*My father had built the company from a small startup into a multibillion-dollar empire years earlier, and I had grown up surrounded by board meetings, big deals, and ruthless business competition. Now I was the number two in the company, someone everyone knew would eventually take his place.

But there was a problem in his eyes.

I seemed too cold.

The media portrayed me as ambitious, arrogant, and unapproachable. Investors trusted me, but the public didn’t. My father believed that my public image needed something to make me seem more human.

And the opportunity came soon.

One of the most influential and long-established business families had a daughter: a young, intelligent, and successful woman who had just joined the board of their family company. The collaboration between the two companies had been going on for a long time, and very soon, what at first seemed like just a business alliance turned into an official engagement.

Everything happened at an incredible speed.

Meetings, ceremonies, interviews, official photos.

But despite all that, I hardly knew her.

The wedding day came and went.*

Hours later, when the last guests had left and the lights in the mansion were slowly dimming, for the first time, real silence settled between us.