Mara Ellison can dismantle a contract in minutes-until one clause makes her pulse spike. In Halden Care's mercy settlements, compassion is just a prettier word for control. And someone is willing to burn lives to keep it buried.Brought in to stabilize the fallout, Mara finds Section 9: the Mercy Clause-quiet, intimate language that binds desperate patients to lifelong compliance, silence, and a private board that answers to no one. It isn't legal fine print. It's a leash. The more Mara reads, the more she realizes the program isn't fixing debt: it's manufacturing obedience.Then she meets the man assigned to protect Halden's interests: a devastatingly composed corporate fixer with a dangerous talent for seeing straight through her armor. He's everything she should avoid-too close to the enemy, too skilled at persuasion, too willing to pull her into conversations that feel like interrogations and foreplay in the same breath.As patient stories surface and threats turn personal, Mara and her adversary are forced into uneasy proximity: late nights, locked doors, shared secrets neither can afford to have. Their chemistry ignites in the spaces between deposition prep and whispered confessions, but every touch raises the stakes. Because if he's lying, Mara becomes evidence. And if he's telling the truth, Halden will destroy them both.In a world where mercy is weaponized, Mara must decide what she's willing to risk-her career, her safety, her heart-to expose the clause that owns people and the desire that might own her first.- A high-heat enemies-to-allies romance threaded with corporate scandal- A brilliant, guarded heroine fighting a system built to silence victims- A morally gray hero with hidden leverage-and a softer center than he admits- Forced proximity, razor-sharp banter, and intimacy under pressure- A twisty takedown plot where love and justice collide