A Marriage Built On Ashes

Sloane Hartford spent years building herself from nothing after her ex, Cade Whitmore, chose his father's approval over her. Her grandmother has passed, and her will drops a bomb: marry Cade within six months or the hotel empire goes to a cousin who'll gut it for profit, destroying the legacy and the thousand families who depend on those jobs. Cade has his own agenda. His sister Lily died six months ago in what police called a suicide. He knows it was murder, tied to a human trafficking ring using luxury hotels as cover. His investigation points to the Hartford empire, maybe Sloane's own family. He'll marry Sloane, give her the empire, but only if she helps him infiltrate the operation and get justice for Lily. It’s forced proximity in a pressure cooker. They're planning a wedding while hunting criminals, navigating family dinners while investigating her relatives, sharing a penthouse to maintain appearances while the hurt between them is still raw. Cade is harder now, willing to burn everything down for truth. Sloane discovers she never stopped loving him, but can't ignore that he suspects her family of monstrous crimes; and worse, she's finding evidence he might be right. How do you reconcile loving someone who might destroy your family? How do you rebuild trust when it was shattered by different values, and those same values are now in conflict again?