Returning a Json-field from SQL to ASP.NET Core API - json

Question

I'm building a relatively simple Get-method in an ASP.NET Core (3+) application. (Currently 3.1 - to be migrated to 5)
The object I need to return looks like this:
public class Data
{
public int ID { get;set;}
public string Name { get;set;}
public string Settings { get; set;}
}
And the Get-method is simply this:
public IActionResult<Data> GetData()
{
var data = _dbContext.GetData<Data>();
return Ok(data);
}
This works perfectly - except for one thing.
In SQL - the settings column (varchar(8000)), contains JSON data. In some cases, a setting can be something simple like : { "threshold": 8754 } and sometimes it can be a large complex object with many fields, but it is always valid Json.
On the ASP side, it does exactly what you would expect. It turns a serialized Json object that contains an INT and 2 x strings.
I would like for it to return an INT, ONE String and One Json Object.
Is there any way that I can tell the serializer that the Settings-property contains Json?
In a perfect world, I would love something like this:
public class Data
{
public int ID { get;set;}
public string Name { get;set;}
[SerializeContentAsJson]
public string Settings { get; set;}
}
Is there a way to do this or is there some other fairly elegant solution to this problem?
Btw. I fully realize that the caller can specify the content types that he/she will accept. In this case, the API is purely for use inside my team and we will always want JSON, so I can compromise on this being a relatively custom solution that might not work if you wanted text/html or some other content type.