Mia Santos was born with superhuman strength. After graduating high school, she spent eight years painting at construction sites, and lost twenty-seven jobs in those eight years for standing up for others. When she caught her fiancé Leo cheating, she hurled him into a trash can; furious, he called her "unfeminine" and blamed her "hero complex" for draining her parents' bakery dry, then publicly called off their engagement and threw the ring into the mud.
At her wit's end, the most dangerous man in New York—Samuel Moretti, the mafia don—offered her a contract: be his nominal wife for one year, stepmother to his nonverbal daughter Bianca, for a reward of five million dollars. One million would be paid upfront to redeem the bakery, and the only condition for the remaining four million was to make Bianca speak. The additional clause: "Don't expect to get into my bed."
With her paint-stained hands, Mia slowly warmed Bianca, who had been mentally manipulated by a cruel housekeeper for five years; and in battles ranging from PTA elections to fights with her ex, she pried open the frozen heart of Samuel. The celibacy clause became meaningless, and the two moved from a contractual marriage to a real intimate relationship. Meanwhile, Leo escalated from pestering and blackmailing to attacking with a knife, and was ultimately "humiliated then killed" by Samuel—he knelt and apologized on the same street, before being dumped into the Hudson River that night.
