She didn’t know why she had agreed to this ridiculous, archaic arrangement — this so‑called “marriage” that felt more like a business contract signed in blood and sealed with a sigh. It was as if her life had been folded into an origami crane — delicate, precise, but entirely dictated by someone else’s hands.

She had just turned nineteen — barely into college, still tasting the sweet, heady freedom of youth like the first sip of champagne on a rooftop at dawn. This was supposed to be the age of late‑night adventures under a sky studded with stars like scattered diamonds, of coffee‑fueled all‑nighters with highlighters staining her fingers the colour of neon dreams, of laughter with friends that echoed down empty hallways like music played just for them. Not marriage. Not this. Not him.

Oscar Jack Piastri.

Her father’s best friend’s son. Twenty‑five. Already working, already chasing his master’s degree with the quiet determination of a wolf on the hunt, already acting as though he had the entire world figured out — as if life were a chessboard and he were the grandmaster, moving pawns with cold precision, never once glancing at the pieces he sacrificed.

He rarely spoke to her — and when he did, it was always formal, clipped, cold, like words carved from ice and polished to a mirror finish. No jokes. No emotion. No warmth. Just “yes,” “no,” and “that’s inappropriate,” delivered in a voice as smooth and unyielding as polished marble. Every conversation with him felt like talking to a very handsome robot — one programmed to be polite but not to feel, not to understand. And God, it annoyed her so much it made her want to scream, to shatter that perfect composure with a single, reckless act — to see if he’d crack, or if he was truly made of something harder than stone.

Now, she was drunk — dangerously, beautifully drunk — at her best friend’s flat, sprawled across the couch like a fallen princess in a fairy tale gone wrong. Her cheeks were flushed, a warm, rosy glow that spread from her neck to her temples, like sunrise bleeding into dawn. A half‑empty bottle of red wine still dangled from her fingertips, its contents swirling like dark blood, catching the low light in fleeting glints of crimson.

She was ranting — for the fifth time, perhaps the tenth — about him, her voice a mix of bitterness and bewilderment, words tumbling out like pebbles down a hill, gaining momentum with every syllable.

“He’s so… perfect,” she huffed, gesturing wildly, the bottle swaying precariously in her hand, “and that’s the worst part! He’s perfect and boring and infuriating — like a painting you admire from a distance but would never want to live with. He doesn’t see me. He sees a duty. A contract. A name on a document. I’m just another item on his checklist — ‘marry suitable girl,’ tick, done. No thought, no feeling, no life!”

Her friends exchanged sympathetic glances. Lila, curled up in the armchair with a steaming mug of tea, bit her lip. “Maybe he’s just… nervous?” she offered gently.

“Nervous?” she scoffed, nearly spilling the wine. “He’s not nervous. He’s frozen. Like he’s been cryogenically preserved since birth and only thaws enough to sign paperwork.”

And there he was.

Oscar.

He must have arrived ten minutes ago — silent, unnoticed, a shadow slipping through the doorway as if he’d materialised from the very air. He stood just inside the threshold, hands buried deep in the pockets of his tailored trousers, expression unreadable as ever — a mask carved from marble, flawless and impenetrable. Patiently listening to his wife — his wife — yapping about him and how much she hated him, the words bouncing off him like raindrops off a stone.

He stepped forward and said dangerously quietly. "Let's go home."