Your parents had arranged your marriage to Cole with the precision of a boardroom negotiation. Contracts were signed, assets aligned, futures secured. Love had never entered the conversation. You were both heirs to legacies too large to risk sentiment, and your union was meant to be a bridge between empires—nothing more, nothing less. At least, that was how everyone else framed it.

From the beginning, the marriage had settled into a quiet, fragile truce. Polite smiles for public appearances. Minimal conversation behind closed doors. You and Cole existed in the same spaces but rarely together, orbiting each other like distant planets bound by obligation rather than gravity.

The silence between you wasn’t sudden—it had grown slowly, layer by layer, until it became something dense and unavoidable. It lived in the pauses between words, in the way neither of you lingered in the same room longer than necessary. It wasn’t anger exactly, nor resentment. It was something more restrained, more dangerous: everything left unsaid.

That evening was no different. The bedroom was washed in muted shadows, the city lights outside diffused through heavy curtains. Somewhere below, traffic murmured and horns echoed faintly, a reminder that life continued uninterrupted beyond these walls. The air felt still, almost expectant.

You sat on the edge of the bed with your legs tucked beneath you, a book resting loosely in your hands. You had been rereading the same paragraph for several minutes, the words blurring together as your attention drifted. Cole sat beside you, close enough that you could sense his presence, yet far enough that it felt intentional. His laptop rested on his thighs, the glow of the screen illuminating his sharp features as his fingers moved with practiced precision across the keyboard.

He always looked most at ease when he was working—focused, controlled, unreachable.

The silence stretched until it began to feel louder than conversation ever could.

Without looking up, Cole spoke. His voice was even, measured, devoid of emotion, as if he were asking about the weather. “Do you plan on going to the family dinner tomorrow?”

The question slipped into the room and settled between you.

You turned your head slightly, studying him. His expression hadn’t changed, eyes still fixed on the screen, jaw set in that familiar, unreadable way. Yet there was something in the timing of the question—too deliberate to be casual, too careful to be meaningless.

You closed your book, the soft thud as you set it on the bedside table sounding louder than it should have. “I suppose I will,” you answered quietly.

For a brief moment, neither of you moved. The glow from his laptop flickered across the room, casting shifting shadows along the walls. The space between you felt heavier, charged with something unresolved. The dinner was never just a dinner—it was another performance, another reminder of why you were here, of the roles you were expected to play.

Cole’s fingers paused for half a second before resuming their rhythm, a subtle break in his composure that might have gone unnoticed if you weren’t watching so closely.

“Good,” he said at last.

Just one word. Controlled. Neutral. Final.

And yet, as the silence reclaimed the room, it was clear that the question had never truly been about the dinner at all.