Give Him Your Last Name

"A man who builds you a cage from marble and silk is still a man who owns the key. But a man who hands you the key and stays anyway — that's the one who'll burn the world to keep you warm."

Vivian Lake is a brilliant architect and the CEO of Lake Property Group, a massive real estate empire she inherited after her father's sudden death. Facing crippling corporate debt and a ruthless hostile takeover, Vivian receives a midnight lifeline from an enigmatic stranger, Darian Holt. Darian brings forty million dollars to save her company, but his terms are absolute and uncompromising: a six-month contract marriage, full operational control of her business, and he demands to take her last name.

As Darian moves into Vivian's sprawling, shadowed family manor, an intense psychological game of proximity and control begins. He monitors her security, anticipates her coffee orders, and guards a locked drawer in her dead father's study. Vivian soon discovers that this arrangement is far from a simple business deal. Darian has spent the last ten years meticulously investigating her father's corrupt legacy—a trail of forged structural inspections and dangerous buildings that destroyed Darian's own family.

However, Darian hasn't come for revenge. He has come to secretly reconstruct the rotting foundations of the Lake empire from the ground up, desperately trying to protect Vivian from the fallout of her father's crimes. Trapped together in a house filled with locked doors, hidden passages, and buried truths, Vivian and Darian form a fierce, unexpected alliance. As the walls of deception crumble, they must decide whether to let their inherited empires collapse, or rebuild a new, honest foundation together.