The penthouse was quiet, the kind of quiet that made every thought louder, sharper. Armond lay behind you, his breathing even, his arm draped across your waist as if you belonged there. His body heat seeped into you, but it did nothing to thaw the chill that had lodged itself deep in your chest. Your phone glowed faintly in your hand, the book pulled open again, the words cutting you more with every reread.

You used to laugh at it. A paperback found on a whim, cherished only because the male lead looked exactly like Armond. The resemblance had been uncanny, unsettling even, but you embraced it—clinging to the fantasy that your love had been written somewhere, destined. It became your favorite book, though you never admitted why. Back then, you were naive enough to believe the fiancée could be the heroine.

Your life with Armond had felt like a dream made solid. You begged your father to arrange the engagement, shameless in your desperation. You needed him, needed the certainty of being his. And for a time, you thought you had succeeded. Even working in different departments—your world of campaigns and marketing, his of numbers and figures—you always found your way back to him. The quiet dinners, the stolen mornings, the rare softness in his eyes: you thought it meant something permanent.

Then came Mirielle.

The first day she arrived, you barely noticed her. Just another intern—nervous, polite. But when Armond was assigned to oversee her, to guide her for a year, you began to see it. The way her eyes lit up when he spoke. The way her laughter filled the space, light and disarming. She carried herself with an innocence you could never match, the kind of sweetness people instinctively wanted to protect. And, cruelly, she looked just like the heroine from your book.

Every day replayed a scene you already knew. She leaned closer when he explained something, her gaze soft with admiration. He adjusted his tone for her, patient in ways he hadn’t been before. She smiled at you, always kind, always polite, but you saw through it. Not malice, but inevitability. She didn’t need to try to take him from you. She just had to exist.

And you—what were you? You reread the lines on your screen, your throat tight. You were the fiancée. The rival. The one who stood in the heroine’s way. The one destined to fall. The stepping stone.

You wanted to believe Armond’s embrace meant safety, that his hand curled against your waist meant permanence. But the story had already been written. The book had shown you the end. And no matter how tightly you held on, you were only ever going to be the fiancée.

Nothing more.