The Mogul's Convenient Wife

Nora Bellamy's bank account holds four hundred and twelve dollars. All three of her credit cards are maxed out. There is an eviction notice on the counter. Her brother Leo is seventeen and has been sick for two years, and the CAR T-cell therapy that could save him costs three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. The insurance review came back denied, citing the pre-existing condition clause. The trials are full. The hospital's charity fund has a waiting list of six months, at least, and Leo does not have six months. He is not asking her for any of that. What Leo wants is the aurora borealis. He keeps dreaming it — *green and purple, like someone spilled glow-in-the-dark paint across the sky* — because the nurses told him to think about things he wanted to see. Then a man in a charcoal suit with a slight hitch in his stride turns up at her door with a folder. Inside it: her own bank statements. Leo's medical records. The insurance denial letter, copied and highlighted. And a single typed page with a figure at the top. Griffin Forrester's grandfather left a will with a clause in it. To inherit the company and take the chair, Griffin must be married by June fourteenth. If he isn't, the position goes to his brother Vance, who has spent three years stacking the trust board with allies and has already filed a motion calling the clause an *unreasonable constraint on personal liberty.* *I need a wife. You need money.* Six months. A legal marriage, strictly confidential. Leo's treatment paid in full, plus a stipend. A quiet divorce at the end of it. Nora tells him to get off her doorstep. He sets the folder inside her door anyway and gives her until six the following evening. What the contract does not cover: a brother-in-law who arrives at the wedding uninvited and stays to be charming, a locked room in a penthouse converted into a north-facing studio with a taboret labelled in her own handwriting, a friend's text that reaches the wrong person, and the moment Vance works out that a sick boy's medical records make usable leverage in a corporate fight. A closed-door marriage-of-convenience billionaire romance about a painter, a brother she will do anything for, an inheritance clause with a deadline, and the distance between a transaction and a promise.