Pride and Penance

Charlotte Ashford has been the perfect wife of Aiden Ashford for nine years, and a stranger to him for eight of them. When his father's will requires five more married years or the estate is forfeit, Aiden asks her to promise she will not leave. She agrees on one condition: total honesty. It detonates the marriage. Aiden confesses a son he never claimed. Charlotte confesses she has been secretly funding that boy for two years. Forced to raise a child neither of them planned for, they build a truce that becomes something neither will name. His mother moves to disinherit the boy and buy Charlotte out. Aiden chooses Bristol and a three-suitcase life over the estate. Charlotte chooses to go with him. A slow-burn billionaire marriage-in-crisis romance about two proud people who keep meeting each other at the wrong end of a promise.