Cassian Roque Velarco stepped into the marble-tiled foyer with the stillness of a man used to silence greeting him at the end of every day. His custom-tailored coat clung to the damp curve of his shoulders, a testament to the late-evening drizzle that had caught him outside the black car waiting by the curb. He didn't mind the rain. Sometimes, it was the only thing that felt uncurated— unscheduled.
The automated lights warmed the hallway in slow, deliberate intervals. Soft gold spilled across pristine surfaces. Minimalism coated the apartment like lacquer: clean lines, cold edges, art that spoke of precision but not passion. He'd chosen this space with Selene three years ago. High above the city skyline, overlooking ambition in motion. It was the kind of home people like them were supposed to have.
Cassian's fingers tugged his tie loose as he passed the console table, dropping his keys soundlessly into the glass dish. He paused, eyes scanning the empty living room. The television was on— muted— and Selene's heels were absent from the rack. She wasn't home yet.
Not unusual.
He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water, his movements practiced and economical. Like everything else in his life, even the mundane had become a routine of quiet control. Behind the glass walls, the city stretched in glittering lines, indifferent and eternal.
He didn't sigh, though he wanted to.
The weight in his chest wasn't new. It had taken root the night he said I do to a woman who had never asked for love— only partnership. And he had obliged. Not because he wanted to forget. But because it was easier to bury a ghost in practicality than to wait for it to come back and haunt him again.
Selene had never been cruel. She was composed, brilliant, an asset. The kind of woman who calculated moves in life the same way she handled mergers— clean, ruthless, with no room for sentimentality. In another world, he might have admired her more. In this one, he simply shared a name and a silence.
He leaned against the counter, holding the glass between his palms.
Somewhere in the corner of his mind, a memory clawed its way to the surface: laughter in the rain, unguarded, unplanned. A girl with wild eyes and messy hair shouting something he could no longer hear. Isolde.
He shut his eyes. Just for a moment.
The sound of the door unlocking brought him back.
Selene entered with the same elegance she wore to every boardroom— a structured blazer over an ivory silk blouse, her dark hair pulled into a perfect low twist. Her heels clicked once on the tiles before she slipped them off and set them beside the others, toe-to-heel, aligned. Her eyes met his briefly.
"You're home early," she said, setting her tablet down on the credenza like it was still warm from the last email.
"Meeting ended ahead of schedule."
"Good." She didn't ask how the meeting went. She never did.
Selene walked into the kitchen, retrieved a bottle of white from the fridge, and poured herself a glass without offering him one. That, too, was routine. Cassian didn't drink wine unless the occasion called for it— and in their house, very little did.
"How was the Bartelson presentation?" he asked.
Selene leaned on the counter across from him. "They're eager. But I want to hold them off. If we stretch it to next quarter, their desperation will soften the terms."
Of course. Strategy first, always. Her voice, clear and even, never gave away fatigue. Even now, after back-to-back meetings, she looked untouched by the day. Sharp. Unshakable.
Cassian nodded, the answer already known to him. He had married a woman who saw their marriage like an enterprise: predictable, profitable, efficient.
He respected that. At least she never pretended otherwise.
"We've been invited to the Deveraux gala again," she said, taking a sip of wine. "I told them we'd confirm depending on your travel schedule."
"I'm not sure I'll go."
"You should," she said, setting the glass down. "Your presence at these things matters more than you think. We've built momentum again after the Noxian deal."
He studied her. The delicate chain on her wrist caught the light— platinum, clean, weightless. Much like her affection. A woman who had everything under control, including her own heart.
"I'll think about it."
She nodded. That was the end of that. No friction. No questions. Just silence stretching between them, familiar as the walls.
Selene excused herself to change. The sound of her heels faded down the hallway, leaving Cassian alone with the city again.
He let out the breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Later, they sat across from each other in the dining room, eating quietly. The clink of utensils against porcelain was the only sound between them. Cassian watched the way Selene cut her steak— precise, even, never hurried.
"Do you ever think about what we were like at the beginning?" he asked suddenly.
Selene didn't flinch. "No," she said. "What matters is what we are now."
He waited, but she didn't elaborate. She never did.
He tried to remember what their beginning had even felt like. There had been no storm, no hunger, no unraveling of two souls. Just... two people who agreed on the shape of a life they could build together. No surprises. No risk.
And no Isolde.
Her name thudded against the back of his mind like it had no business being there.
He stood. "I have some calls to return."
Selene only nodded.
Cassian retreated to his study. The lights in here were dimmer, more forgiving. The room was his— less curated, more lived-in. Books lined the shelves, though few had been touched in months. A faint scent of old paper and espresso lingered in the air. The rain had stopped. Outside, the city gleamed, still and arrogant.
He sat at his desk, powered up the monitor, and stared at the emails flooding in. Numbers. Proposals. Reports. Everything moved, evolved, expanded— except for him.
There was a time when his life had color. When someone had burst into it with sun-warmed skin and stories about the sea. Isolde used to write poems on napkins and tuck them into his coat pocket. She would hum while folding laundry. Cry during films. Get lost in old bookstores. She was chaos and beauty and life, all at once.
And she had disappeared without a word.
A blink. A breath. Gone.
He used to ask why. For years, he asked.
But now, Cassian had stopped asking. Not because he no longer wanted to know— but because he feared the answer.
His phone buzzed on the desk.
