The CEO's Unwanted Bride

Chapter 1 — The first thing Mia Harper noticed when she woke up was the ring. Cold. Heavy. Wrong. She stared at it for a long moment, her mind still fuzzy from the sedative the doctor had given her at the hospital. The room around her was not her room. The ceiling was too high, the sheets too soft, and the silence too expensive. She sat up slowly, her heart already pounding. Where am I? The answer came in the form of a man standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, his back to her, his hands clasped behind him. He wore a perfectly pressed white shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows, and he looked out at the skyline of New York City as if he owned it. He probably did. "You're awake," he said. He didn't turn around. Mia blinked. Her voice came out rough. "Who are you?" Now he turned. And her breath caught — not because he was handsome, though he was, in that cold, carved-from-stone kind of way — but because of the expression on his face. Or rather, the complete absence of one. "Ethan Cole," he said. "Your husband." The word landed like a slap. "My—" She looked down at the ring again. Gold. Simple. Real. "This isn't funny." "No," he agreed, walking toward her with slow, deliberate steps. "It isn't." He stopped at the foot of the bed and set a manila folder on the white duvet. "Your father signed this contract three years ago. A business arrangement between our families. In exchange for clearing his debts, you were promised to me upon your twenty-second birthday." Mia's hands trembled as she reached for the folder. She opened it. Her father's signature stared back at her — shaky, desperate, undeniably real. "He never told me," she whispered. "I know." She looked up. Something flickered in his dark eyes — not sympathy, but something close to recognition. As if he understood what it felt like to be bound by a decision you never made. "So what happens now?" she asked. Ethan Cole straightened. "Now," he said, "you l earn to be my wife."