Breaking the Engagement, My Stepfather Wants Me Back

Among the big families here a marriage is a deal between two houses, and a girl taken in as a dependent is something one house can offer another. Lily Hayes comes into the Sinclair household after her mother dies. Victor Sinclair is her stepfather on paper. She is lonely in that house and what she feels for him turns into love. The Cross family is a danger to her, and Victor's way of keeping her out of their reach is to put her into an arranged marriage with the Reids. He lets her believe the simplest explanation, that she was a plaything to him and a card to be traded. She is humiliated, handled and pulled into what the houses are doing to each other, and she settles on getting away. Danger keeps finding her anyway, and Victor keeps coming for her. He tears up the marriage contract himself and brings out the things that had been kept from her.