Zoe Mensah had one rule: keep it professional. For three years, she paid Marcus Cole to be her husband — dinners, phone calls, family holidays, a gold ring he wore without complaint. It was a contract. Nothing more. Clean, controlled, and completely private. Then Marcus died. And everything Zoe thought she had neatly contained came apart at the seams. Now she is the emergency contact nobody expected, the guardian of a little girl she never knew existed, and the woman a furious, golden-eyed stranger named Daniel Cole is absolutely convinced is a fraud. He is wrong about almost everything. He is right about one thing — she is hiding something. She just didn't know what it was until Lily asked her a question no seven-year-old should be wise enough to ask. "Did you love my daddy?" Zoe doesn't have an answer. But the longer Daniel stays to find the truth, the more she suspects the real question was never about Marcus at all.