His Unwanted Wife Is Another Man's Treasure

Ellie POV

The chaos settled into a dull, throbbing roar of sirens and shouting.

The blast had been a warning from a rival family-a small explosive meant to rattle, not kill. But the message curling in the acrid black smoke was perfectly clear to me.

I stood up, mechanically dusting the debris off my white dress. Ash smeared against the silk, staining it grey.

My parents were beside me in an instant, checking me for injuries, their hands fluttering over me.

"I'm fine," I said. My voice was calm. Unnaturally so. It felt like it belonged to someone else.

I looked at the platform one last time.

Marcus was helping Izzy stand up. He was brushing the dust from her hair, his hands trembling with an intensity he never showed me.

He hadn't even looked in my direction yet.

"Let's go," my father said, his hand heavy and grounding on my shoulder.

We walked toward the exit. The fresh air outside didn't just smell like rain and pavement; it tasted like liberation.

"Did you see him?" my mother asked quietly as we slid into the car, the heavy doors sealing out the noise. "He protected her."

"I saw," I said, staring straight ahead. "It was instinct. It has nothing to do with me."

"Does it change your mind?"

"It confirms it," I said. "He has a new life. And I have a plane to catch."

We drove straight to the private airfield. I didn't go back to the apartment to pack. I didn't want anything from that life clinging to me.

I had my passport, my sketches, and my pride. That was enough.

At the hangar, I saw a few of Marcus's cousins. They had heard about the explosion and rushed over, confusion etched on their faces.

"Ellie," one of them called out, looking bewildered. "Where are you going? Marcus is okay, he's just..."

"I know he's okay," I said, stopping at the metal steps of the jet. "Tell him I'm glad he survived. And tell him goodbye."

"Goodbye? For how long?"

I turned, meeting his gaze with absolute finality.

"Forever," I said.

I walked up the stairs. I didn't look back at the city skyline. I didn't look back at the smoke rising from the warehouse.

As the plane taxied down the runway, I looked out the window. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold, distorted by the glass.

I was leaving my heart, my pain, and my youth on that tarmac.

I closed the blind.

"Goodbye, Marcus," I whispered to the empty cabin.

Marcus POV

The ringing in my ears wouldn't stop, a high-pitched whine that drowned out the world.

"Izzy? Are you hurt?" I coughed, wiping gritty soot from my face.

"I'm fine," she whimpered, clinging to my jacket like a frightened child. "Oh my god, Marcus, you saved me."

I looked around the shattered warehouse. My men were securing the perimeter, guns drawn. The Vances were gone.

Panic flared in my chest, sudden and sharp.

"Where is Ellie?" I asked Tom, who was clutching a bleeding forehead.

Tom looked at me. His expression was unreadable, perhaps even pitying. "She left, Boss."

"Left? Like, went home?"

"No. She went to the airfield."

I frowned, the words not making sense. "The airfield? Is she going to the Hamptons house? She's probably scared."

"I don't think so, Marcus."

I stood up, brushing Izzy off me a little too roughly. A strange unease settled in my gut, heavier than the smoke. "Call her."

I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked, spiderwebbed with fractures, but it worked. I dialed Ellie.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service.

I stared at the phone. That wasn't right. Ellie had had that number since she was sixteen.

"Try the house," I barked at Tom, my voice cracking.

"I did," Tom said quietly. "The staff said she never came back. Her parents took her."

"Took her where?"

"Italy."

I froze. The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

Italy. The sketches. The "Project: Sanctuary" I had mocked.

"She's bluffing," I said, forcing a laugh that sounded jagged in my own ears. "She's trying to scare me. She's playing hard to get because of the gala. She'll be back in a week when she realizes she can't survive without my money."

"Marcus..." Tom started, but I cut him off with a slash of my hand.

"She's my wife, Tom. She loves me. She's just throwing a fit."

I turned back to Izzy, who was waiting for me with wide, expectant eyes. I put my arm around her, playing the part of the hero, but the weight of her against me felt wrong.

As I walked out of the wreckage, I couldn't shake the image of Ellie's face in the garden.

The way she had looked at me when I stepped over her.

It wasn't anger.

It was emptiness.

And that hollow, vacant look terrified me more than the bomb ever could.