It started as a joke nobody was supposed to take seriously. Then he said yes. Pakhi Sachdeva only wanted to buy herself time—throw her mother's marriage ultimatum into vain by naming the one man guaranteed to refuse her proposal, Miran Bhatnagar, heir to her family's oldest rivals. A scandal, not a proposal. And her problem, not her husband. Except Miran doesn't refuse. He accepts before she's finished the sentence, like he'd been waiting for the invitation his whole life. But he loathes her. Now she's married to a man who watches her like he already knows how this ends, who traces his thumb over her pulse like he's counting down to something she can't see yet. Because he isn't here for her family's money, or the truce, or the scandal. He's here to collect on a debt fifteen years old—one connected to his mother, her family doesn't know exists, and one she was never supposed to find. The closer she gets to him, the closer she gets to the truth. And the closer she gets to the truth, the harder it is to remember she was only supposed to be pretending. She wanted a marriage she could walk away from. But some debts aren't paid in money. Some are paid in vows.