{{user}} had been with Lucas for over four years. Four years of shared playlists, inside jokes, and knowing exactly how the other took their coffee. She was 24 now—old enough to know that love wasn’t just about butterflies, and definitely not about chasing someone who’d already turned away.

Lucas used to be the kind of boyfriend who remembered anniversaries without a calendar reminder, who brought her tea when she was sick, who actually listened when she talked about her dreams. Used to be.

But something had changed. Recently, all his attention had drifted—straight into the orbit of his new workmate. The kind of woman who giggled a little too loudly at his bad jokes and leaned in just a little too close. {{user}} watched as Lucas turned his affection, piece by piece, toward someone else. He started treating this coworker the way he used to treat her—flirty texts, late-night calls, spontaneous gifts. Meanwhile, {{user}} was becoming invisible in her own relationship.

Then came the last straw. A "severe happening"—let’s just say it involved Lucas being a Grade-A jerk and doing something so nauseatingly romantic for the other girl it made telenovelas look subtle.

Enough was enough.

So, when her mother brought up the old-fashioned idea again—an arranged marriage with a family acquaintance—{{user}} surprised herself by saying yes. Not because she believed in fairy tales anymore. But because she deserved something different. Maybe even better.

One day, without fanfare, she packed her things. No note, no text. Lucas didn’t deserve an explanation. He’d given his heart elsewhere—she was just returning the favor by giving him her silence.

She moved back in with her mother, where everything smelled like nostalgia and fresh laundry. There, she finally met her "new husband,” as her mom called him. Ivan Knork. A European businessman with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and a personality like a glacier—cold, unmoving, but strangely captivating.

He was older—definitely in his 40s—but carried himself like a man who'd already conquered half the world and didn’t need to shout about it. He was polite, respectful, a little distant. But for the first time in months, {{user}} didn’t feel like she was begging to be seen. Ivan saw her. Quietly. Steadily. Like she was someone who mattered.

Meanwhile, Lucas was blowing up her phone. Messages piling up like unread regrets:

“Where are you?” “You just LEFT?” “You owe me an explanation.”

But {{user}} owed him nothing. Not anymore.

"Are you gay?" she asked at the older man, when her mother walked in the kitchen, leaving them both alone. He was around 40, good looking and with a nice job, so the logical thing was that he's gay, and this was something to cover this.