Dante POV
I didn't sleep.
I spent the entire night ransacking the house, tearing it apart room by room, desperate for a clue. A note. Anything.
But she had wiped her tracks.
She was smart. She was a doctor; she knew how to be surgical, how to cut ties with absolute precision.
I called my head of intelligence at 4:00 AM.
"Find her," I ordered.
It took them six hours.
"Boss..." The voice on the phone was hesitant. "She left the country."
"Where?"
"She flew to Geneva yesterday. Then she boarded a UN transport."
"Where, Damiano? Where did she go?"
"South Sudan, Boss. Juba."
The phone almost slipped from my hand.
South Sudan.
A war zone. Active conflict. Bombings. Militia raids.
She had gone to hell.
She had chosen hell over me.
"She is working as a Trauma Coordinator for an NGO," Damiano said, his voice low. "Her flight into the interior leaves in twelve hours from Geneva."
"Get the jet," I said.
I hung up.
I drove to the airfield like a madman. I broke every speed limit in the state.
I didn't care.
I had to stop her.
I had to tell her... what?
That I was sorry? That I was a fool? That I realized too late that she was the only real thing in my fake world?
I boarded the Gulfstream.
"Fly," I told the pilot. "Push the engines to the limit."
The flight felt like a lifetime.
I sat in the leather seat where she used to sit. I smelled the air, searching for a trace of her, but the cabin was sterile. Her perfume was gone.
I remembered the look on her face when I made her stand in the sun.
The pain.
She was sick. She told me she was sick, and I thought she was lying.
I was the liar.
We landed in Geneva.
I didn't wait for the stairs. I jumped to the tarmac.
I ran.
I ran through the terminal. People stared. The Ice Prince, running like a desperate teenager.
I reached the gate for the UN transport.
It was empty.
I grabbed a ground crew member by the vest.
"The flight to Juba! Where is it?"
He pointed to the window.
"It left early," he stammered. "To beat the storm."
I looked out the glass.
A grey C-130 was climbing into the sky. It was a speck against the clouds.
She was on it.
"Elena!" I screamed.
My voice echoed in the empty gate area.
She couldn't hear me.
I watched the plane disappear into the cloud layer.
My chest hurt. A physical, crushing pain.
I pressed my hand against the glass. It was cold.
Just like her eyes the last time she looked at me.
She was gone.
And I was the King of nothing.