Cassian ignored it at first, assuming it was another calendar reminder. But it buzzed again— twice. Short, deliberate. He picked it up.
Unknown number. No name, no preview.
He tapped the screen, half expecting it to be a mistake or a spam message.
"Do you still watch the rain from the same window?"
The words sank in like ink bleeding through old parchment.
He stared at the message, heart slowing in that precise, disorienting way it does when something long dead stirs awake.
His fingers hovered. He didn't type back. He didn't breathe.
Instead, he stared at the message until it vanished behind the darkening reflection of himself on the screen. The silence in the study felt heavier now, almost sentient.
He didn't need a name.
Isolde.
He hadn't read her words in years, but something about the simplicity, the haunting softness of it— only she could write that way. Only she would ask that.
Still watching the rain. As if nothing had changed.
As if she had never left.
Cassian locked the screen and pushed the phone aside. He stood, restlessness blooming inside him like a fault line about to split. He walked to the window, as if on cue, and leaned against the cool glass.
From here, he could see the city he'd conquered, piece by piece, in the years after she disappeared. He'd built his empire taller, louder, richer. But none of it had filled the silence she left behind.
That window had seen him through nights of wondering, of blaming himself, of playing out every what-if like a broken loop.
And now, after all this time, she reached out.
Why now?
Behind him, the study door remained closed. Selene never entered this room. It wasn't part of her world. This was where Cassian kept the messier parts of himself— his old journals, a photograph tucked in a drawer, a first edition copy of The Little Prince she had once gifted him after a fight.
He pulled it out now, fingers brushing the spine. Inside, the same napkin she'd written on years ago was folded between pages— faded, delicate.
"Somewhere, there's a version of us who made it."
—Isolde.
He hadn't opened that book in almost two years.
His phone buzzed again.
He turned slowly.
"I didn't want to leave. Not then. Not like that."
Two messages. No name. Just the past peeling itself open like a wound never properly closed.
He exhaled, long and quiet. The kind of breath you release when something fragile is returning— whether you're ready or not.
In the bedroom, Selene was already asleep when he walked in.
She lay on her side, her face turned away, her hand resting elegantly over the duvet. The lamp cast a muted glow across the room. Clean lines. Soft grays. Neutral everything.
Cassian stood at the doorway for a long time.
There were moments— rare, silent ones —when he wondered what it might have been like if they had loved each other. Really loved. Not respected. Not partnered. But burned.
He turned off the light and settled into bed beside her, careful not to disturb the stillness. His eyes traced the ceiling. His mind didn't.
It was with Isolde again.
And the ache he had long numbed was no longer quiet.
He rolled onto his back, eyes open in the dark.
The messages hadn't come again.
Cassian replayed them in his mind, the words looping with an eerie quietness.
Do you still watch the rain from the same window?
I didn't want to leave. Not then. Not like that.
A part of him wanted to believe it was just a prank. Something stupid. An old college friend with a twisted sense of nostalgia. Maybe Theo, who still thought throwing him off balance was a form of entertainment. Or maybe a forgotten number synced from an old cloud backup, someone impersonating—
But no. That kind of message? No one could have faked it. Not the way it made his chest constrict. Not the way it stirred something he'd buried.
Still, logic had always been his armor.
It was probably a wrong send.
Probably.
The next morning, Cassian moved through the motions with the precision of habit. Shower. Suit. Coffee— black, no sugar. The paper-thin schedule waiting on his phone.
Selene emerged from the walk-in closet as he buttoned his cuff. Her dress was dark, structured, paired with gold studs and a sleek clutch. She met his eyes in the mirror, her tone brisk.
"Board expects your thoughts on the Granton acquisition by nine."
"I've reviewed the terms," Cassian said, adjusting his collar. "We're taking it."
Selene nodded, not with surprise, but expectation.
Cassian reached for his watch, pausing for just a beat longer than necessary.
Selene noticed.
"You look distracted."
"Just tired." He slipped the watch on. "The meeting ran late yesterday."
She didn't question him further. She never did.
It was one of the reasons things worked between them. Or at least, lasted.
Selene moved toward the door, already typing something on her phone. "I'll meet you downstairs. Driver's waiting."
He stayed a second longer after she left, glancing at his phone one last time. No new messages.
Maybe it had been a mistake. A coincidence. He almost believed it.
But beneath his pressed cuffs and polished calm, the smallest crack had opened.
And it wouldn't close.
By the time they arrived at Velarco & Holt's private tower, Cassian had tucked the memory of the night into a corner of his mind labeled "irrelevant." He spent the morning the way he always did— sharp, controlled, unshakable.
He dissected deals. He signed off on reports. He moved money that most people would never see in a lifetime.
At lunch, he sat at a table overlooking the city with Selene and two senior advisors. The conversation was clean, structured, all numbers and future plans.
But the view outside caught his attention again— gray clouds rolling in, the kind that promised rain.
He remembered the question from the message.
Do you still watch the rain from the same window?
He did.
And for the first time in years, he hated how much of himself was still waiting for something unnamed.
That night, he returned home to an empty apartment. Selene had a business dinner, something to do with a board seat she was eyeing.
Cassian loosened his tie and stood alone by the window. The rain had finally come.
Soft. Relentless.
He watched it fall, just like he always did.
But this time, it didn't feel peaceful. It felt like something was waking up.
Something he wasn't ready to name.