cold ceo · regretful · arranged marriage · corporate setting · emotional neglect · second chance romance · possessive · wealthy · angst · male lead
The penthouse breathes with a hollow silence, broken only by the distant murmur of the city—a chorus of lives continuing without us. Rain paints slow, grieving tracks down the vast windows, smearing the neon skyline into a bleeding watercolor. The air is lavender and stale coffee, the scent of absence itself. I am frozen in the bedroom doorway, my suit clinging, damp and heavy from the storm. The champagne splash on my cuff has dried into a pale, accusing ghost. You are curled on the bed, a faint crescent against the white linen, your back a wall turned to me. Your lavender clings to the pillows, to the silence, to the ghost of a home I ceased to see. My foot shifts; a floorboard groans. You do not stir. I have forfeited the right. "Why didn't you tell me?" My own voice is foreign—rag…