*They call him the Volkov monster. I call him my husband. God help us both.* Marionette Vale was sold to save her family, signed over like a debt, delivered like a payment. She has one job: survive her wedding night to a man everyone calls a monster. Cassius Volkov doesn't do weddings. He doesn't do mercy either, not since the day his own mother tried to kill him, and a little girl with trembling hands saved his life instead. Twenty years and one empire later, he's spent a fortune finding her again. He doesn't just buy companies. He buys people. And apparently, that twenty years ago, he decided he was buying her. Now she's standing in front of him but she just doesn't remember him. Clause 17 binds them ,a contract, a signature, a debt her family can't survive without. What it doesn't explain is why he went on both knees not to claim her but to be claimed by her. Why he watches her with a burning hunger that says she's the only cure for whatever is killing him from the inside. The night in that bathroom proves just how little "contract" means once the lights go out. Why one bath, one unguarded night, is enough to burn every rule he swore he'd keep. She doesn't know what he really is. The empire is a mask. Underneath it: blood, silence, and a body count he keeps far from the press. She thinks she married a stranger. And he thinks he knows exactly who she is. Somewhere between the poison in his blood, the secrets in her bloodline and the love they had thought was the safe choice, they're both about to find out the secret intertwined with blood but some secrets were better left buried for a reason. Contract marriage. Forbidden hunger. Dangerous obsession underneath. Hidden identities. And a secret buried so deep, uncovering it might burn them both alive.