The rain started as the string quartet struck their first chord, fine mist turning to droplets that whispered across the rooftop canopy. Callum Virell stood still at the center of it all—polished marble underfoot, candlelight flickering against crystal, the diamond ring cold in his palm.
Everything is almost perfect. Only she is the missing piece.
The city skyline stretched behind him like a steel throne—his empire, carved from numbers and nerves. Tonight was supposed to be the next stone in that foundation. A promise. A future.
He glanced at the elevator.
He could already imagine her—Dahlia, with that soft smile she never tried to tame.
Dahlia wasn't born into power. Her mother was the head maid in the Virell estate. Dahlia had grown up in his shadows—quietly, carefully, never expecting a place beside him. But when his mother died, and grief clawed at him until the world turned to ash, it was Dahlia who stayed.
She never tried to fix him. She just stayed and journeyed with him to healing and acceptance.
Bringing lavender tea when he couldn't sleep. Hiding his broken things when he lashed out and tending to his wounds, even though he refused to. Calming him when he forgot how to breathe.
And slowly, without knowing it, he had let her in.
He loves her.
He had chosen her—not out of obligation, not out of gratitude, but because when he had been stripped of sanity, when strength had failed him and dignity had been reduced to ashes, she had given him nothing less than her best.
Then, dazed from his thought, the elevator chimed.
He turned.
And the world stopped.
It wasn't Dahlia who stepped out.
It was Seraphine Elion.
Rainwater clung to her dark coat, sleek and military in cut. Her black heels echoed across the rooftop marble. Her hair, soaked but swept back, framed a face that hadn't changed nearly enough in six years.
Callum didn't move.
Not when she stopped in front of him. Not when she raised her chin. But when he saw what she held in her gloved hand—
An umbrella. Black silk, gold trimmed.
Dahlia's.
His chest tightened.
Sera's voice came low and level, like a blade slid under the ribs.
"Sorry," she said. "Dahlia can't make it today."
No smile. No warmth.
Just a calm, terrifying certainty.
She extended the umbrella.
"She asked me to return this."
Callum stared at it. Stared at her.
"Where is she?" he asked.
Sera tilted her head slightly, her eyes unreadable.
"Safe," she said. "I wouldn't worry—unless you were planning to make her wait too long."
The candle flames danced wildly behind her, flickering in protest. The quartet faltered, bows pausing mid-note.
Callum took the umbrella. Their fingers didn't touch.
"Why are you here, Sera?" he asked, his voice low, edged with disbelief.
Her lips curled faintly—not a smile, not quite.
"Isn't it obvious?" she whispered. "I'm here to collect what I left behind."
Something in his chest snapped.
He didn't wait for her to say anything else.
Didn't give answers.
Didn't even look back.
Callum turned and strode across the rooftop, rain hitting his skin like warning shots. The string quartet faltered behind him, and the ring box burned in his pocket—useless now, a relic of a future already collapsing.
He shoved into the elevator, pressing the button with too much force, jaw clenched as the doors slid shut between him and the woman who had just rewritten everything.
Dahlia.
Something was wrong.
He knew it —not just in her absence, but in Sera's look at him. Not with vengeance. Not with regret.
But mercy.
A mercy that came with a cost.
As the elevator dropped, so did the weight in his chest.
While reaching for his car, he keeps dialing Dahlia's number. It rang. And rang.
No answer.
He started the engine with shaking hands and peeled into the rain-soaked streets.
He didn't care that the road blurred or the sign was red.
He only cared about the one person who had once saved him from the darkness—and who might now need saving from something far worse.
---
Seraphine Elion stood beneath the awning, water threading down the edge of her coat, watching Callum take the silk-handled object and run.
Then, after he's gone, she sat in the seat that wasn't for her and ate the food.
She drank the wine and asked the musician to play. Then, she waved goodbye to the staff.
The elevator doors closed behind her with a soft hiss.
Only then did she allow herself to breathe.
---
The car waited outside the Virell Tower entrance, its headlights low and silent in the rain. Sera stepped in, peeled off her gloves, and rested her head against the window as the driver pulled into the night.
She didn't cry.
She hadn't cried in years.
Not since the day she realized he wasn't coming back.
---
Six years ago, on her twenty-first birthday, while dancing with Callum, she whispered pleas to help her convince their fathers to break the engagement.
Not for freedom. Not for rebellion.
But for love.
"I love him," she had said. "And he loves me."
Callum agreed and left earlier.
Two days later, she learned the cost of her plea.
The young man she loved—Lior—was summoned quietly. Her father offered him a deal of five years. No contact with Sera. No aid. No interference. He was to leave the capital and make a name for himself. Only then would he be deemed worthy to stand beside a daughter of the Elion line. However, if Lior fails, Sera must marry Callum of Virell line.
It was cruel. Arrogant.
But fair, in the world she had grown up in.
Lior had taken the offer.
He had kissed her forehead with shaking hands, whispered that he would come back for her, and disappeared across the ocean with nothing but determination in his eyes.
She had waited.
One year. Secret letters were buried in her drawer.
Two years. Whispers of him doing well.
Three years. Silence.
Four. Nothing.
When the fifth year came, she asked her father for more time.
He granted her one more year—not for Lior's sake, but because he saw the edge behind her calm. The glass of a woman trying not to shatter.
But the sixth year came. And still, no Lior.
Not a letter. Not a call. Not even a rumor.
He had vanished.
---
In the present...
She looks at the window as the city bled past—half-forgotten lights and ghosts of lives she might have lived.
Tomorrow, she would face Callum again.
Tomorrow, she would kneel at the altar of her past and pretend she had never run from it.
He would hate her.
And she would let him.
As long as he gives her what she needs.
A marriage.
A child.
And a reason to finally stop waiting.