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Ava Rani’s ‘The Charmer’ Unveils Final Biotech Billionaires Love Story: Read the First Chapter

Ava Rani, author of The Spare and The Heir, is ready to charm you once again with the third and final book in the Biotech Billionaires universe, The Charmer, out May 13, 2025. Swooon is exclusively debuting the first chapter and cover of the upcoming novel.

The Charmer revolves around a charming billionaire, Xander Sutton, and a reclusive lawyer, Penelope Chen-Astor. When they tie the knot to outsmart an inheritance scheme, sparks fly and unexpected love blossoms in this sizzling romance. The Charmer will span all across the globe, from the bustling streets of Manhattan to the serene beaches of the Hamptons and the skyscrapers of Singapore. Scroll down to read (and swoon over) the first chapter and cover.

Chapter 1
PENELOPE

Xander Sutton was a dead man.

“I can get them open,” Sloan Amari insisted. A fellow partner at my law firm, she’d become a good friend over the years. Her fingers wrapped around the plastic latches—what I assumed were childproof locks—fastened along the lip of the walnut drawer on my office desk. “He did this once before on my kitchen cabinets, and I figured it out then.”

I huffed, frustrated. Becoming friends with Sloan Amari meant becoming friends with her friends. And they were all lovely.

Her best and oldest friend, Xander Sutton, however, was mildly infuriating. Utterly gorgeous and impossible to not like, but mildly infuriating.

I managed to get caught in the cross fire of Sloan and Xander’s epic prank war. I tried to see the humor in it, but it had been a long week and I had meetings to prepare for.

“I’m so sorry, Pen.” Sloan’s face contorted as she turned the lock again to no avail. “It’s my fault. I stole all of his left shoes, so he was just getting me back.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Based on the stories I’d heard, she and Xander had been playing these games for over a decade. “You two are grown adults. You do know that, right?”

On the polished wood desk, my phone began to buzz. Maddox’s name lit up the screen. I scooped it up, silenced it, and put it in my pocket.

This was already the week from hell before Xander added to the pile. It started with a courier dropping off an envelope of papers that outlined the process to receive my inheritance—the one left by my grandfather after he passed a few months ago. Seemingly mundane, but I knew this wasn’t just some routine paperwork drop-off. My family had been nagging me to deal with this for months and apparently felt I needed a physical reminder, so they’d gone out of their way to arrange the delivery. Gritting my teeth, I’d given in and read it all through. The ink on those pages had been hanging over me all week, tinging everything with irritation.

I regretted the pitch in my voice when I saw Sloan’s shoulders fall. “I know it’s silly,” she sighed, standing up straight and running a hand down her skirt. Her eyes dropped, embarrassed. “It’s—”

“Shit.” A voice from the doorway drew our attention. Xander Sutton, the engineer behind the sudden elevation in my blood pressure this afternoon, stood in the doorway. The summer afternoon’s light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of our Manhattan office, illuminating his mossy green eyes, currently wincing with guilt. “Misfire.” He raked a hand through his dirty blond hair, pushing the neat coif slightly askew. “Sorry, Penelope.”

In the mood I was in, I thought I might give him a piece of my mind, but the calm sincerity in his voice made me pause. Frustrating as his antics occasionally were, even I had to admit that Xander Sutton always treated others with unreasonable levels of humility and kindness, making it near impossible to remain angry with him. It was like his superpower. Xander collected friends and simply converted enemies.

I sighed and motioned to my locked desk drawers. “Can you get them open?”

He nodded and came over to assess the situation.

Just then, Sloan’s phone started to ring. She checked the screen and frowned. The Hightower case was going to litigation, and I knew she was supposed to be meeting with the defense team today. This would be one of the biggest cases the firm had represented in years, and Hightower—one of the firm’s largest and oldest clients—would not be easy to vindicate after so much public scrutiny aimed at their practices.

“Go,” I insisted, seeing the indecision warring in her expression. I appreciated her wanting to make things right, but duty called.

She nodded, then turned to her friend, pointing a stern finger at him. “Xan, be more careful,” she warned darkly before leaving.

“It won’t take long,” Xander assured me as he shrugged off his suit jacket and laid it on one of the chairs in front of my desk. He rounded it, knelt down, and silently began to remove the locks that must have been installed while I was out.

“Good,” I said, meaning to hold my annoyance, but my tone had lost all its sharpness.

“Sorry,” he said softly, his attention focused on turning a lock. “Your offices changed when you two became partners at the firm. I didn’t account for that.”

