A Marriage Built on Lies

To save her family's empire, CEO Eliana King, known as the "Ice Queen," entered an arranged marriage with the rebellious artist Garrett Wolf. She saw him as a chaotic variable to be managed, a business deal. She never expected to be a pawn in his game of love.

The devastating truth was that her husband was desperately in love with another man, Aden, and their entire marriage was a sham to make him jealous.

When Eliana tried to divorce him, her own family, who knew the secret all along, had her brutally whipped. Later, Garrett publicly forced a kiss on her to provoke his lover, an act that ended with Aden knocking her unconscious.

In the hospital, Garrett' s only concern was protecting Aden, proving her pain meant nothing next to his obsession. She was a tool, utterly disposable.

This final betrayal ignited a fire in the ice. After a violent retaliation, she cut ties with her past and began celebrating her freedom. But the party came to a dead stop when Garrett appeared, his eyes burning with a rage meant only for her.

Chapter 1

Eliana King POV:

When I agreed to marry Garrett Wolf, I saw him as a calculated move, not a man. My family' s empire demanded a merger, and Garrett was the rebellious heir-a chaotic variable I intended to manage, not feel. I should have known then that the precise calculations I lived by would never account for the messy, untamed equations of his heart.

Garrett Wolf was a whirlwind. He was the kind of person who walked into a room and instantly owned it, not by power or money, but by sheer, untamed energy. I heard stories about him, whispers of late-night parties, impromptu art installations, and a casual disregard for anything resembling a schedule. He was a celebrated photographer, an artist whose work was as wild and unpredictable as his life. He lived to create, to provoke, to feel everything all at once.

I, Eliana King, existed in a different universe. My world was built on spreadsheets, board meetings, and impeccable control. They called me the "Ice Queen," and it wasn't a nickname I fought. Emotion was a weakness, a variable that could jeopardize everything. My life was a meticulously planned strategy, every decision a chess move to secure my family's legacy and, more importantly, to protect a secret promise I' d made years ago.

Our marriage was an arranged absurdity, a necessary evil to merge the King Corporation with Wolf Industries. My family, steeped in old money and rigid traditions, saw Garrett as an uncivilized asset. He saw them, I suspected, as the gilded cage that had trapped him. And me? I was just another piece of the corporate puzzle, the CEO programmed for success, not emotion, to secure our vital merger.

The first time I met him formally, in the grand, suffocating King manor dining room, he arrived two hours late. His black leather jacket looked out of place against the