My younger sister had gone after seven men I dated, and my parents kept saying, “Family is forever.” When I found her cornering Mark beside Dad’s old Mustang at Mom’s birthday party, I finally stopped asking her to change. Instead, I made an appointment with the attorney who had represented her ex-husband. Weeks later, I walked into Sunday dinner holding that attorney’s hand, and Britney had no idea who my new boyfriend really was...

The offices of Whitmore & Vance occupied the forty-second floor of a polished steel-and-glass tower overlooking the Chicago River. The lobby smelled of expensive leather, polished Italian marble, and the discreet, chilling silence that only truly astronomical hourly rates can purchase.

I sat in a high-backed armchair upholstered in midnight-blue velvet, clutching my leather portfolio to my chest like a shield. My charcoal pencil skirt and silk blouse were professional, but compared to the immaculate paralegals gliding across the carpet with three-inch heels and whisper-quiet tablets, I felt like an imposter.

"Ms. Linwood?"

A receptionist with pristine porcelain skin and a silver headset smiled politely from behind a floating reception desk.

"Mr. Whitmore will see you now. Corner conference room, on your left."

I stood up, smoothed down the front of my skirt, and forced my spine to remain rigid. Every instinct honed over twenty-eight years of being the "peacekeeper" urged me to turn around, take the elevator back down to street level, and accept my role as the family doormat. But then the image of Britney's hand on Mark's chest flashed behind my eyelids—the sly, sideways glance she had given me before she turned on the waterworks.

I walked down the hallway and pushed open the heavy frosted-glass door.

The conference room offered a panoramic view of the lake, where dark, choppy waves met a pale spring sky. Standing by the window, a cup of espresso in one hand, was James Whitmore.

In person, he was taller than he appeared on his firm’s website—at least six-foot-two—with broad shoulders that tapered neatly into the tailored cut of his navy trousers and pale blue shirt, the cuffs rolled twice up his forearms to reveal a glimpse of a steel chronograph watch. He turned as I entered, his slate-gray eyes sweeping over me with the swift, analytical precision of a scanner reading a barcode.

"Ms. Linwood. Maya," he said. His voice was a rich, controlled baritone, completely lacking the nervous cadence of men like Mark. He set his cup on a coaster and extended his hand. "Please, sit."

His grip was firm, warm, and brief. He didn't offer a polite, empty smile. He simply sat down across from me at the massive walnut table and opened an empty leather notebook.

"When my assistant told me Eleanor Linwood’s daughter had requested a private consultation, I assumed Trevor Morrison’s divorce had sprouted some unexpected legal weeds," James began, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Then I checked the record. You aren't Eleanor, and you didn't support your sister during the proceedings. In fact, Trevor mentioned you were the only person in that family who sent him a text message wishing him well after the decree absolute."

"Trevor told you that?" I asked, slightly surprised.

"Trevor was my client. I make it my business to know everything about the environment surrounding my clients," James said calmly. "So, Maya. You’re not here for estate planning. And you don't strike me as someone who wants to sue her sister for tortious interference with contractual relations. Why are you in my office?"

I took a deep breath. The air tasted of filtered alpine mint and dry parchment.

"I need to hire you," I said clearly.

"I'm an attorney. What is the cause of action?"

"Fraud," I said. "Emotional fraud. Psychological vandalism. A decade of systemic theft."

James raised one dark, arched eyebrow. A faint, razor-thin smirk touched the corner of his mouth. "None of those are recognized causes of action in the state of Illinois, Ms. Linwood. If you want therapy, I can recommend a very capable clinician on Michigan Avenue."

"I don't want therapy, Mr. Whitmore. I want an actor."

The silence in the room stretched until the faint hum of the building's ventilation system became audible. James didn't blink. He just studied me, his gray eyes narrowing slightly as he tried to solve the puzzle sitting in front of him.

"Explain," he commanded softly.

I laid it out. I didn't cry. I didn't raise my voice. For twenty minutes, I gave him an objective, chronological summary of the last nine years. I told him about Connor in my dorm room. I told him about Daniel, Josh, and Ryan. I told him about my parents’ endless refrain—*family is forever, turn the other cheek, she's fragile*. I told him about Mark in the garage beside Dad’s Mustang just forty-eight hours ago, and how my mother had demanded I apologize to Britney for interrupting her seduction.

As I spoke, James didn't take notes. He leaned back in his chair, his long fingers steepled under his chin, his gaze locked onto mine with an intensity that felt almost physical.

"And where do I fit into this miserable domestic melodrama?" he asked when I finally stopped talking.

"Britney has never seen you in the wild," I said. "During the divorce, she only saw you from across a courtroom while she was busy playing the weeping victim for the judge. You had your reading glasses on, you were fifty feet away, and her own attorney kept her sheltered behind a stack of binders. She knows the name 'James Whitmore,' but to her, you're an abstract monster who took away her alimony. She doesn't know what you look like in jeans. She doesn't know your voice when you're laughing."

James let out a short, quiet exhale that was half a laugh and half an expression of disbelief. "You want me to pretend to date you."

