Sweet Romance14 min read
My Fake Marriage, His Cold Rule, and the Truth That Broke Them
ButterPicks12 views
I never expected to return home from a nightclub and find the door locked against me.
"Open up," I knocked. "It's me."
"Who are you?" came Bjorn's voice from inside, dry as winter air.
"It's Florence."
A laugh. "You have Gucci and a Cayenne. Who let you think you can tell me what to do?"
I froze. He sounded amused and not—there was a curdled pride in the way he said it.
"I bought my things," I managed.
Bjorn Schreiber's laugh softened like glass breaking. "Don't make this a habit."
I stood outside, the city night cooling my cheeks. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to storm away. But the truth was small and private and impossible to shout into his closed door: I was strangely, infuriatingly reluctant to leave.
"From now on, no more late nights." He said it like law.
"Okay," I said.
"Ten o'clock curfew."
"Okay."
He watched me say it, as if he could read the small tremor in my voice.
The marriage certificate between us had been signed months ago. The wedding had been a tidy, polite thing—photos, family toasts, the kind of ceremony that makes good gossip for a week and then sinks into the cold river of memory. We were fake husband and wife on paper, neutral lines on a legal form. But somehow reality insisted on adding weight to our arrangement.
I met Bjorn back in university. He was younger then, a sophomore—the kind of boy who went to the library and read for the pleasure of learning. White shirt, book in hand, laughs with classmates. I, impulsive and convinced of my winning tactics, cornered him one evening and said, "I don't want regret. Will you be my boyfriend?"
He tilted his head like a question mark. "You can keep your regrets."
That moment changed how people watched me. My ex spread stories. People compared him and me like we were buy-one-get-one specimens in a catalog. The rumor mill made him mythic; it made me petty. He looked at me once and said, "Pursuing me is not shameful. Having worse taste is."
That one sentence added a thousand translations from other mouths. Later the same mouths staged my character and his—until I was an unflattering punchline.
Years passed. I left campus, worked freelance, scraped together rent and dinners, and still, I ran into that boy-turned-man. He had become that pale, measured success that my friends muttered about at brunch. My friend Janelle told me, "He is handsome. You should go for him," and I, dramatic and stubborn as ever, let my pride push me into a spoof plan: we would fake a marriage.
It was absurd, of course. He accepted because his family pressed. He told me he would do it to quiet them. I told myself I would accept because maybe, just maybe, his indifference hid a tenderness I could coax out.
"You're like a puzzle. I won't be fooled by charm," he said the first night we shared a couch.
"You're my puzzle too," I joked. He didn't laugh.
At first our arrangement had boundaries. Bjorn's world was a map of schedules and meetings and the company—a kingdom where he was exact and president-like. "House is yours; study is mine," he said once, pointing to the bedroom and the study. "Don't enter the study without permission."
I rolled my eyes. He was absurd.
I tried everything to break him. I came to the study with milk for him, wearing my soft nightdress. He paused the conference call with a soft click at his finger, then kicked my slipper back to me like I'd been a bothersome cat.
"Why are you rubbing your leg against me?" he asked.
"Cramp," I lied, giggling like an idiot.
"Go to bed," he said.
I left burning.
We played this game for months. I was the loud, present, silly wife. He was the cold, precise husband who reminded me of rules and rarely of tenderness. Sometimes he would let his hand brush mine on accident and I would spend three days replaying that second like a stolen song. Sometimes he would slide an expensive bag or watch toward me with an almost annoyed generosity—he had money like a weather system—and I would think the whole world had shifted.
"Why don't you wear the ring?" I'd asked once, pointing at the thin silver on my finger.
"No rule says I must," he had said.
It was the sort of dismissive line he gave when he wanted to be absolutely, unarguably unyielding. I kept the ring and, later, when money ran out, I walked into a pawnshop and tried to sell it. He walked in like a shadow.
"Are you selling it?" Bjorn asked.
"Yes," I said.
"You can tell me." He was steady. "You need money, say so."
"We're not legally divorced," I said, voice small.
"Give me a reason." He wanted proof, insisted on a rational accounting of the heart.
"Because it's inconvenient. I want a proper marriage, children—" I said carelessly, testing him.
He went quiet. "Give me a reasonable reason."
I had the courage to say it, and then I had the courage to leave a signed divorce paper on his table and walk with my suitcase to the door.
He did not sign immediately. He took my suitcase, held it, and then said, "You can't leave before I explain to my mother."
That protective, territorial instinct annoyed me. "I can explain," I offered.
"No." He said.
He went looking for the ring. He picked through orders and boxes and emails and then, he found it months later—after we had asked the company to verify our divorce filing—yet he did not return it.
