Lies That Kept Her

Mara Voss is a London solicitor who keeps meticulous records and trusts almost no one. Then a file appears on her locked desk at eleven at night, stamped with a name she has not used since infancy and a note in a careful hand: You were not hidden. You were assigned.

What it leads her to is not a lost adoption. It is a ledger. For a century, powerful families used children to settle debts between them. Some were hidden to save their lives. Others were handed over as payment.

Whoever left that file got through three locks to put it there, and they are not finished with her. That same night, a man comes through her locked door as though it had apologised to him. Adrian Moretti will break any law to keep her breathing, and he has the one flaw she cannot survive: he decides, out of love, what she is strong enough to know.

He knows she does not need saving. He stays anyway.