I married Stan to prove a point, not to find love. My parents tried to buy my future with an ultimatum, and I answered with a marriage of convenience to a man they would never approve of. But once the papers were signed and the performance began, the lines blurred. Stan was kind, funny, quietly attentive. We were supposed to be pretending, yet our small domestic rituals started to feel dangerously real.

When I came home that night and saw the rose petals, the tuxedo, and the velvet box, I thought it was a cruel joke. Instead, it was the truth crashing down: the “homeless man” I’d rescued was a dispossessed CEO fighting his own family’s betrayal, and the only thing he’d ever really wanted from me was something my parents could never force—love freely given. I didn’t answer him with fireworks or a fairytale yes. I gave him something harder: time, loyalty, and a promise to walk beside him while he reclaimed his life. Somewhere between revenge and pretense, I had stumbled into the very thing my parents tried to manufacture. This time, it was mine to choose.