"I won't return it," he said once late at night in the kitchen, standing in his bathrobe like something made of frost. "It's not a possession. It's... I don't know why I kept it."
"You can't keep my ring."
"Then why did you sell it?" He looked at me as if I had pushed a door closed on him.
"Because I needed money." I couldn't claim any higher motive.
"Then why don't you ask me next time?"
"Because you never answer."
He had his ways of controlling distance: unread messages, leaving me in rooms, scolding the staff if I was late. His mother, Corinna Bertrand, had hated me at first; after months of living with them, she softened just enough to act the part of matriarch. She told me what a wife should be. She scolded me for not being better at time or table. Still, she scolded more often than not.
"Your husband will be fine," she told me one morning. "He works hard."
It's strange how we arranged the house into zones: my bedroom and his study, like countries with borders. I promised myself I'd leave. I planned other apartments, saved every freelance contract like it was oxygen. I grew nights into days, working and taking orders. For a time, the thought that I might be thrown out didn't scar me; I had always survived.
Then came the day of the public collapse.
I was back in town handing in portfolios when I saw a woman run toward Bjorn, sobbing into his chest. Delphine Winkler.
"Delphine?" I heard some mutter.
My scalp prickled. Years earlier she'd spun rumors about me, she'd written gossip columns and peddled lies that made my life smaller. She had once written that I had followed Bjorn around like a lovesick fool. I had confronted her once. She had smirked, then deflected. That scene now—her in his arms—felt like an old wound reopened.
Bjorn stepped back from her, face a mask. "We're married," he said loudly. "This is public."
Delphine stepped back like a performer whose lines had been missed.
It was, it turned out, the start of the unravelling that was to come.
Travis De Luca—Bjorn's assistant—had always seemed quiet, efficient. He had been at my failed interviews once; I remembered him shaking his head with a faint, secret smile. He was the person who filtered the company's internships, who stamped bright red approvals on glossy paper. For months his name had not meant anything to us.
But one night, an anonymous tip told me there had been irregularities in the internship list I had once been part of. I was furious. I had been told I did not make the cut. The list I'd seen had a stamped signature that matched the assistant's handwriting.
I started digging, because that was what I did: draw the veins of the world with ink and color and curiosity.
And the veins led straight into the boardroom.
"Florence," Janelle said over the phone, worried. "If you're going to stir the company hornets' nest, be careful."
"I'm careful," I lied.
The evidence was messy but it existed: forged internal memos, a trail of payments, names on lists changed to favor certain people. Delphine's name surfaced in notes referencing "PR benefit." Travis De Luca had amended candidate names. Goddard Torres—an older friend of mine from university who had become a client—had been seen signing contracts that suddenly benefited a competitor. There were meetings, late-night transfers, and a map of favors that made my stomach turn.
We planned a public disclosure.
"How public?" Janelle asked. "Do you mean a press release? A board meeting?"
"A full board meeting," I said. "Bring witnesses. Bring transcripts. Bring proof."
I hadn't realized until that moment how much the system defended itself with silence. When I sent an email to the board, they replied with a polite, neutral "We will investigate." The company's PR tried to placate things. But I kept pressing.
The day of the exposure was cold and bright. The boardroom smelled of polished wood and expensive coffee. Company executives and a smattering of journalists filled the room. Bjorn was there, impossibly still and composed, as if the center of a storm.
"Are you sure you want to do this here?" Bjorn asked me in the hallway before the meeting.
"Yes," I said. "I want everyone to see the truth in light."
He watched me, and I watched him. There was a softness in his eyes then, like a missed chance.
At the dais I opened my folder.
"This is a list of candidates for internships last year," I said, voice steady. "This shows the candidates who were accepted, with the date stamp. This shows the original list before amendments."
Travis, sitting two rows ahead, frowned.
"And here are the payment receipts," I continued, "to third-party accounts, converted and routed through shell companies. Here is an email trail where an alias—'D.W.'—requested favors for certain names. Here is the internal approval signed off by 'T. De Luca.'"
"These are allegations," said a board member.
"Allegations," I repeated. "But now, with these files, they are facts."
Delphine sat immobile like a statue carved of porcelain.
"And who do you want to call to the stand?" Bjorn asked quietly.
"First, the assistant, Travis De Luca," I said.
Travis's face flushed. He stood when I asked him.
"Travis," I said. "Did you sell internship spots and redirect company accounts?"
Travis opened his mouth. "No—no, I—"
"It was your signature," I said, placing a printed clean copy on the table. "You signed off candidates who were otherwise not scheduled to enter the program. Your account received wire transfers three times last quarter that don't match any legal expense."
He licked his lips. "I—"
"Answer," Bjorn said, cold as a blade.
Travis faltered. The room held its breath.
