Chapter 2 The Billionaire & The Nobody

Florence, Italy. Five years ago.

Vivienne Chase hadn't planned to spill espresso on a billionaire.

But in her defense, he was brooding in her favorite corner of the bookstore café like he owned the place.

"Careful," the man muttered, catching the cup before it hit the table.

"I-sorry," she stammered, trying to mop up the mess with a napkin and her pride.

"No damage."

He glanced up. Cold eyes. Sharp jaw. And a stare that looked straight through her.

Vivienne should've walked away.

But something about him-his stillness, the shadows under his eyes-felt like a storm in a glass cage.

"You're American," she said.

"And you're nosy."

She raised a brow. "You're sitting in my chair."

He smirked. "Buy the building, then we'll talk."

She rolled her eyes, turned-and paused. "Wait... I know you."

He stiffened.

She did know him. Not personally. But that face had graced business magazines, Forbes lists, and tech expos. Dominic Wolfe. Ruthless. Reclusive. Rich as sin.

"I won't sign your napkin," he said dryly.

"I wasn't going to ask. But thanks for confirming the ego."

He blinked, caught off guard. Then-an exhale that might've been a laugh.

Vivienne walked off with her pride partially intact and a strange tightness in her chest. She told herself it was just adrenaline.

The next day, he was back. Same table. Black coffee. A hardcover he didn't read.

The day after that, again.

By the end of the week, he asked, "Don't you have somewhere better to be than eavesdropping on strangers?"

She snorted. "This is Italy. We mind each other's business for sport."

"You should find a new sport."

"And you should find a new table."

They kept clashing like that. Light jabs, dry wit, shared silences.

Until one night, he found her outside, struggling with her bike lock in the rain.

"You need help?"

"I need this day to end."

He held the umbrella without asking, and neither of them said anything else.

It became routine. Coffee, banter, near-silences that spoke louder than words.

She learned he had no social media. Didn't like small talk. Drank his coffee bitter.

He learned she was in Florence for a literature program. Lived alone. Wrote things she never showed.

She didn't mean to fall.

But he looked at her like she was real in a world that had turned fake.

And when she smiled, he stared like it was a language he never mastered.

It wasn't a fairy tale. There was no slow burn. No grand gestures. No long-winded declarations of love under moonlight.

It was impulse and intensity.

Thunder in their veins.

Lips crashing in the dark aisle of a closed bookstore.

Hands learning each other like scripture.

"You're not what I expected," she whispered once, his shirt clutched in her fists.

Dominic gave a faint smile. "I get that a lot."

"No, I mean-" She paused, breath unsteady. "You're not cold. You pretend to be, but... you're not."

He rested his forehead against hers. "Don't say things like that."

"Why?"

"Because if you keep seeing through me, I won't be able to leave."

She didn't say anything. Not then. But her silence was an answer.

One night, when the storm outside matched the storm in her chest, she said, "We're too different, Dom."

He kissed the inside of her wrist, like it meant something sacred. "Good. I don't like mirrors."

"But you'll leave."

He pulled back, studied her face. "Then marry me before I do."

She blinked. Laughed, awkwardly. "That's not funny."

"I'm not joking."

Her voice lowered. "We've known each other for what-two months?"

"Sixty-three days," he said. "I counted."

She shook her head, not ready to believe him. "You're not serious."

He stepped closer. "I don't do girlfriends, Vivienne. I've never wanted to share pieces of myself until you."

"And you want to... marry me?"

"No press. No announcements. Just you and me. We keep it ours."

She bit her lip, unsure. "So... no one knows?"

"No one needs to," he said. "The world doesn't get to touch this."

She hesitated. "This is insane."

"Most good things are."

Her heart kicked hard in her chest. She pulled away, pacing to the window of the cramped apartment they'd made theirs for a few weeks. "You're Dominic Wolfe. There's an entire empire waiting for you. I'm nobody with student loans and second-hand shoes."

"And yet," he murmured, coming up behind her, arms sliding around her waist, "you're the only thing that's felt real in months."

She turned to face him. "You're not telling anyone?"

"We don't have to. It's not for them. It's for us."

Silence stretched between them. The kind that tested decisions and dreams.

"You're crazy," she finally said.

He smiled. "That makes two of us."

---

They went on a date the next evening. Not one of luxury or flash, but something that felt like them.

He took her to the gardens behind an old basilica, the kind tourists missed but locals knew like secrets. The cobblestones were uneven. The benches cracked. The candles he brought flickered wildly in the wind.

He brought pizza wrapped in brown paper and two plastic cups for cheap red wine. She wore a faded blue dress and flowers in her hair. He wore a coat that looked a size too expensive for the night.

They sat under the stars, eating and laughing.

She told him about her failed manuscripts and childhood dream of being a playwright. He listened, fascinated.

He told her about corporate wolves and the loneliness of boardrooms. She didn't pity him. She understood.

At one point, she fell asleep on his shoulder.

And that night, he didn't sleep. He just held her and watched the sky turn from ink to ash.

They got married on a rainy Thursday.

No guests. No diamond.

No promises beyond a signature and a look.

A worn-down church just outside Florence. The priest barely spoke English. The papers were signed in the backroom beside a broken piano and a rusted cross.

She wore a black dress. His eyes carried the kind of storm you couldn't outrun.

He kissed her like she was the answer to a war he didn't know he was fighting.

And for a while-

It was enough.

They moved into a one-bedroom apartment with peeling paint and leaky pipes. She wrote in the mornings. He made coffee like it was science. They danced to old Italian records and fought over the last cannoli.

There were mornings of silence. Nights of passion. Days where the world didn't exist beyond their walls.

Sometimes she'd catch him staring at her like she was a puzzle he wasn't ready to solve.

Sometimes she'd touch his face just to remind herself he was real.

She never asked how long he would stay. He never offered a timeline.

She always sensed he was a flight risk - even when his arms felt like home.

They lived like borrowed time didn't apply.

But it did.

It always did.