The Designer He Hunts Is His Own Wife

Hali Andrews is a junior designer who never expected to wake up in her billionaire CEO's penthouse. Ezra Gardner makes it clinical: a contract marriage to kill any scandal. She says no and tells him she has a boyfriend. On the way home, she ducks into a pharmacy and buys Plan B with cash, still wearing the Chanel suit he gave her.

At the office, the rumor mill is already spinning about a torn dress in Ezra's suite. Hali hides the bruises under a thick sweater, but Ezra corners her in an elevator. He hooks a finger into her collar under the pretense of fixing a tag, grazes the mark on her neck, and murmurs, "Hide it well. I don't like sharing what's mine."

Everything starts caving in at once. Her name lands on the S Country Fashion Week delegation, and suddenly her boyfriend Irving wants to tag along—after years of never taking her anywhere. Suspicious, she tracks his phone. It stops right at her best friend Leah's apartment. Later, she's stuck in a service elevator with Ezra during a blackout. He's drenched in sweat, claustrophobic. She rambles about fabric, about coffee machines, about a cat that ran away when she was seven, just to keep him upright. When they finally climb out, she notices his ankle—a mess of old scars that looks far worse than any break.

Ezra brings her to Senator Grimes's fundraiser on his arm. The moment he introduces her as Hali Andrews, the senator's composure slips. Outside the venue, Irving and Leah watch the kiss on a monitor, pale and horrified. Back at work, colleague Wendy Kim plants stolen sketches in Hali's desk and calls HR. Ezra barely glances at the designs and calls them "pedestrian uninspired garbage." He demands the physical backup tapes. Hali doesn't wait. She tails Wendy to the parking garage, watches her pay off security guard Mike, and later sneaks into the server room with a master key card Ezra gave her. She copies the deleted footage—Wendy shoving sketches into the drawer—and brings it straight to Ezra. He plays it in front of Wendy, then has her fired and blacklisted.

Irving arranges a dinner, oblivious. Hali shows up in a blood-red dress she bought herself, maxing out her own credit card. He leaves his phone on the table. A message from Leah lights up the screen: an ultrasound image with the words "our little bean" and "6 weeks strong heartbeat." Hali stares at it, lifts her wine glass, and drinks. She doesn't cry. She doesn't scream.

She is Chaos. The designer Ezra has been desperately hunting. And she's already his wife.