"Yes," he confessed. "I... I moved the names. I took money. I thought I could fix it and be discreet. I thought—"
"Thought what?" The CEO's voice was flat.
"I thought I could borrow it as an advance," Travis said, fingers trembling. "I thought—"
He could not finish. The public watched him shift from confidence to confusion, to denial, and then to defeat. For a moment he was still the efficient man I had seen, but the mask had fallen. Cameras flashed. Someone in the back whispered into their phone.
Delphine's face changed too. At first she swallowed and then, with a practiced air, she tried to position herself as a victim. "I was used," she said quickly. "I was offered insider information to write a piece. I refused—"
"Stop," I said. "You wrote the slander years ago. You admitted you published a piece that ruined my reputation. Why?"
"I thought it would... " Her voice trailed.
People murmured. Someone took a video on a phone. A journalist raised a hand. The public room had become an audience; the walls seemed to lean in.
"Why did you write it?" I asked.
"I didn't like you," she said bluntly and immediate, like a child admitting guilt.
There it was: the ugly, human heart. After the admission, the room turned from curiosity to judgment.
The chairman called for security. "Travis De Luca will be escorted out," he said. "We have evidence of embezzlement. We will hand this to authorities."
Travis's face went white as paper. He lunged to collect his belongings.
"No," he begged. "No—please."
His eyes flicked around, searching for an ally. Everyone took a step back. It was a small and terrible betrayal unraveling in public. Social feeds lit.
Delphine, however, tried to salvage something. "I wrote things, yes. But those were words. This is business," she argued, trying to split sin and consequence.
"You used your pen as a weapon to ruin someone," Bjorn said, voice as cold as river ice. "You used a rumor to damage a life."
Delphine's smugness cracked. "I—" She looked smaller under the blaze of the boardroom lights.
Public fallout was immediate. The journalists in the room whispered into cameras and phones. The room became a theater. The board recorded statements for legal record. The reactions were audible: whoever had been complicit in the corruption shifted their weight and a few faces that had been casual at the table hardened into grim lines.
Travis was escorted out with handcuffs, his face a pale oval. The press swarmed the exit. He mouthed "I'm sorry" to me, then looked at Bjorn with a desperation I will not forget.
Delphine was fired. They read her full infractions in a formal letter: defamation, paid rumor dissemination, etc. For a moment she protested and then, seeing the evidence, the hawkish faces of the executives and the hot glare of cameras, she crumpled. Her reaction had stages: at first defiant, then shocked, then pleading, then a raw, childlike breakdown.
"This is insane," she cried. "You can't do this to me. People need me. They need my words."
Around the room, people stared. Some took their phones out and recorded. A few whispered, "She deserved a lesson." Others said nothing.
The things I had wanted were simple: public truth, and the world to see that my career had been intentionally blocked. I had not planned for the humiliation that the culprits would feel. But seeing them degraded, watching Travis' face drain of color as he was walked to the exit, seeing Delphine on her knees trying to hide her face from cameras—it satisfied a stone inside me. The satisfaction wasn't sweet; it was necessary.
Later, as legal cases opened and investigations extended, each person received a punishment fitting their role. Travis De Luca was arrested for embezzlement and fraud; he was led out in handcuffs with executives and journalists watching, the sound of camera shutters like rain. Delphine had lost her platform; her contracts dried up and her social media was flooded with comments from people she had slandered over the years. Goddard Torres, who had been dragged into handling tainted contracts, found his name on a leaked document in a way that cost him his role; he was publicly removed from his directorship at a company event, the board reading the findings aloud. Each punishment was different: Travis faced the law; Delphine faced public ruin and professional exile; Goddard suffered the slow erosion of reputation.
At the press conference that followed, Bjorn took the podium.
"We don't tolerate corruption or slander in this company," he said, composed. "Anyone who betrays trust will be held accountable."
I watched him. He had been my cold husband; now he was something else. His voice had weight beyond duty. The reporters scribbled, the microphones hungrily drank his words. People looked at me and then at him. There was a current of surprise: his defense of me was visible and unmistakable.
After that day, I stopped thinking of leaving. Not because we had resolved everything, but because the public shift had rearranged the air between us. He began to leave me messages again, small ones at first: "Are you home?" "Eat something." He would send pictures of the city from the office window, and sometimes of a book he thought I might like. In the quiet, he started to ask my opinions. Once, in the kitchen, he flicked a lid and asked, "How was the meeting?"
"Everything fine," I said.
"Tell me," he insisted.
I told him. He listened. For the first time, his answers were not the rigid, rehearsed replies but small, honest things. Later that week he stood at the doorway and quietly said, "You were right about the color scheme."
"Right about what?" I asked, surprised.
"About the palette for your cover," he said. "Change it to that blue."
