At ten years old, Viola Hart learned exactly what money could buy.It could buy her mother eighteen more months.They didn't have it.She memorized the number at the bottom of the legal pad while the machine still beeped.Forty thousand pounds.The price of a life her family couldn't pay.So Viola grew up. And Viola paid. Every debt, every name, every careful column in her mother's cramped handwriting.Now there's one debt left—and the man who holds it could sink everything she's bled to build.He's a magnate.Cold. Untouchable. Used to getting exactly what he wants.And what he wants is her, on his arm, wearing his ring, selling the world a lie.A fake engagement. A boss's ultimatum. One season of pretending, and her family's debt is gone.It should be simple.But small towns keep secrets, and so does he—a locked drawer, a magnolia, a name from the past that won't stay buried.The ruse was supposed to stay a ruse.Then his hand finds the small of her back like it belongs there, and the pretending stops feeling like pretending at all."Marry me for real," he says, "and I'll never let anyone collect on you again."But Viola has spent her whole life learning that promises cost more than money.When the lie threatens to win and the truth could ruin them both, she has to decide whether the last chance at forever is worth trusting a man whose fortune is built on the very thing that took her mother.Some debts you pay with money. This one she pays with her heart.Bound by the Magnate is an emotional and steamy billionaire romance about a fake engagement, small-town secrets, a boss's ultimatum, a guarded heroine, and a last chance at forever neither of them saw coming.Perfect for readers who love billionaire boss romance, fake engagements, hidden secrets, grumpy hero and the woman who unmakes him, and a hard-won happily-ever-after. A standalone with a satisfying ending.