"I want you to be my boyfriend for thirty days," I said, my voice hardening. "I want you to come to my family's Sunday dinner. I want you to sit at my parents' dining table. I want Britney to see a man who is successful, handsome, cultured, and utterly devoted to me."

"And then?" James asked, his eyes gleaming with dangerous curiosity.

"And then she will do what she has done seven times before," I whispered. "She won't be able to help herself. It’s a pathology, Mr. Whitmore. She doesn't want the man. She wants to take him from *me*. She will slip her phone number into your coat pocket. She will brush against your arm in the kitchen. She will send you late-night messages about how 'misunderstood' she is. And when she tries to pull you into the shadows of my parents' house, I want you to let her trap herself."

"And why would I, a senior partner at a tier-one firm, risk my professional reputation to participate in a high-school prank?" James asked. His voice wasn't angry; it was clinical, probing for the foundation of my proposal.

"Because it’s not a prank," I said, leaning across the table until I was only two feet from his face. "It's an execution. My parents have spent ten years telling me that I am crazy, that I am jealous, that Britney is an innocent child who just makes innocent mistakes. They refuse to believe it because Britney always ensures there are no witnesses—just her word against mine, and she cries better than I do. I need an unimpeachable witness. I need a man who knows the law, who knows how to document evidence, and who has already taken her down once."

I pulled a certified bank draft from my portfolio and slid it across the glass-smooth walnut surface. It was for twenty thousand dollars—half of the emergency savings I had built over five years of grueling seventy-hour workweeks at the marketing firm.

"That’s your retainer," I said. "Bill me your standard hourly rate for every family dinner, every coffee date, every minute you spend enduring my toxic family."

James looked down at the check. He didn't pick it up. He looked back up at me, his eyes dark with something I couldn't quite decipher—respect, intrigue, or perhaps a predatory amusement of his own.

"Take your money back, Ms. Linwood," he said evenly.

My stomach plummeted. The room suddenly felt suffocatingly hot. "Mr. Whitmore, please. If it's not enough—"

"I don't take money to deceive people," he interrupted, pushing the check back toward me with one manicured finger. "And if the Illinois State Bar Association caught wind of an attorney accepting a cash retainer to participate in a fraudulent domestic charade, I’d be spending the rest of my life reviewing commercial leases in Peoria."

I looked down at the check, my throat constricting with bitter, familiar humiliation. I was an idiot. A desperate, pathetic idiot who thought real life worked like a movie. I reached for the check, my hand trembling slightly.

"I apologize for wasting your time," I whispered, gathering my portfolio. "I'll see myself out."

"Sit down, Maya."

The command was soft, but it carried an authority that made my knees freeze. I looked at him.

James stood up, walked over to the panoramic window, and looked down at the silver thread of the river winding through the concrete canyons of the city. He took a slow breath, his broad shoulders rising and falling.

"Trevor Morrison spent eight months in my office," James said quietly, his back turned to me. "He was thirty-two years old, and by the fourth month of that trial, he had developed a severe heart arrhythmia from the stress. Your sister had filed three separate false police reports alleging that Trevor had threatened her life. She tried to have him arrested outside his own workplace. She leaked private medical documents to his employer, trying to get him fired so he couldn't pay his legal defense."

James turned around, his expression completely devoid of mercy.

"Your sister is not just an attention seeker, Maya. She is a remorseless narcissist who destroys human beings for sport. In that courtroom, I was constrained by the rules of civil procedure. I could only protect Trevor's money. I couldn't touch her soul."

He walked back to the table, pulled a silver Montblanc pen from his breast pocket, and tapped it against the leather notebook.

"I won't take a single dollar from you," James said, his gray eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that sent a violent shiver down my spine. "If anyone asks, we met at an art gallery opening in River North. We hit it off. We’ve been seeing each other for two weeks. But under two conditions."

"Name them," I said, my voice barely more than a gasp.

"Condition one: We don't break character. If we are in public, if we are near your family, we are a couple. You don't flinch when I touch you. You don't look nervous when I hold your hand. If they smell hesitation, the trap fails."

"Agreed," I said instantly.

"Condition two," James said, leaning down so his face was level with mine, his scent—cedarwood, black pepper, and cold linen—washing over me. "When the trap snaps shut, you don't back out. When your parents start crying, when Britney falls to her knees and plays the victim, you do not let them off the hook. We take this all the way to the end. Are you strong enough for that, Maya?"

I looked into the eyes of the man who had terrified my sister’s high-priced divorce attorneys into submission. For the first time in ten years, I felt no fear.

"I've been waiting ten years for this, Mr. Whitmore," I said.

James smiled—a slow, lethal, breathtaking smile that transformed his aristocratic face from stern to dangerously charismatic.

May you like

“Then make something else,” my mother-in-law said after secretly giving...

$My husband slammed his fist against the mahogany dining table and ordered me to apologize to his sister or get out. Twelve family guests watched, waiting for me to cry. He seemed to have forgotten that I owned the house before we even met. I stood up, walked behind his sister's chair, and asked one question about nearly $60,000. The reaction from his business partner told me everything I needed to know\...$