A Sinner’s Truth

Santo: Cold. A deep, bone-chilling cold. I’ve felt it since the night I clutched my pregnant fiancée to my chest and had a pair of cold, lifeless eyes stare back at me.

My family wants me to move on. To start living again. But it’s not so easy to do when your heart and soul are still six feet under.

A second chance at love isn’t in the cards for me. A second chance at love isn’t in the cards for me. Which is why when I meet Aria Swan in a bar one night and she offers up a solution to both of our problems, I actually consider her proposal.

I mean, where’s the harm in playing house for a bit? It’s not like I’m going to fall in love with her. A fact that will make terminating this little arrangement at the end of the year easy. Even if her touch has this way of melting the icy coldness surrounding my heart….

Aria: Ever had the answers to all your problems just fall into your lap? Or, in my case, have you stumbling into the solution?

I have no idea what comes over me when I bump into Santo De Bellis. Call it desperation. A last-ditch effort to pull myself out of the hole my last name has created. But all I can think is how this arrangement can be mutually beneficial.

I need a husband. Because if I’m already taken, my father can’t marry me off to the highest bidder. And if that same husband happens to be a De Bellis, well, no one is going to be stupid enough to question it.

I don’t expect him to actually agree. So when he does, I jump at the chance for freedom.

What could possibly go wrong? All we have to do is stay married for a year. It can’t be that hard. Can it?