CONTROLLED BURNS

She built her empire alone.
No family money. No inheritance. No one who stayed.

Nova Ashford doesn't do sentiment.
She does strategy.

So when Adrian Vale walks in at two in the morning with a merger proposal and a marriage clause buried in the fine print -
she reads the terms.
She weighs the cost.
She signs.

Business arrangement. Clean. Controlled. Temporary.

Except -

He knows how she takes her coffee before she tells him.
He leaves dinner on the counter when she works past midnight.
He says her real name -
the one she buried with everything she ran from -
like he's been thinking about it.

She has a system for things like this.
She files them away for later.

Later is running out.

And Adrian Vale, she's beginning to understand, has never once in his life been filed away.

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**CONTROLLED BURNS- they managed everything except each other*
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Updates every [Monday & Thursday]
Mature content - 18+
Slow burn | Contract marriage | Corporate romance