Altar of Deceit

She signed a contract to save her father. She didn't read the fine print.Cecelia Hayes has forty-eight hours to make a decision no woman should have to make. Her father is drowning in debt—debt that appeared out of nowhere, debt that swallowed his business, his home, and his pride in a single, ruthless month. Then Desmond Sterling arrives with an offer: marry him for five years, and the debt disappears.She tells herself she can survive anything with an expiration date.She is wrong.Sterling Manor sits on thirty miles of private land. No neighbors. No cell service. No way out. The moment the front doors close behind her, Desmond confiscates her phone, her ID, and every trace of the woman she used to be. He replaces her clothes. He controls her meals. He schedules her days down to the minute and her silence down to the second.He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to.Because Desmond Sterling doesn't break women with violence. He breaks them with patience—with exquisite food and Chopin nocturnes and a hand on the back of her neck that makes her forget why she wanted to scream. He breaks them by becoming the only source of warmth in a house designed to freeze everything else out.And Cecelia is freezing.Day by day, she feels herself disappearing. Her name. Her voice. Her ability to tell the difference between captivity and devotion. The man who locked her in is the same man who plays piano for her in the lamplight. The man who starved her into obedience is the same man whose touch she craves like oxygen. The cage is silk. The bars are beautiful. And the woman inside them is starting to love the architect who built them.But every cage has a flaw. And every perfect husband has a secret.The one Cecelia finds in his safe will change everything—or prove that everything has already changed beyond repair.