SMILE FOR THE CAMERAS
597 Words
Ariella
I never realized how loud silence could be until I sat next to Cassian Wolfe in the back of a bulletproof car.
He hasn’t spoken since the red carpet. Not a single word.
He didn’t need to.
His hand on my back, his fingers brushing mine for the perfect shot—it was all performance. Calculated. Cold. Believable.
The world is already eating it up.
Cassian Wolfe’s secret engagement revealed! Who is Ariella Knox?
From journalist to fiancée: media whirlwind surrounding Wolfe's mystery woman.
My name is trending. My face is everywhere. And the lie is alive.
I glance at him now—he’s scrolling through something on his phone, unbothered, like we didn’t just sell a fantasy to the world that might kill us both if it ever unravels.
“I thought this was supposed to protect me,” I murmur.
“It is.”
“Then why does it feel like I just climbed inside a cage?”
He doesn’t look up. “It’s safer than what was waiting outside it.”
I turn to the window. The city blurs past in streaks of light and steel. “I don’t belong in your world.”
“No,” he says. “But you broke into it. So now you stay.”
---
His penthouse is all glass, concrete, and cold elegance. The kind of place that looks like no one lives there because no one really does.
A maid shows me to the guest room—because of course, we don’t share a bed. That would imply trust. Intimacy. Something dangerously close to real.
“You’re free to redecorate,” Cassian says as I trail him through the open-plan living room. “But I won’t fund taste.”
I raise a brow. “You don’t like my personality, now you don’t like my furniture style?”
“I don’t like unnecessary things.”
I stop walking. “Is that what I am to you? Unnecessary?”
His gaze meets mine, calm and unreadable. “No. You’re very necessary. That’s the problem.”
For one breath, we stand there—nothing between us but the buzz of electricity and buried tension.
Then he turns away. “Dinner is at eight. Don’t be late. Or overdressed. Or sarcastic.”
---
Dinner is a trap.
Not the food—it’s catered and silent and somehow tastes like wealth.
The trap is the woman sitting across from me.
Tall. Elegant. Perfect posture. The kind of woman who knows she’s been invited to judge.
“Ariella, this is Delilah Wolfe,” Cassian says.
My spine stiffens. Wolfe.
His sister? Cousin? Ex-wife?
Delilah gives me a slow, amused smile.
“I always wanted to meet the girl foolish enough to say yes to my brother.”
Cassian doesn’t react. He cuts his steak with robotic precision.
I smile politely. “I always wanted to meet someone who didn’t think that sounded like a compliment.”
Her smile widens. She likes that.
“You know this won’t end well,” she says, sipping her wine. “For either of you.”
“I know,” I reply. “But at least we’ll look good doing it.”
Cassian finally glances at me. Not quite approval, but not disapproval either.
Something else. Something unreadable.
After dinner, Delilah leaves with a kiss on his cheek and a warning in her eyes. Not to him—to me.
Don’t fall for him.
I wish I could promise that.
But the truth is... I already feel myself slipping.
And he hasn’t even touched me yet.
- Writer
