THE CEO's UNSCRIPTED WIFE

nly been back in her father's house for three days since scattering her mother's ashes over the churning Atlantic, and already, grief felt like a luxury she couldn't

his voice that belied his protest. "She'll be well-provided for. And think of the connections, Sade! The deal we can make with Smith once she's his wife... it's a goldmine!" A goldmine. Zuri gripped the doorknob, her knuckles white. Her father, the man who had always prided himself on his "business acumen," was selling her. His own daughter. Not for love, not for security, but for connections and a deal. He was trading her like a commodity, a piece of property to be bartered for fame and fortune. Rage, pure and incandescent, ignited in her gut, burning away the last vestiges of her grief-induced stupor. She wouldn't be bought. She wouldn't be sold. She wouldn't become another one of Mr. Smith's vanished wives. The idea hit her with the force of a physical blow, shocking in its audacity, yet strangely liberating. Her father had always paraded her as his pristine, untouched daughter, a virgin prize to be bartered at the peak of her market value. He bragged about her purity to his colleagues, a perverse point of pride. What if that purity, that unblemished state, was the very thing she destroyed? What if she became the ultimate scandal? A pregnancy. The thought was terrifying, reckless, dangerous. It was a gamble with her entire future, a plunge into an unknown abyss. But the alternative – a lifetime as Mr. Smith's chattel – was a fate far worse than any scandal. This was her only weapon, a desperate act of sabotage against the very foundation of her father's plans. If she wasn't "pure," she was worthless to him in this monstrous transaction. Her mind raced, bypassing the horror to land on the pract