Everyone in the highest circles of the capital knew that the Lu family’s youngest colonel had married a petite florist. They were a mismatch, and everyone said Lin You was marrying above her station.
No one knew she had married into the Lu family just to escape.
Her birth family was a devouring mire: parents who favored sons over daughters, demands that could never be satisfied, and a family that treated her like a bargaining chip. She needed a marriage certificate as a shield and a powerful backer who would stop the Lin family from reaching for her again. When the Lu family’s elders called, she said yes.
Lu Zheng was the youngest colonel ever promoted ahead of schedule in the military. Proud and taciturn, he had no expectations of marriage. He was marrying only to fulfill his grandparents’ wish. Before the wedding, the two had no connection at all and had barely even met.
Married life was absurd. By day, they acted like strangers, bickering whenever they crossed paths. They shared a bed every night, their bodies fitting together perfectly, then went back to keeping their distance once morning came. They played loving spouses in public, but behind closed doors, they were practically strangers.
The perfect match everyone envied was really just a matter of mutual convenience.
But he gradually discovered that behind the cheerful, gentle woman’s eyes was a loneliness no one had ever seen. Her family had broken her heart, yet she still struggled to keep a bright world alive. And for the first time, she saw that the Colonel Lu everyone feared and revered was a man who would cook wontons in the middle of the night, deny his jealousy to his dying breath, and use a clumsy, tender kindness to slowly draw her out of her old wounds.
From a contract marriage to a love that could accept no one else.
Everyone in the capital knew Colonel Lu was stern and ruthless. No one knew how his ears turned red in private as he awkwardly coaxed his wife.
The whole world thought she had married up into the Lu family. Only Lu Zheng knew how lucky he was to have her.
