Jenna Jarvis POV
The night air outside the hotel was biting, a sharp, frigid shock against my skin, but it felt like the first breath of real oxygen I had inhaled in three years.
I didn't look back at the gilded doors of the ballroom, where the echoes of my husband's applause for my humiliation still lingered.
Instead, I looked at the black SUV idling at the curb.
The window rolled down, revealing a face hewn from granite and shadows.
Kain Solomon.
He didn't ask if I was sure. He didn't ask if I was okay.
He just opened the door.
"Get in," he said.
His voice was a low rumble, the kind that vibrated deep in your chest.
I climbed inside.
The leather seat was cool against my legs. The car smelled of expensive scotch, rich leather, and gun oil.
"Drive," Kain ordered the driver.
As the car pulled away, merging into the arterial chaos of New York traffic, my phone began to buzz.
It wasn't Corbett.
It was Ivana.
I stared at the screen, her name flashing like a warning sign in the dim cabin.
I answered. I needed to hear it one last time. I needed the sting of it to make sure I wasn't dreaming.
"You really are pathetic, running away like that," Ivana's voice slithered through the speaker, dripping with venomous triumph. "Corbett is furious. He says you're making us look unstable."
"I'm not running, Ivana," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "I'm leaving."
"He'll never come for you," she laughed, a brittle, jagged sound. "He chose me tonight. He chose Elenor. You're just the placeholder that got too loud."
"You're right," I said, feeling a strange, cold calm settle over me. "He did choose you. And you deserve each other."
I hung up.
I didn't just end the call.
I opened the settings and blocked her number. Then I blocked Corbett's. Then the house line.
It felt like cutting an anchor loose from a drowning ankle.
"Done?" Kain asked.
He was watching me from the other side of the seat. He hadn't touched me, yet his presence filled the entire car.
"Done," I whispered.
"Good." He handed me a folder. "Your new identity for the flight. We are going to a private airstrip in Teterboro. By morning, you will be in France."
I took the folder, my fingers trembling slightly. "Why are you doing this, Kain? You're risking a war."
He looked out the window at the passing city lights, his profile stark against the glass.
"I don't start wars, Jenna," he said, turning his gaze back to me. "I finish them. And I hate seeing a masterpiece used as a doormat."
We flew through the night.
When we landed in Nice, the air was different.
It smelled of salt and pine and possibilities.
We took a car up into the hills, toward Grasse, the perfume capital of the world.
Kain brought me to a stone cottage on the edge of a vast estate.
It was secluded, surrounded by fields of jasmine that were just beginning to close for the night.
"This is yours," he said as we stood on the gravel driveway. "No guards inside. No cameras. Just you."
He pointed to a building adjacent to the cottage. "And that is your lab. Fully stocked. Everything you lost, I replaced. And more."
My throat tightened.
"I don't know how to repay you."
"Create," he said. "That is all I ask. Make something that doesn't smell like fear."
I went inside.
I didn't sleep. I went straight to the lab.
I worked for forty-eight hours straight, blending, smelling, crying, and blending again. I poured every ounce of pain into the vials, distilling my grief until there was nothing left but essence.
Two days later, Kain came to the door.
He held a tablet.
"You should see this," he said.
I wiped my hands on my apron. "What is it?"
"My legal team sent over some paperwork to Corbett's office disguised as a land acquisition deal for the docks," Kain said, a dark amusement dancing in his eyes. "He was so distracted by the fallout from the gala and his stock prices dropping that he didn't read the fine print."
He handed me the tablet.
It was a digital copy of a document.
"He signed it," Kain said. "He thought he was signing a union concession contract buried in the merger files. He signed the divorce papers, Jenna. Uncontested."
I stared at the signature.
Corbett Ewing.
He had signed me away without even looking, too busy trying to save his money to save his wife.
I looked up at Kain.
"I'm free," I whispered.
"Legally," Kain said. "Now we make sure you stay that way."
