NEVER MEANT TO LOVE YOU

CHAPTER 3

The envelope was sitting just inside my doorway, stark white against the dark floor, placed there like someone wanted to make sure I'd see it.

I froze the second I noticed it. Seconds earlier, I'd been laughing into the phone, still floating on whatever high that date had left me on. Now the air in the room felt different, thicker, wrong. I bent down slowly and picked it up.

My name was written across the front in neat, deliberate handwriting.

My hands shook as I slid a finger under the seal. The paper inside felt crisp, expensive, like whoever wrote it had planned this long before it ever reached my door. I unfolded it, and the second the words registered, my heart just stopped.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR WAIT AND SEE.

No signature. No room for misreading it.

I hung up on Melody without a word of explanation. I couldn't. I didn't understand what I was looking at myself yet, let alone how to say it out loud.

"So that's how it's going to be," I said to no one, my voice cracking in the empty room. "Threats."

I sank onto my bed, the envelope crushed in my fist, staring at the ceiling while my mind cycled through every face that could have sent it. Martel's cold stare. The others, all smiles in public and knives in private. Any one of them had reason enough. All of them did.

The message didn't need explaining. My time was running out, and someone wanted me to know it.

My phone rang while I was still lying there, heart hammering, and the sound made me jump. I checked the screen expecting Melody calling back.

It wasn't her. It was a number I didn't recognize.

My stomach dropped before I even answered, some instinct already telling me who it was. The man from the restaurant. The one date I'd let myself hope about, just a little.

"Hello?" My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.

"Hi, um, this is Bryan." He sounded careful, like he was choosing every word. "I hope I'm not bothering you. I wanted to apologize."

I sat up straight, gripping the phone.

"I think I made a mistake," he went on. "I thought you were the woman my friend set me up with. I got home and told him how great the date went, and he looked completely lost. Turns out the woman he actually arranged for me went to the wrong address entirely."

Something in my chest sank.

"I'm really sorry for the confusion," he said. "But for what it's worth, I enjoyed talking to you. You're a remarkable woman. Thank you for your time."

He was about to hang up when something in me broke loose.

"Wait!" The word came out louder than I intended.

Silence on the other end.

"I was sent on that date too," I said in a rush, the words tumbling out before fear could stop them. "By my mother. I know how this sounds, but maybe it's not a coincidence. Maybe something's actually lining up here."

He sighed, and I could hear the apology already forming. "I wish I could believe that. But honestly, I only went to get my best man off my back about it. I'm raising my daughter alone after my divorce, and I haven't let anyone in since. I'm sorry."

The line went dead before I could respond.

I sat there staring at my phone, something close to panic climbing up my throat. The threat waiting on my bed. The rejection I'd just gotten. The walls closing in from every direction at once. I couldn't think straight enough to stop myself.

I called him back.

He picked up.

"Please," I said, barely holding my voice together. "Marry me."

Dead silence.

"I'm sorry, what?" he finally said. "You don't know anything about me. My past, who I am as a person. I don't know you either. Are you okay? Why are you this desperate?"

My throat burned, but I kept going anyway.

"Please," I said again. "Just meet me tomorrow. I'll send you the address. Hear me out, all of it. If you still say no after that, I'll never bring it up again."

A long pause stretched between us before he agreed, clearly against his better judgment.

I barely slept that night. When I finally did, the dreams were vicious, dark streets, footsteps behind me that never got closer or further away, gunshots that came from nowhere and everywhere. I woke up shaking, soaked in sweat, sure for a second that it had actually happened.

Morning showed up anyway, indifferent to all of it.

I got ready with more care than I'd put into anything in weeks. Dressed like I had some kind of armor to put on. Did my makeup like I was preparing for a fight I couldn't afford to lose.

We met at a quiet café, sunlight coming in soft through the windows, almost mocking how calm everything looked compared to what was happening inside me.

I told him everything over coffee.

The Roman family. Their reach, their expectations, the threats that came with both. I slid the envelope across the table and watched his face as he read it. I explained the deadline. The danger. The fact that I was being hunted simply for existing in a world I'd never asked to be born into.

"I'm not asking for love," I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could manage. "I don't want romance. I want an arrangement. We're married in public. We live our own lives in private. I just need protection. I just want to survive this."

Bryan sat back, studying me, his expression giving nothing away.

"I run Wise Construction," he said slowly. "One of the biggest firms in the country. Do you understand what agreeing to this would actually cost me? My reputation. My business. My personal life."

He paused, and his voice dropped, quieter now.

"My daughter. I'd be bringing her into a lie, introducing her to a woman I don't love, just to keep up appearances."

I stared at him, the pieces suddenly clicking into place.

"You're that Bryan Wise?" My voice came out flat with disbelief. "The CEO?"

Of every person in this city I could have turned to in a panic, I had somehow proposed to one of the most powerful men in the country without even realizing it.

"Hypothetically," he said after a moment, "if I said yes, what's in it for me?"

I didn't have an answer ready. No money. No leverage. Nothing to offer him that would make this a fair trade.

"I'll do anything you ask," I said quietly. "Whatever it takes. I just want to live through this."

The honesty of it sat heavy between us.

We spent hours after that laying out terms, drawing boundaries, putting everything into writing before either of us could second-guess it. This wasn't love. It was survival, dressed up in a legal contract.

The very next evening was the Roman family's annual gala, the kind of event built entirely around being seen, cameras and society and hunger for scandal all crammed into one glittering room.

I walked in with my hand looped through Bryan's arm.

He looked like exactly what he was, calm, commanding, completely untouchable. I stood beside him doing my best impression of the same, fear buried somewhere under a smile I'd practiced in the mirror that morning.

The cameras caught us instantly.

Whispers spread through the room before we'd even crossed it.

By the next morning, it was everywhere online.

MYSTERY WOMAN CLAIMS BRYAN WISE.

NEW POWER COUPLE SHAKES HIGH SOCIETY.