Ellie POV:
The Escalade didn't head for a local estate. It blasted past highway exits straight to Teterboro Airport.
Within twenty minutes of being seized, I was carried up the air-stairs of a Gulfstream G650. The private jet's twin engines were already whining at idle, ready for immediate taxi. He dumped me into an oversized Italian leather recliner and strapped the harness across my chest himself.
I looked out the oval window, memorizing the tail number and the heading on the runway.
As the jet climbed through twenty thousand feet, I tested my extremities beneath the blanket. A faint, electric tingling prickled at my toes and the tips of my fingers. Motor function was returning ahead of schedule, likely accelerated by my elevated metabolic rate. My diaphragm felt lighter; I could draw deeper breaths. But I kept my posture slumped, feigning total helplessness.
Across the aisle, the man sat with a tablet, rapidly signing digital documents and taking encrypted calls.
"Is the trauma surgeon on standby?" he barked into his headset. "Keep the ECMO unit primed. If her pulse dips below forty, inject the atropine. I'm landing in four hours."
His voice shook on the last sentence. A hairline fracture in his icy facade.
When the jet finally touched down, the desert heat hit us through the opening cabin door. The neon glare of the Las Vegas Strip cut through the dusk.
Another convoy was waiting on the tarmac. We were driven at breakneck speed down the boulevard, screeching to a halt outside a whitewashed, 24-hour wedding chapel. The neon sign buzzed: A Little White Chapel.
The building was completely cordoned off. Private security held the perimeter.
He unbuckled me, dragged me out of the car, and hauled me through the double doors. A man in a sharp grey suit—evidently a high-priced corporate attorney—was pacing beside an ordained officiant.
"Is the paperwork drawn?" the man holding me demanded.
"Ready for signatures, Mr. Leon," the lawyer said nervously, laying out a crisp document alongside a gold Montblanc pen.
If I really marry this man, what about Dick?
My fingers had regained about forty percent of their strength. My vocal cords were rasping back to life. As he shoved me toward the mahogany desk, I planted my heels against the carpet.
"N-no..." I forced the words past my dry lips, looking straight into his furious face. "You... have the wrong... woman. I'm not... your Spencer..."
He didn't even pause to process the syllables. He heard defiance, nothing more.
"Still fighting?" His fingers clamped around my throat with sudden, bruising force, shoving me back against the paneled wall. Oxygen cut off in an instant. "You took ten million dollars from the Leon Foundation to be my PR fiancée and stabilize our public shares. You disappeared the day you were supposed to visit my grandmother, and the stress put her in the hospital. You are signing this legal marriage certificate tonight, or I will dismantle the Spencer family piece by piece."
Ten million dollars. PR fiancée. The Leon Foundation.
The pieces clicked together in my suffocating brain. The runaway woman shared my name and my face. But this lunatic was too blinded by panic to verify who he had actually grabbed.
My tactical calculus was instantaneous: I had no phone, no ID, no money, and was surrounded by armed guards in Nevada. If I refused and he threw me into a private cell, I would have zero leverage and no access to the outside world. But if I signed, I stayed in his inner circle. I stayed close to the dying grandmother. And I could dismantle this sham from the inside.
I reached for the pen.
He loosened his chokehold. I dropped into the chair, coughing roughly, drawing air into my bruised trachea.
I took the pen. With deliberate, trembling strokes, I signed: Ellie Spencer.
Except I altered the terminal stroke of the 'S' and dropped the secondary cross on the 'p'—a subtle forensic discrepancy that would render the signature legally contestable under handwriting analysis in any federal court.
The officiant stamped the document without asking a single question. A stamped certificate was handed over.
My eyes fell on the groom's printed legal name: Julien Leon.
My chest tightened. Julien Leon. The undisputed superstar captain of the New York Titans. The "Ice King" of the NHL. A multi-millionaire heir to one of the most ruthless sports and real estate dynasties in North America.
Julien snatched the certificate, his eyes devoid of warmth. "Game on, wife."
