The morning after London's long, sleepless storm arrived with a pale sun that barely managed to break through the skyline. The air tasted cold. Sharp. As if the Thames had exhaled all its secrets along with the early fog.
Eleanor Vance walked alone across the narrow pedestrian bridge linking South Bank to the cluster of old offices where the Moreau Law Corporation kept their London branch. His steps were steady too steady for someone who had just uprooted an entire life's direction by agreeing to a marriage contract he never planned on signing.
Yet not a single line of emotion cracked across his face.
Not sorrow.
Not hesitation.
Not hope.
Only a calmness so practiced that it felt like armor.
The city moved around him like distant noise car tires hissing over wet asphalt, the murmur of commuters, the faint metallic thud of train tracks in the background. Eleanor didn't flinch at any of it. London was familiar, but today it felt like a stage, and he was an actor forced into a script he never agreed to.
The wind pushed at his coat. He didn't speed up.
He wasn't running from anything.
Not anymore.
Inside his pocket, his phone vibrated once. A message from the Moreau family's private line, short and cold:
"Meeting. 9:00. Don't be late."
He slid the phone away. No response.
They didn't need one.
He would be there he always was.
The Moreau office was a tall glass building near Blackfriars, sharp-edged and unforgiving against the weak dawn. Eleanor passed the revolving doors and stepped into a lobby washed in expensive marble and colder air. People glanced at him the way they always did half curious, half intimidated. Not because he was loud or imposing, but because he always carried silence like a shadow that swallowed everything else.
He pressed the elevator button.
The doors slid open.
Inside, Isabella Moreau was already standing.
She wasn't dressed like the woman he met the night of the storm. Gone were the soft lines, the hesitant glances, the quiet grief that clung to her like mist. Today Isabella looked… unbreakable. A fitted black coat, hair pinned up, expression sculpted into elegance and steel.
Her gaze flicked to him brief, assessing, unreadable.
"Mr. Vance," she said.
"Miss Moreau."
A beat of quiet.
The elevator doors closed.
The ride up felt tighter than the small metal box should allow. Isabella's breaths were controlled, but Eleanor noticed the faint tension in her jaw, the subtle tremor at the edge of her sleeve. She hid it well. Exceptionally well. But not well enough to escape his eyes.
He had been trained to see fractures long before they broke.
"I was told you left early this morning," Isabella finally said.
"I start my days early."
"So I've been told."
"You've had me investigated," he replied flatly.
Isabella blinked once, sharply.
Caught, but not embarrassed.
"I had to," she answered. "If you and I are to enter a long-term contractual arrangement, I need to know the man standing beside me."
"You already know enough."
"That's the problem." Her gaze sharpened. "I know too little. And what I do know doesn't line up."
The elevator chimed.
Their floor.
The doors opened, and instead of stepping out, Isabella hesitated just a fraction.
"I'm trying to understand what kind of man agrees to marry a stranger for reasons he won't explain," she said quietly.
Eleanor's eyes lifted to hers dark, calm, unreadable.
"The kind of man who doesn't back out once he's made a decision."
Her breath hitched, but only for half a second.
Then she stepped out without another word.
The conference room was all glass walls and London fog beyond them. A long table sat in the middle, documents already arranged in neat stacks. A few Moreau associates nodded politely as the two entered, but kept their distance. Everyone in this building had heard the rumor: Isabella Moreau was entering a marriage contract.
None of them knew why.
None of them dared ask.
Eleanor stood beside her as the legal advisor began speaking through
clauses financial consolidation, public image alignment, press timeline, inheritance safeguards, shareholder reassurance. The words blended into a distant drone.
For every point, Isabella asked three questions sharp, concise, impossible to dodge. She wasn't merely intelligent. She was surgical.
At some point, she glanced at Eleanor.
"You agree to all this?"
He didn't look at the papers.
"I agree."
"You're not even reading them."
"I don't need to."
Isabella's brows tightened, but she held his gaze.
"Eleanor Vance, I need a partner who understands what he's stepping into. Not a ghost signing papers for the sake of convenience."
"I understand perfectly," he said. "More than you think."
The room grew quiet.
A lawyer cleared his throat and continued the presentation, but Isabella's attention lingered on Eleanor longer than she wanted to admit.
There was something in him that didn't fit the clean lines of legal contracts. Something simmering beneath the surface. Something she couldn't name
yet but she recognized danger when she saw it.
Not the kind that harmed.
The kind that changed the trajectory of a life.
Two hours later, they stepped out of the meeting room. The hall was quieter, the lights softer now. Eleanor walked beside her, hands in his coat pockets, posture relaxed but eyes alert.
"You didn't look surprised by any of the terms," Isabella said at last.
"I wasn't."
"Why?"
He stopped walking.
So did she.
Because she deserved an answer not the full truth, but something real enough to matter.
"Because I've lived most of my life being told where to stand, what to say, who to protect. This," he gestured toward the office behind them, "is nothing new."
Something flickered across her expression sympathy? Curiosity? A softening she quickly shut down.
"And yet you expect me to accept you without question," she replied.
"I don't expect you to."
His voice lowered.
"But I expect you to understand that trust doesn't come from knowing someone's past. It comes from seeing what they do next."
She held his gaze.
The world outside the glass windows blurred with muted sunlight. A gentle silence settled between them not hostile, not fragile. Something else. Something forming.
"You speak as if the future is already decided," she whispered.
"No."
His tone was calm.
"It's simply the one thing I'm willing to fight for."
A breath escaped her lips quiet, involuntary.
Then she stepped past him, her heels clicking sharply down the hall.
But she didn't walk away fast.
Just enough to hide the way her pulse had begun to change.
By late afternoon, the fog thickened again. Eleanor exited the building into the almost-evening, coat pulled close as the cold curled around him. The sky glowed faintly orange behind the clouds.
He checked his phone.
No messages.
Good.
He liked silence.
But as he crossed the street toward the underground station, a familiar black sedan rolled up beside him. The tinted window slid down.
A man with narrow eyes and too-clean gloves stared out.
"Mr. Vance. Your presence is requested."
Eleanor's jaw tightened imperceptibly.
"By whom?"
Though he already knew.
"The family."
Of course.
The past never left quietly.
He exhaled once, slow and steady, then opened the car door and slid inside.
The city swallowed the sound as the car drove off.
And somewhere in a high window of the Moreau building, Isabella watched the taillights fade, a crease forming between her brows.
"Who exactly are you, Eleanor Vance?"
Her whisper fogged the cold glass.
A question the whole city would soon be forced to ask.
.