The Forbidden Billionaire’s Masquerade Ball: an Opposites-attract Age-gap Rags to Riches Romance

One masked night changes everything…I’m a barista with coffee grounds under my fingernails and rent due next week.My favorite customer slips me an invitation to Manhattan’s most exclusive masquerade ball.I show up in a borrowed gown, feeling like an out-of-place Cinderella.Then a mysterious stranger pulls me into his arms to dance.Our chemistry is magnetic.That dance turns into a night of intoxicating, sensual bliss entangled in silk sheets.I slip away before dawn, taking only memories and leaving my mask behind.Some fairy tales aren’t meant to last beyond sunrise.Weeks later, my Cinderella fantasy crashes into reality when he walks into my coffee shop.Xander Sterling—billionaire extraordinaire and Manhattan’s most eligible bachelor—is staring at me with those same piercing blue eyes, recognition dawning.Ten years my senior and from a world of penthouse views and private jets.I try to pretend that night never happened.I’m a struggling artist with dreams of my own—not another conquest for a powerful man.But Xander isn’t letting go that easily.As he pursues me with a single-minded obsession, I’m faced with an impossible choice: keep my hard-won independence or surrender to the commanding billionaire who’s determined to unmask my heart.Some Cinderella stories don’t end at midnight…