Love On The Run

Chapter 2

The wedding had been quiet, almost surgical in its efficiency. No sweeping ballroom, no hundreds of guests. The room felt full to bursting and empty at once, a seeming paradox neither side knew how to fix. Angela looked at her step dad two pews back, half-in, half-out of breath, the voice of the off-key choir bouncing off the dome, the civil celebrant drowning everything.

She pretended none of these issues were stirring, blurred the column of dust that sliced the moonrise sealed inside her high heels.

The shutter from the balcony slipped home again, a one-pulse freeze. The minutes dragged, one Danish glaze looping into the next.

She had repeated the words, slipped the platinum ring onto Edward’s finger, and felt nothing except the strange pressure of the band now circling her own.

It didn’t feel like a symbol.

It felt like a lock clicking shut.

The driver had taken them back to the penthouse afterward. Edward didn’t utter any word all through the drive. He glanced at his mobile phone,he replied to some important messages, and looked out the window like he was in a new environment.

The elevator doors slid shut, and a great cloud of silence filled the tiny room. She inhaled the faint bite of his aftershave, a crisp cedar chill, and wished it didn’t bite right back. He wasn’t leaning toward her; no, the space he created was deliberate, chest to shape to shape of the world, gaze like a north star pinned to the doors.

The penthouse unfolded the same way it had the first time, all polished glass and miles of unobstructed city, but today the shine feels like a winter lake you can’t safely walk on. The skyline stretches glassy and untouched, and with it creeps the impression that what was once a sanctuary is now exhibited. Every surface gleamed, every angle was calculated. There was no litter, no drift ,no cup of Joe, no proof of a human being living here. It was a mansion meant for being noticed, not a home for love.

Edward loosened his tie and set it neatly on the counter. “Your room is down the hall,” he said without looking at her. “The last door on the right.”

She raised a brow. “Not the master bedroom?”

His expression didn’t change. “We both agreed this isn’t that kind of marriage.”

“We agreed on nothing,” she said quietly.

He looked at her then, a blink of something pestering, delightful, maybe both passing through his mind. “You could’ve rejected the offer and walked away, Angela..”

“And watched my father drown? You made sure that wasn’t an option.”

For a beat, the space between them felt laced with a tension no one dared name, as if the room had collected all the unspoken grievances and was holding them like a breath. Finally, he let the silence shatter, taking one measured step to the side, courteous and reluctant, granting her the single lane they needed to inch past a truth they both knew was waiting on the other side.

Her room? Total show-off. Seriously, it got that five-star hotel vibe, but, you know, actually lived in by a human instead of a catalog mannequin. You walk in and boom—there’s this armchair chilling in the corner, acting like some kind of throne, decked out in a stupidly soft blanket that basically begs you to flop down and never leave.Those windows? Yeah, they’re not shy at all, just flexing the whole skyline like, “Look what I got.” When she let her suitcase go, the zipper made this ungodly noise that echoed, because of course, the room was dead silent. Typical, from the doorway, Edward said, “Dinner’s at eight. You’re free to do what you want until then. Just…stay out of my office.”

She whipped her head around. “Why?”

Because I freaking said so, that’s why.

He swung the door shut—yeah, with that finality you only get in movies, the kind that makes you wince. Too loud, too much, too done.

Then, weirdly, the days just...blurred. One after another, melting together into this weird, boring routine. He just lost a whole day like his time traveling or something. One minute he's convinced it’s Tuesday, next thing he knows it’s Thursday and Wednesday straight up vanished. Seriously, did Wednesday just dip without saying goodbye? Time’s got jokes. Edward always dipped out before sunrise and rolled back in when the day was already done, like his whole life was just one long, stubborn loop. Guy’s schedule was tighter than jeans. She roamed the penthouse, searching its edges, attempting to discover some remnant of the man who inhabited this place. But there were no photographs of family members, no mementos personal.

Just sleek furniture and the constant hum of the city beyond the glass.

At night, she’d hear his voice from behind the closed studying with a low voice, sometimes rising in sharp bursts when he argued with whoever was on the other end of the call. Once, she caught a single word in that clipped tone of his: payment.

It lodged in her mind and wouldn’t leave.

On the fourth evening she was standing outside the study. The door was closed, though not quite closed. Edward sat at his desk back to her, and the blue light of the computer box played on the window.

Wonder tokened her nearer. She pushed a little farther at the door another inch. There was a photograph of a woman on the table with soft brown hair and a smile which lit up the picture. She did not resemble Angela at all, but there just seemed to be something in the eyes.

Beside the photographs there was an envelope with the letterhead of her father's company.The flap was already torn, the papers inside spread out. From where she stood, she could make out her father’s signature, Edward’s signature… and a number so large it didn’t seem real.

“Fifty million.

Her breath snagged so violently she didn’t notice the brief rasp until the silence around the words cracked like ice. You could practically choke on that silence—it was that thick. For a second, she half-expected the whole room to just c***k apart, like glass under a hammer. Edward shoved himself away from the desk, chair screeching like a banshee, and when he finally turned to look at her, man, the letdown in his eyes hit first. Way before he even bothered to say anything. What are you doing?”

She froze. “You didn’t close the door.”

Doesn’t mean you can just waltz in here.” His voice was calm—almost too calm—but yeah, there was definitely a hint of don’t-mess with me underneath.

‘’I was looking for you.” It was only half a lie.

His eyes narrowed, sliding toward the photograph before returning to her. “And what exactly did you see?”

She crossed her arms. “Enough to know my father owes you fifty million dollars.”

He just froze there for a sec. Then, real slow, he got up—like he was weighing whether to stomp out the flames or just watch the whole thing go up in smoke. “No,” he said. Your father owes my company fifty million dollars. There’s a difference.”

“Don’t split hairs. That’s why we’re married, isn’t it? Not for an alliance, not for family honor to settle his debt.”

Edward’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t buy you, Angela. I gave you a way to protect your family’s name.”

She laughed, but it was sharp, humorless. “A way? You mean a corner to be backed into. You made sure the only choice I had was you.”

“I offered you a contract. You signed it.”

“A contract that came with a platinum shackle,” she shot back, holding up her left hand so the ring caught his gaze flicked to the ring—blink and you’d miss it—then shot back to her face. For a split second, something flickered there, some kind of ghost she couldn’t quite catch. Poof. Gone. His expression clamped down tight again, just walls and deadbolts.

“So I’m the villain now, huh?” he mumbled, low enough that she almost missed it. “One day, though, you’ll realize this marriage? It’s the only thing keeping you breathing.”light.

The words sat in her mind long after he left the room. Keep me alive. Alive from what? From whom?

That night, she just sprawled out on her bed, eyes glued to those city lights flickering through the window. Seriously, in this massive, buzzing mess of a city, the answer had to be out there somewhere—right?But it wouldn’t come from waiting quietly in this penthouse.

She would find it herself.

Even if it meant breaking every rule Edward had set.