Chapter 1

My coworker slid me three hundred bucks to take her place on a blind date.

The guy was supposedly an impoverished, illegitimate son—a total nobody she didn't want to waste her time on, but was too polite to turn down herself.

I had just sat down at the coffee shop, and before the man across from me could even open his mouth, a neon wave of bullet screen comments exploded in front of my eyes:

[HOLY SHIT! Isn't that the lost heir of the Harrington Group?!]

[In just three days, he’s getting welcomed back to the family as the sole heir to the entire Harrington empire!]

[LMAO, this chick sitting across from him is here to reject him? What an epic loss!]

After reading that, I choked on my own breath.

The man before me wore ordinary clothes and had a calm, indifferent expression, yet he carried an unmistakably grounded presence.

My coworker blew up my Snapchat: "Hurry up and dump him. Come back and take your cash."

I glanced at the $300 transfer notification on my phone, then looked back at the man sitting across the table.

I slammed my phone face down. "Hi. Honestly, I think we're a great match. How about we get married at City Hall today?"

I stared at him, wheels turning in my head at lightning speed.

The floating comments kept scrolling across my vision:

[The Harrington Group is worth thirty billion dollars, and this dude is the only living heir!]

[His cheap excuse of an older brother was totaled in a highway crash three days ago. Old Man Harrington is losing his damn mind trying to track him down!]

[Wait, what’s up with this girl’s eyes? Does she know something??]

My heart skipped a beat at that last comment.

I quickly lowered my head and pretended to check my phone, glancing sideways at my surroundings.

Everyone else in the café looked completely normal. No one was staring at us.

So... these comments were only visible to me?

The man lifted his coffee and took a slow sip. His fingers were long and nicely defined.

He wore a plain white tee and a thin dark-gray jacket. Not a single watch on his wrist. He looked just like an overworked entry-level architect.

Yet when he raised his eyes to meet mine, his gaze was as deep as still water—sharp, scrutinizing, yet faintly detached.

"What did you just say?" He set his cup down, his voice low and steady. "Get married?"

My heart was pounding wildly.

Three hundred bucks.

Did I just trade three hundred bucks for the sole heir to a thirty-billion-dollar empire?

My coworker, Mandy, was bombarding me on Snapchat:

"Did you turn him down yet? Did you?"

"I'm telling you, he’s dead broke. His dad never gave a crap about him. The legit son over at the Harringtons is totally running the show. There's zero chance for this guy to step up."

"Hurry up! I'm waiting for you to go shopping with me."

I glanced at Mandy's avatar—a selfie of her lounging inside her Porsche.

She genuinely didn't care about three hundred bucks. As the spoiled heiress of Vance Construction, her family had set up this date. She just thought he was too low-class, and she didn't want to burn bridges with the matchmaker by rejecting him in person, so she paid me to do the dirty work.

What Mandy didn't know was that the golden boy of the Harrington family died three days ago, and the family was keeping it under wraps to prevent their stock from tanking.

I took a deep breath, flipped my phone face down on the table, and looked straight at the man in front of me.

His name was Sean. Sean Harrington.

I had skimmed over his name in the profile Mandy gave me a few days ago without paying much attention. But now, all I could think was how ridiculously wild fate could be.

"I said," I repeated, trying my best not to sound overly desperate, "why don't we go down to City Hall and make it official today?"

Sean stared at me, his expression unreadable.

He probably thought I was playing a prank.

But I couldn't care less about playing hard to get right now.

Wait... could these floating comments be trusted? What if this was some bizarre, high-tech scam?

The moment that thought popped into my head, the screen exploded again:

[LMAO, this girl is literally playing with cheat codes!]

[If she misses this boat, she’s gonna cry her eyes out in a bathroom stall when Harrington Group's stock skyrockets.]

[In three days, Sean’s taking his rightful throne. Every socialite in the city will be lining up around the block. She’d be an idiot not to lock him down right now!]

Alright, I was sold.

"You heard me right," I said, sitting up straight and placing my purse on the chair next to me, settling in for business.

"I mean getting legally married. A real license. Today."

Sean leaned back against his chair, his eyes lingering on my face for a couple of beats.

"We just met. You don't even know my name."

"Sean Harrington. Twenty-eight. Graduated from State University with a degree in architecture. Currently working at a boutique design firm."

I rattled off the facts Mandy had provided, then added, "I knew all of this beforehand. I didn't just Google you right now."

A subtle twitch pulled at the corner of Sean's mouth—not quite a smile, more like faint amusement.

"Then you probably also know that I have no money."

Oh, I knew.

The file laid it all out. Sean was the illegitimate son of old man Harrington, raised far away from the family with zero contact.

His older half-brother, Luke, had constantly sabotaged him, even pulling strings behind the scenes to mess with his job offers so he could barely find work after graduation.

Right now, he was renting a cramped apartment on the east side of town, earning just barely enough to get by, and driving a beat-up Toyota Corolla with unknown mileage.

None of that mattered anymore.

In three days, before Luke’s funeral arrangements were even finished, old man Harrington would be knocking on his door.

Luke was dead. In the third generation of the Harrington dynasty, Sean was the only son left.

The sole heir.

Thirty billion dollars.