The Grand Hotel ballroom. Decorated. Expensive. Beautiful. Prison disguised as celebration.

Natalie stood at the altar. White dress. Not her choice—her mother's choice. Tight. Suffocating. Like a noose around her neck. Around her life. Around her future.

Beside her stood Charles Whitmore. Sixty-five years old. Wrinkled. Gray. Smelling like old cologne and older money. A rich stranger her parents sold her to for two million dollars and monthly payments.

The officiant ...