"Three years?"
Elara repeated the words, her voice barely above a whisper in the quiet, moonlit room. She stared at the man beside her, trying to process the sheer magnitude of his confession.
In her past life, she had been completely blind. She had spent all her energy begging for Julian's scraps of affection, never realizing that the most dangerous, untouchable man in the city had been quietly plotting in the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
She didn't feel fear. She didn't feel creeped out.
Instead, a strange, dark thrill bloomed in the center of her chest. It validated everything. He wasn't just a random weapon she had picked up in a moment of desperation. He was a predator who had chosen her.
"You were going to ruin his company?" she asked, her heartbeat quickening.
"I was going to ruin his life," Alexander corrected smoothly, his thumb lazily tracing the curve of her waist. "I already had the hostile takeover drafted. I was just waiting for the gala to publicly humiliate him. But then you walked up to me in that white dress and did half the work for me."
Elara let out a soft, breathy laugh, propping herself up on her elbow to look down at him.
"So," she murmured, trailing a delicate finger down the center of his chest, tracing the edge of his faded scar. "I didn't trick the big, bad billionaire into a marriage of convenience. I just walked willingly right into his trap."
Alexander's eyes darkened, the moonlight catching the predatory gleam in his gaze. Quick as lightning, his hand shot out, catching her wrist. With a swift, effortless roll, he flipped their positions, pinning her back against the mattress.
"The best traps, Mrs. Cross," he whispered roughly, his face inches from hers, "are the ones the prey doesn't want to escape from."
He kissed her again, hard and demanding, effectively silencing any further questions for the rest of the night.
For the next four days, Alexander kept his promise. The island was a total blackout from the rest of the world.
There were no board meetings. No paparazzi. No whispers of Julian or Chloe.
Elara found herself slipping out of the hardened, ruthless shell she had built to survive her rebirth. Without an enemy to fight, she was forced to simply exist. She spent her mornings swimming in the crystal-clear ocean, and her afternoons wrapped in Alexander's oversized t-shirts, reading on the sun deck while he worked out in the open-air gym.
They didn't talk about the past. They didn't talk about the future. They existed entirely in the present, communicating through lingering touches, shared espresso, and the suffocating heat of the master bedroom.
By the fifth morning, Elara felt completely entirely different. The hollow, aching void in her chest—the lingering trauma of her murder—had been replaced by a fierce, grounding warmth.
She walked out to the sun deck, holding two mugs of black coffee. Alexander was standing by the glass railing, looking out at the horizon. He was wearing dark linen pants, his bare back catching the golden morning light.
Elara walked up behind him and wrapped her free arm around his waist, resting her cheek against his spine.
Alexander let out a low, content hum. He turned around, taking one of the mugs and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
"You're up early," he noted.
"I woke up and you were gone," Elara replied, taking a sip of her coffee. "I was starting to think you swam back to the mainland."
A rare, genuine smile touched Alexander's lips. "And leave my eighty-million-dollar wife alone? Bad business."
Before Elara could fire back a sarcastic reply, a sharp, jarring noise shattered the peaceful morning silence.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
It wasn't a standard ringtone. It sounded like an alarm.
Alexander's smile vanished instantly. His posture went completely rigid, the relaxed lover disappearing in a millisecond, replaced by the ruthless patriarch of the Cross family.
He set his mug down on the glass table and walked swiftly back into the living room. Elara followed close behind.
Resting on a console table near the front door was a bulky, black satellite phone. It was the emergency line. The one Alexander had explicitly told Liam only to use if the city was burning down.
Alexander picked it up. "Speak."
He listened in silence. Elara watched his face, her stomach tying itself into a tight, cold knot. The muscles in Alexander's jaw ticked. His pitch-black eyes grew so cold they looked entirely dead.
"Understood," Alexander said finally. "Fuel the jet. We are heading back."
He hung up the phone and turned to Elara.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice tight. "Is it Julian?"
"Julian is a cornered rat," Alexander sneered, his voice dripping with absolute venom. "But rats get desperate when they are starving."
He walked over to Elara, his hands gripping her shoulders. The protective, terrifying intensity radiating from him took her breath away.
"Julian didn't just leak rumors to the press," Alexander explained, his voice low and dangerous. "He broke into your late mother's estate last night. He forged a document claiming your mother transferred the core Vance ancestral assets to him before she died. He just filed an emergency injunction with the high court to freeze your entire company, claiming you stole it from him."
Elara's blood ran cold. Her mother's estate. The very foundation of her family's legacy. In her past life, Julian had convinced her to hand it over willingly. Now, he was trying to legally steal it to save himself from bankruptcy.
The brief, beautiful peace of the island shattered into a million pieces.
Elara didn't cry. She didn't panic. The armor she had shed over the last five days snapped back into place, harder and more unforgiving than before.
She looked up at Alexander, her eyes burning with an icy, lethal fire.
"He touched my mother's legacy," Elara whispered, the sheer hatred in her voice echoing through the quiet villa.
Alexander's grip on her shoulders tightened. A dark, predatory smirk curled his lips as he recognized the ruthless woman standing in front of him.
"Yes, he did," Alexander murmured. "Pack your bags, Mrs. Cross. It's time we go home and put a permanent end to my nephew."