Ivy Calloway inherits three things when her father dies: a shipping company already sinking, a house she can barely afford to keep, and a debt to a man named Salvatore Moretti that was never supposed to become hers. The Morettis do not forgive debts. They collect them. So when Salvatore's son Dante shows up at the funeral in a suit that costs more than her father's casket and tells her there is only one way to settle what is owed, Ivy already knows what he means before he finishes the sentence. Marry him, or watch her mother lose everything her father spent his life building. Dante Moretti does not want a wife. He wants collateral he can control, a name on a marriage certificate that keeps the family's business quiet and his own father off his back. He expects her to be grateful, or at least obedient. He does not expect her to fight him on everything from the wedding dress to the house rules. He does not expect to start listening for her footsteps in a house he built specifically so he would never have to listen for anyone again. Ivy did not choose this marriage. But she refuses to be owned by it, and the longer Dante watches her refuse, the more he realizes ownership was never what he wanted from her to begin with.