Caspian's Point of View
Some letters are never sent. Not because they weren't meant to be read, but because they were only ever meant to be written.
The house was cold— not from lack of heat, but from absence of warmth.
Everything inside was pristine, designed by professionals who spoke in clean lines and quiet luxury. Marble floors. A custom staircase. Art that Caspian didn't choose, but approved with a nod. Even the air smelled expensive.
It was a house meant for power, not peace.
Selene moved through it like a ghost in silk. Their paths crossed— at the breakfast counter, during silent dinners, in board meetings disguised as evening conversations. She never asked where he had been; he never asked what she truly wanted.
They married because it made sense.
The Navarro had money. The Velarco had influence. Their wedding had sealed an empire, the merge of two legacies built on steel, politics, and quiet brutality.
Love had never been part of the contract.
Still, Caspian wondered— should it have been?
That night, he sat alone in the study, sleeves rolled up, collar loosened, a letter in front of him that he had no business writing.
Isolde,
I don't know what I'm doing. I shouldn't be thinking about you— not anymore. But some days, you're louder than the silence in this house.
He stopped. The pen hovered.
Outside, rain fell against the tall windows, drawing blurred lines across the glass. He could still hear Selene downstairs, talking on the phone— her voice measured, efficient. Business, most likely. It was always business.
They barely spoke unless strategy demanded it.
They were two kingdoms stitched together by power, not affection.
He didn't hate her. In fact, he admired her— her sharp mind, her elegance, the way she could dominate a room with just one glance. She was everything a man like him was supposed to want.
But he didn't know if he wanted her.
He didn't know if he wanted any of this.
Because when it was quiet— when the empire was sleeping, and no one needed him to be ruthless— it was Isolde he remembered.
Her laugh. Her chaos. The way she challenged him without fear, stripped him bare with questions that didn't care about titles or empires. She had known the version of him that existed before the ambition hardened.
Before he sold his heart for legacy.
He pressed the pen down again.
You asked me once why I always looked like I was about to run. I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because the truth was— I already had. From you. From what we were. From the life I might've had if I had stayed.
The words came easier now, uncoiling from some buried place inside him.
This house is quiet. Selene doesn't ask questions. We function. We succeed. From the outside, we look untouchable. But I wonder— if you stood at our gates and screamed, would I still hear you through the walls?
He paused again.
This wasn't a letter.
It was a confession to a ghost.
A part of him still belonged to a life he abandoned. And he wasn't sure if the man staring back at him in the mirror each day was the version he ever wanted to become— or just the version that survived.
He folded the paper once. Then twice.
Then slipped it into the drawer, just like the other drafts.
Selene entered a moment later— elegant as ever, eyes unreadable. She wore a navy suit, heels clicking softly against the hardwood floor.
"We have the Milan call at 8 AM," she said, not looking at him. "Also, your mother sent another invite to the gala next week. I already declined on both our behalves."
"Thank you," Caspian replied simply.
She nodded, turned to leave— then stopped.
"You haven't been sleeping," she said, voice neutral.
"I sleep enough."
"No, you don't."
They stood in silence. The air between them felt like glass— see-through, but impossible to walk across without shattering something.
"Do you ever regret it?" Caspian asked suddenly.
Selene turned to him, brow slightly raised. "Regret what?"
"This. Us."
She didn't answer right away. She crossed her arms instead, eyes narrowing slightly— not in emotion, but calculation. Then, with clinical honesty, she said, "It was never about regret. It was about necessity."
Caspian nodded once. "Right."
"And you?" she asked, after a moment.
"I think," he began, voice low, "if I hadn't met you the way I did, I might've liked you. Maybe even loved you."
Selene gave a quiet, almost pitying smile. "But we weren't built for that."
"No," he agreed. "We weren't."
She left without another word.
And he sat back down, hands on the desk, staring at the drawer holding the letter he would never send.
Caspian stared at the desk after Selene left, as if the grain of the wood might offer answers.
He didn't know what he was doing anymore.
He had conquered every milestone his father once set for him— then broke through ceilings no one thought he could touch. The empire was his now. His name echoed in boardrooms, headlines, and press releases.
But none of it filled the quiet.
He used to think that power would be enough. That if he became someone impossible to ignore, the ache of what he left behind would fade.
But it hadn't.
Sometimes, he wondered what it would've been like to bring Isolde here. To this house. To this life.
Would she have hated the way the furniture looked too clean? Would she have laughed at the sterile way the art was positioned, like everything was afraid to be touched?
She would've opened the windows, brought in color, ruined the silence with music and reckless dancing. She would've refused to be a shadow to his ambition.
And that's exactly why he didn't bring her with him.
Because loving Isolde meant vulnerability. And in his world, vulnerability was fatal.
He rose from his chair and crossed to the glass wall that overlooked the garden. The moon was high, silver against black. He had it all— power, prestige, control— and yet, he stood there feeling like a man who had lost everything.
Because what he couldn't control was her absence.
He could buy silence, negotiate deals, secure alliances. But he couldn't undo what he did to her.
The last time they spoke was not even a goodbye. It was a strategy— like everything else.
"You'll ruin me if you stay," he had told her.
And she had smiled— that heartbreaking, defiant smile— and replied, "Then I guess I was never meant to be your empire."
She wasn't. She was the rebellion he didn't dare choose.
He pressed his fingers to the cold glass. Outside, the garden lights cast long shadows, elegant and empty.
Just like his marriage.
Selene never asked him who kept him up at night. She wasn't the type to ask questions that couldn't be solved by strategy. They lived like partners, not lovers— their connection measured in deals and dividends, not intimacy.
It didn't bother him. Not in the way it should've.
Because they both knew what this was.
But what haunted him wasn't Selene's coldness— it was his own.
He should love his wife. Or at least try. But the truth he never said aloud was this: he didn't know if he was capable of love anymore.
Not after what he did to Isolde.
He left her behind for a seat at the table— the highest table— and now that he sat at the head of it, every toast tasted like ash.
The letter in the drawer was not his first.
There were others.
More than twenty. Each one written in the quiet of nights like this. Each one filled with things he should've said when it mattered— things like I'm sorry or I was scared or I loved you so much, it felt like drowning.
But none were ever sent.
He knew Isolde wouldn't be waiting. She was too fierce, too free, to orbit a man who chained himself to power.
And yet, he kept writing.
Because in a world where everything he said became a headline, the letters were the only place he could be honest.
And honesty, it turned out, was the one luxury he had given up to become the man everyone respected.
A soft knock on the door startled him.
Selene stood at the threshold, her robe wrapped neatly around her, her expression unreadable.
"I'm flying to Singapore tomorrow. I'll be gone for a week," she said, voice even.
"Is that a warning or a courtesy?"
"Neither. Just information."
He nodded.
She hesitated. Then, in an almost reluctant tone, added, "You should get some rest."
"I'll try."
She looked at him— for a moment, really looked— as if trying to decode what he wasn't saying. But whatever she saw, she didn't comment on it.
She left quietly.
And he returned to his chair.
Pulled out the drawer.
Unfolded the letter.
He didn't add to it. Didn't revise it. Just stared at the ink like it could speak back.
Isolde once told him, "The most painful love stories are the ones that don't end. They just disappear."
She was right.
Because she hadn't ended. Not in his heart. Not in the parts of him that still remembered the girl who kissed him under the rain, who whispered wild dreams into the night, who once told him that no empire was worth a soul.
He gave up his soul.
And now all he had was the weight of words he couldn't say.
What do you do when the life you built feels like a stranger's dream?