My Millionaire Father Forced Me to Marry a Homeless Man to Break Me, but He Never Expected What Happened Next

At 7:00 a.m. the next morning, the air was clear, bitter, and cold.

We walked twenty-two blocks north toward the industrial district. Samuel moved with his steady, rhythmic limp, his ash cane crunching through the fresh powder on the sidewalk.

Frank Miller’s salvage yard smelled of rusted iron, sawed pine, and diesel oil.

Frank himself was a seventy-year-old man with grease-stained overalls and a thick white mustache, sitting inside a heated trailer drinking coffee from a thermos.

When we walked through the door, Frank looked up over his reading glasses.

He stared at Samuel for ten full seconds.

Then he set his coffee down so hard it spilled over his desk.

“Sam?” Frank croaked, his voice cracking. “Sam Thorne? Is that you, you old goat?”

“Hello, Frank,” Samuel said softly.

Frank jumped up from his chair, lunged across the desk, and pulled Samuel into a bone-crushing hug, completely ignoring the faded coat and the wooden cane.

“Where the hell have you been?!” Frank yelled, holding Samuel by his shoulders. “I heard you were dead in Chicago! I heard you went under!”

“I was under for a while, Frank,” Samuel said, turning toward me. “This is my wife, Hannah.”

Frank looked at me, then looked at Samuel, taking in our wet boots and modest clothes, his sharp old eyes putting the pieces together in an instant.

“What do you need, Sam?” Frank asked flatly, dropping the pleasantries. “You name it. If it’s in my yard, it’s yours.”

“I need three sheets of heavy drafting paper, two T-squares, and permission to use your work table for four hours,” Samuel said. “And I need to know who is developing the old brick warehouse on 32nd Street.”

Frank grunted, pulling a heavy blue folder from a metal filing cabinet.

“That warehouse belongs to Weston Property Group,” Frank said grimly. “Garrett Weston bought it six months ago. He wants to tear it down and build a six-story concrete parking garage.”

I stepped forward. “The historic brick building on 32nd? That structure was built in 1888 with triple-thick timber trusses! Tearing it down is a structural crime!”

Frank looked at me with newfound respect. “That’s what I told his project manager, lady! But Weston says the timber is rotting and the foundation is cracked. He’s filing for a demolition permit on Monday.”

Samuel looked at me. A dangerous, beautiful light burned in his gray eyes.

“Hannah,” Samuel whispered. “Is the timber rotting?”

“No,” I said firmly, remembering the internal survey files I had seen on my father’s desk two weeks ago. “The foundation has three minor settlement cracks near the south wall, but the Douglas fir framing is completely petrified. It’s indestructible.”