pride and self-respect was the one thing money had not taken away from her, but with everything hanging over her like an angry cloud: her father's gambling debts and his loan sharks gearing up to come after her, her mother's hospital bills and the cafe job barely covering her rent, all of it had her drowning, she was about to sell it anyway.Now, the man who just watched a stranger disrespect and slap her across the face is offering her a life changing opportunity that could fix all of it, if only she could agree to become his wife just so he could reverse the effect of the blackmailer’s forged documents.The only thing Sebastian Calloway-Reyes knew he needed was good PR and a headline strong enough to bury a fabrication that was going to destroy him. And since the blackmailer wants his company but his board wants a scandal-proof face for the cameras, he has no other option than to make the move.And Isla — furious, broke, and the only woman in New York who looks at him like his name means nothing — is just the perfect figure convincing enough to buy him time.What neither of them expects is how fast the lie stops feeling like one.Sebastian's mother wants his ex-fiancée back in the family, and she's not subtle about it. Isla's own best friend is quietly working to reclaim the engagement Isla was only ever supposed to borrow. And somewhere behind all of it, a man neither of them has ever met had spent years making sure this exact collision would happen — because the debt crushing Isla's family was never an accident, and the scandal threatening to end Sebastian's career didn't start with him at all.Five million dollars was supposed to buy six months of pretending.Now, it's about to cost them both a great deal more than that.