Blue. It felt like a little personal surrender.
Time passed like a river. We were awkward and clumsy together. Sometimes he would still be distant, closed in the steel of his schedule. But other times, he would open and let me in just a sliver. He introduced me to people properly—not with the cold shrug I'd grown used to. The ring came back into circulation, not as a symbol of ownership but as a symbol he seemed to be learning to live with.
"I paid for your first print-run," Bjorn told me one evening as we sat near my sample books. "I want people to see your name."
I looked at him. It felt like wind in the sails: an adult acknowledgment. "You don't have to."
"I want to," he said. "I was late in many things."
The exhibition of my artbook, "Dust & Tenderness"—the new title I'd picked to carry a little of both the old hurt and new hope—sold out its first press. The news that my design IP had risen hit the feeds. I received messages, contracts, offers to collaborate. My world, which had been dim with small failures, brightened. Bjorn came to my signings; he sat at the back and held a copy like a prize, and when our eyes met he smiled with something that did not fit him but he tried anyway.
"You're nervous," I told him.
He rubbed his thumb across the book's spine. "I am. About you."
"About me?" I laughed softly.
"About what's going to happen if you find out I'm useless at being romantic."
"That's not the point," I said.
"It is for me," he whispered. "You asked me once why I didn't notice. I didn't know then. I know now."
There are still days of friction. There are old scratches. There are moments when he says "Everything" not in silly intimacy but as a near apology, when he tells me that he knows work has swallowed him sometimes. There are times I return a bag he bought me and he looks flustered.
But the worst villains had been punished in public. The man who abused his position was taken away in cuffs before a crowd. The woman who wrote poison publicly apologized and lost influence; she had every stage of reaction I had imagined: smugness then denial then pleading then collapse. The man who had been indirectly involved lost his title. Each reaction was different, and each was witnessed, photographed, narrated.
One punishment scene stood out in my mind because of its completeness. It was the day Travis was escorted out. He had gone from being a small, efficient man to someone shrieking at the cameras, calling my name in desperation.
"Florence," he said, voice raw. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"Why?" I asked quietly, and the room grew still.
"I wanted to afford a wedding for my sister," he blurted. "I thought I'd fix things and pay it back."
There was a beat of silence. Then a voice from the back—one of the interns who had been denied—shouted, "You ruined people's futures for that?" The interns around him snapped nodding, their faces rough with outrage. The reporters recorded his apology and the interns' remarks every second.
People around the table shifted. Faces I recognized as neutral partners now looked at Travis with scorn. Someone near the door took a video, a few others recorded audio, and a clip of his shame that afternoon looped across the internet for hours.
Travis's face went pale. He tried to stammer, stumble, make amends. "I can repay—"
"That's between you and the law," said one board member. "Your actions have consequences."
He begged. He tilted his head, trying to find a sympathetic face, and there was none. He fell from detachment to shock to denial and then to the collapse of a man who realized his safety net was an illusion. People muttered. Some whispered that this was a sad end to a promising assistant. Some applauded accountability. A few recorded him for their followers.
Delphine's humiliation unfolded differently. They invited her to the same room two days later to read a public apologies statement. She put on a professional face; the minutes logged her statement in full. As the PR read consequences—blacklists, contract terminations, legal suits—her expressions shifted from stiff-shouldered defiance to pleading, then the crumpling of someone who had not understood that words can cost others the work they need to survive.
Goddard Torres, who had been my old friend, came forward in a company hearing. He resigned. The board read his involvement and, though he claimed to have been naive, the public record made him accountable.
The punishments were not personal revenge. They were, for me, restorations—of reputation, of career, of balance. After months of broken sleep and whispered press briefings, I found myself with a published book and a steady stream of real clients.
One night, after a long day of signings, Bjorn came to my tiny apartment with a paper bag and a look like a man who had practiced vulnerability.
"Do you forgive me?" he asked.
"I forgive you many things," I said.
"Not everything," he retorted. "Not yet."
"We have to start somewhere," I said.
He managed a small smile and pulled from the bag a second, simpler ring—less show, more meaning—and set it on the table.
"You don't have to call me husband," I said lightly.
"I won't make you," he said. "But would you... stay?"
I looked at him then—past the boardrooms, past the punishments and public judgments, at the man who had stood in the ordeal beside me. He had been cold, yes. He had been a harsh puzzle. He had been cruel in his indifference and kind in small, precise mercies. He had been the guardian of his own rules; he was learning to let some go.
"Yes," I said.
We both laughed like two people who had found shelter from rain in the same doorway.
The book's back cover still bears a faint smudge of graphite from the last page I wrote—an accidental mark I left as memory that not everything must be neat. It says nothing dramatic. It says, simply: "I learned what Everything could mean."
The End
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