The Cruel CEO's Contract: An Enemies-to-Lovers, Forced Proximity Billionaire Boss Romance
Paperback
Series: The Boardroom Rivals
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 24 2025
Pages: 394
Weight: 1.16
Height: 0.88 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
He wrote the rules to save his empire. I took a red pen and rewrote the game.
Damian Hale is a man of absolute control. He is the billionaire CEO of Manhattan's most ruthless corporate strategy firm. He is cold, calculating, and completely immune to the messy distractions of human emotion. To him, the world is just a balance sheet, and feelings are bad investments. But when a disastrous, out-of-context video clip sends his company's stock plummeting, his board demands an immediate fix to his public image.
The PR team suggests a fake romance with a bubbly influencer. Damian has a better idea. He wants a counterparty. Someone sharp, resilient, and impossible to manipulate.
He wants his brilliant in-house counsel: me.
Sloane Parker doesn't do fairy tales. She does the math. Drowning in my mother's crushing medical debt, I know better than to trust an arrogant billionaire offering a lifeline. But Damian's proposition isn't a fairy tale-it's a highly structured, ninety-day contract.
Rule 1: Publicly date to stabilize the optics. Rule 2: Keep a strictly professional firewall at the office. Rule 3: The No Feelings Clause. This is business. Nothing more.
I sign the paper, vowing to keep my fiercely guarded heart entirely out of the equation. It's just a transaction. A carefully choreographed corporate dance. But as the fake dates turn into late-night confessions, and the staged touches ignite a visceral, consuming heat, the rigid lines of our agreement begin to blur.
Damian might have authored the rules of our fake relationship, but behind the closed doors of his glass penthouse, his terrifying control is fracturing. He's supposed to be my boss and my fake boyfriend, but his dark hunter eyes track my every move with a possessive hunger that definitely wasn't in the paperwork. Soon, I realize that the only thing more dangerous than a cruel CEO is a man who will burn down his own empire to claim what's his.
Can a relationship built on red ink and corporate survival ever turn into something real?
The Cruel CEO's Contract is a scorching hot, high-stakes standalone billionaire office romance filled with electric banter, explosive chemistry, and a fiercely independent heroine who brings a powerful alpha to his knees.
Tropes you will absolutely devour:
Billionaire Boss / Employee Romance
Fake Dating / Contract Relationship
Enemies to Lovers Tension
Grumpy Boss x Hyper-Competent Sunshine
Touch Her and You Die / Protective Alpha
Forced Proximity & One Bed
High Heat / Open Door Intimacy
Guaranteed Happily Ever After (HEA)
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