Sloan and I became senior partners at the law firm around the same time. She and I seemed to be on similar tracks, careerwise, anyway. When it came to our personal lives . . . well, she was living out a real-life fairy tale with Xander’s older brother, while I was living out something entirely different.

Xander’s biceps flexed beneath the perfectly ironed button-up shirt as he turned the lock. A hard pang and his almost inaudible grunt followed, settling low in my stomach.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you came here to gloat,” I mused, watching as he completed one end. “I was one more failed attempt away from taking a hammer to the drawer.”

“Damn.” He stood and brushed past the back of my chair to the other side of the desk. From that close, an initial whiff of clean citrus from his cologne gave way to a fusion of warm amber and musk. He knelt down and flashed me a quick smile before returning his attention to his task. “Showed up too early.”

I gave him a hard look.

“I came by to sign the final Dawn Capital papers, too,” he explained as he pulled the fastener forward and unclicked it. The entire mechanism came loose and fell into his hand. “But I think I pissed off my lawyer.”

Xander and his colleagues, Rohan, Jackson, and Tristan, all used to work at the same large investment firm. Over the past ten years, the four had been responsible for most of the company’s profitability. So it only made sense for them to branch out and start their own company together.

But this was no tiny start-up. Many of their old firm’s largest clients were moving with them, and new accounts were flocking their way. When the final assets and investment transfers were signed this afternoon, they’d be the second largest capital investment firm in the world.

I was their counsel and personally handling the incorporation process for Xander’s firm: Dawn Capital.

“Fix this expeditiously and your lawyer will forget it ever happened.”

“No threats?” He chuckled again, looking straight ahead. “I think I’m growing on you.”

“Like a barnacle on a sea turtle,” I answered dryly, ignoring the excited buzz that ran along my skin.

I’d occasionally felt something around him. A quiet chemistry that never crossed a line. But given his easy grace with strangers and the fact that Xander Sutton could have chemistry with anyone, I was sure whatever I occasionally felt was one-sided and nothing to dwell on.

The corner of his mouth tipped up and his lips parted. My pulse skittered awaiting his retort.

It never came. Instead, his lips pressed together, he blinked, and continued working on the last lock.

“And . . . done.” The final lock fell into his hand. “Like it never happened.”

He stood and pulled open a drawer. His gaze landed on the documents I’d been reviewing before lunch.

My inheritance. The stipulations.

“Thank you.” My hand brushed past his and closed the drawer. I opened the one below.

“Just undoing the damage. I’m sorry, Penelope.”

Xander was hardly ever formal outside of professional spaces, but over the past few months he was careful with every word he chose around me. He only said half the snarky comments I knew were rolling around in his head.

I found myself wondering what prompted the change. If it had anything to do with that night—the masquerade—but asking felt impossible.

I pulled out the file for Dawn Capital’s incorporation. “Have Rohan, Jackson, and Tristan sign their copies. Courier them back when you’re done.”

He nodded and took the folder. “Come have celebratory drinks with us tonight. We owe you one.”

“I’d hold on to that generous thought; you still haven’t seen the firm’s bill,” I quipped lightly, trying to breeze past the heaviness that lingered in my chest at the recollection of the masquerade.

“Well, if you change your mind, we’ll be at the Augustus.” He leaned in just a hair closer. “But no pressure. We value your time.”

“Well, if you value your life . . .” I threatened, holding my capped pen like a dagger. I poked him once in his unreasonably solid chest as a warning. “Take care to exclude me from your silly games.”

“No need to threaten my shirt with a good time.” He put his hands up and backed away slowly to my door, grabbing his suit jacket on the way, an amused smile tugged at one side of his face. “Tom Ford is innocent in all of this.”

I tamed the smile that tried to creep past my defenses.

“See you later, Penelope.” He turned and his footsteps receded down the hallway.

***

Hours after Xander left the office, I was submerged in an acquisition document when a knock at the door lifted me from my work.

“Do you have a second?” Maya Malhotra peaked her head in the half-open doorway.

“Yes, please shut the door behind you.”

She was a rising star. A junior associate in litigation who could outmaneuver the devil himself. An invaluable asset to the firm and Sloan’s personal recommendation to join our ranks.

“What’s the latest with the Hightower Energy case?” I asked.

“Sloan says the whistleblower got some heavy-duty representation for the civil case, too.” Maya took a seat, tucked her voluminous jet-black hair behind her ear, and folded her hands on the envelope she brought in. “Victor Hightower may be in some trouble.”

