MARRIED TO THE CRIPPLED BILLIONAIRE

My sister walked down the aisle in my wedding dress.

On my fiancé's arm. Wearing my ring. Smiling my smile.

Three hundred guests applauded. My father toasted the "perfect couple."

And I stood at the back of the cathedral, holding the bouquet I was never going to throw.

"Aria." My stepmother Vivian appeared beside me, her perfume sharp as a slap. "Don't make a scene. Grayson chose Chloe. Love isn't something you can force."

Love. That was rich. Grayson Sinclair had proposed to me eight months ago. Vivian had planned the wedding down to the napkin rings. And this morning — this morning — my father had knocked on my door and told me, calmly, that there had been "a change."

Chloe would marry Grayson.

I would marry his older brother instead.

Damian Sinclair. The recluse. The cripple. The man who hadn't been seen in public since the car crash three years ago that shattered his spine and — the tabloids whispered — his face. The Sinclair family kept him locked away in a fortress on the cliffs like a shameful secret.

"The merger requires a Whitmore bride for each Sinclair son," my father had said, not meeting my eyes. "Chloe is delicate. She can't be expected to... care for an invalid. You've always been the strong one, Aria."

The strong one. That was what they called me when they wanted something.

They'd called me the strong one when my mother died and Vivian moved in before the funeral flowers wilted. When Chloe "borrowed" my design portfolio and got hired at the jewelry house I'd dreamed of my whole life. When Grayson started coming home smelling like my sister's perfume and I made myself believe it was nothing.

Now Chloe reached the altar. Grayson lifted her veil. He looked over her shoulder — straight at me — and smirked.

That smirk did something to me. It burned through the shame and left something colder underneath.

"Fine," I said.

Vivian blinked. "What?"

"I'll marry him. The brother. Damian." I set my bouquet down on an empty pew. "Draw up whatever papers you need."

For one second, real fear flickered across my stepmother's face — as if she'd expected me to beg, to cry, to be manageable. Then she smoothed it over with a smile. "Wonderful. The car is waiting. The ceremony is tonight."

Tonight. They'd already planned it. They'd known I'd have no choice.

The car took me up the coast road as the sun bled out over the water. The Sinclair estate rose out of the fog like something from a gothic novel — black iron gates, stone walls, windows dark as closed eyes.

A housekeeper led me through silent halls to a study lit by a single fire. "Mr. Sinclair will see you now."

He sat in a wheelchair by the window, his back to me. Broad shoulders. Dark hair. Hands — elegant, unscarred — resting on the armrests.

"Aria Whitmore." His voice was low and rough, like it didn't get used much. "The discarded bride."

"The consolation prize," I said. "I hear you got one too."

A pause. Then — God help me — he laughed. Quiet and surprised, like the sound cost him something.

He turned the chair around.

The tabloids had lied. His face wasn't ruined. It was beautiful the way a blade is beautiful — all cold angles and shadow, ruined only by the thin scar that cut through his left eyebrow. His eyes were dark and much too sharp for a man the world had written off.

"Let's be clear," he said. "You need my name to escape your family. I need a wife to stop mine from circling my grave. It's a contract. Nothing more."

"Fine by me."

"Then sign."

I signed. He signed. His hand closed over mine when I set down the pen — cool, strong, deliberate.

"One warning, Mrs. Sinclair," Damian said softly, and something in his voice made the fire seem colder. "People in this house are not what they pretend to be. Including me."

"Meaning what?"

He smiled for the first time. It was not a reassuring smile.

"Meaning your sister didn't steal your groom, Aria. She saved your life."