Nineteen-year-old Iris Maxwell has always known exactly who she is: a scholarship student fighting her way through design school, devoted daughter to the adoptive parents who found her abandoned at a fire station, and fierce protector of her four younger brothers. With nothing but raw talent and relentless determination, she's determined to build a fashion empire from scratch, no connections, no trust fund, just hard work.
When Iris wins the prestigious Metropolitan Design Challenge, she catches the attention of Tony, a mysterious business student who offers to help with her startup plans. Their coffee shop meetings crackle with unspoken tension and possibility, but Tony harbours secrets of his own. As the heir to the Kennedy fortune, he's trapped between family expectations and his growing feelings for the brilliant designer who refuses to rely on anyone but herself.
Everything changes when Iris enters the Lawson competition, a design contest worth fifty thousand dollars, hosted in memory of Roxanne Lawson, an heiress who vanished twenty years ago. The missing girl shares Iris's birthday, and Tony's strange reaction to this detail hints at connections neither of them fully understands.
As Iris races to complete her collection, she must navigate the cutthroat world of high fashion, the complexities of falling for someone from a different world, and the unsettling possibility that the iris pin she was found with might be the key to a past she never knew existed. Some coincidences are too perfect to be accidents, and some secrets are too dangerous to stay buried.
A contemporary romance about ambition, identity, and the courage to claim your destiny, no matter who you were born to be.
