Jessica Miller has always found comfort between the pages of a book. So when a charming stranger reaches for the same rare novel in a quiet bookstore, it feels like fate.

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Ryan Thorne is everything she never knew she was looking for — brilliant, attentive, and breathtakingly handsome. He knows obscure literary quotes by heart. He listens like she's the only person in the room. And when he invites her to his breathtaking estate to see a collection of letters she's dreamed of her entire career, she can't say no.

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She should have said no.

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The gates close behind her without a sound. The halls are long and silent. And the woman she glimpses watching from the shadows isn't a housekeeper — she's his mother. They've done this before.

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What begins as a weekend that feels like a fairy tale slowly reveals itself as something far darker. The portrait frames hold more than paintings. The locked doors lead nowhere she's allowed to go. And the man who made her feel so completely seen has been watching her far longer than she knows.

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Jessica came willingly. Leaving is another matter entirely.

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Some houses are built to keep people out. His was built to keep one person in.