“Oh no,” I murmured with marginal sarcasm. Nobody would mourn the Hightowers. They were vile people, but we represented a lot of vile people. “Is Sloan alright?”

“She seems fine.” Maya squirmed in her seat. She handed the unsealed envelope—the one holding a copy of my inheritance terms—back to me. “You wanted me to review these.”

While I was in London on assignment for the firm with Sloan a year ago, my family let me know they’d finally arranged my marriage. It wasn’t a surprise; it was one of the requirements for all of the grandchildren to receive their inheritances. We had to get married, and I knew my father would use that stipulation to further the company—Chen Tech—or the family name. For a long time, I’d quietly accepted my fate.

“Any clever work-arounds?” I asked.

“Well, since getting your inheritance only has two stipulations, we can’t really play them against each other to find a way around it,” Maya began.

For years I had ignored my father and half brother’s jostling and postponed the inevitable wedding, until they became a bit more forceful. Seven months ago, at the Amari Masquerade, I was notified that my mother’s shares in Astor Media—her family’s company—had become tied to my fulfilling the marital clause. If my mom wanted to see a cent of what rightfully belonged to her, I would need to add a ring to my finger. And I was on a timer. I had till the end of the summer this year.

“The location stipulation is easy; buy a property in Singapore. But the marriage one . . .”

The grave tone in her voice became a pit in my stomach. Maya was a mastermind when it came to finding loopholes. Especially this close to the deadline. If she didn’t see a way out . . .

“Yes . . .” I muttered to myself. “The marriage one . . .”

My mother, Victoria Astor, married my father, Alvan Chen, as an arrangement. The wealthy Singaporean Chen family got a coveted Western title once I was born and became more than just new money from a tech fortune. And the Astors, British nobility, whose media company was floundering before the wedding, had the capital to rebuild.

It was a joint venture sealed with a wedding. But that venture was thrown into chaos when my mother filed for divorce a few years after that. By my fourth birthday, I was splitting my time between Singapore and London and bitter parents.

“You can’t change the timeline. It’s ironclad,” she continued. “Good news is, now that your grandfather has passed, they can’t change the terms again.”

“I guess that’s a silver lining.” My grandfather passed right after the New Year, after he changed the terms. Originally, all I would have been giving up was my inheritance if I didn’t follow through with the wedding. But then, right before he passed, he tied my mother’s shares in Astor media to my own. Those shares were meant to provide for Mother for the rest of her life in the manner she was accustomed to. This was their way to force my hand. Needless to say, I didn’t attend the funeral services.

I’d spent the last few months trying to find a way around the terms while avoiding all their prodding. I’d been away from home for so long, I’d alienated myself from my family—even though they hardly ever acted like one. But, you only get one family, and I’d always figured one day I’d finally get around to fitting into it. If I did this, went directly against their wishes, what if there was no road back and it severed me from them forever?

It wasn’t easy to simply decide you were fine going it alone.

That fact kept my thoughts on an endless loop the last few months making me distrustful of my own intuition.

“Thank you for trying.” I opened by drawer and placed the copies I’d given Maya there.

“You can still win this one. Get your inheritance and the shares that are tied up in it.” Maya’s voice adopted a reassuring sharpness, a steely confidence emerging. One I’d heard a hundred times when she was practicing for trial. She sat up straighter. “The old-fashioned way.”

“Right.”

I could marry someone—just not the person they picked—for a year, the amount of time allotted before the funds could be transferred. Someone I could trust enough to go through the motions. Then I’d have my inheritance and my mother’s shares. But the daunting reality that this might be the final strike that cut me off from my own blood was unnerving.

Maya stood and began to make her way to the door. “You do know quite a few bachelors that would probably be up for the task. My annoying brother included.”

A laugh bubbled up and popped out of me. Maya was Rohan Malhotra’s little sister. And Rohan, along with the rest of the Dawn Capital cofounders were a part of Xander Sutton’s merry band of cohorts.

She grinned as she turned to leave.

“I’ll see you at Sloan’s engagement party on Friday night,” she said as the door closed behind her.

My phone rang again and Maddox’s name lit up the screen for the second time that afternoon. A sense of dread wrapped around my chest.

I wasn’t sure what I’d do next, but one thing was certain: by the end of the summer, I was going to be married.

From THE CHARMER by Ava Rani. Copyright © 2025 by Ava Rani. Reprinted by permission of Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.