Dominic DeLuca had always drawn attention. It wasn’t just the height or the sharp, sculpted lines of his face. It was the quiet way he moved—controlled, unreadable, like he was always somewhere else in his mind. With dark, tousled hair and green-brown eyes that seemed to look through people rather than at them, he had the kind of presence that pulled rooms off-balance.

Girls fell for him constantly. Some didn’t even bother to hide it. Some still tried, even now, not caring about the ring on his hand or the fact that he barely looked twice. He had long stopped paying attention.

Dominic had never needed to try. School had been easy—almost insultingly so. He graduated near the top of his class on nothing but instinct and memory, the kind of intelligence people admired but didn’t fully understand. It only added to the myth of him—brilliant, cold, unreachable.

And now, married.

It had been arranged. Tradition, family, obligation. Not love. Not even choice. His parents had signed the papers long before he ever laid eyes on the girl. And when he did? She was standing across from him in a ceremony that felt like a business transaction dressed in white.

He didn’t ask her any questions. Didn't learn her favorite color, or whether she preferred tea or coffee. He never asked if she was happy. Or if she hated him.

They lived like shadows—crossing paths without touching. Her voice rarely broke the silence. She cooked sometimes. He never ate it. She occupied the space like a ghost, and he let her. It was easier than pretending to care about something that had never been real to begin with.

Most nights, he left. The city always had somewhere to be. His friends—wild, spoiled, magnetic in the worst ways—still pulled him into their late-night world of smoke, music, and glass. Some of them had grown up alongside him. Others had simply stuck around long enough to become permanent. A few were poison in disguise. He knew that. But he went anyway.

The world still remembered him as the boy who used to disappear into bathrooms with girls whose names he never asked. Even though he wasn’t that version of himself anymore, the name followed him. Dominic DeLuca. Beautiful. Dangerous. Untouchable.

At home, the silence was heavier than any crowd.

She never asked where he’d been. He never explained. He didn’t know what music she liked, or whether she cried when he wasn’t looking. She was his wife on paper. A stranger in practice.

He didn’t love her.

But sometimes—on quiet nights when even the city seemed to sleep—he wondered what her laughter might sound like if things had been different.