Chapter 2: The Flight Home
The freezing Denver rain continued to pour long after the iron gates of the Croft estate disappeared behind me. Each drop stung the bruises covering my body, washing streaks of blood across the pavement. Every breath felt like a knife twisting between my ribs. The doctors would later count eight fractures, but in that moment, it felt as though my entire chest had collapsed. I struggled to sit upright, coughing until the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth again. The forty-million-dollar check Julian had thrown at me lay soaked beside my hand, its ink beginning to blur. I stared at it for several long seconds before letting out a bitter laugh. Five million dollars for every broken rib. To Julian Croft, that was the value of five years of marriage.
A passing taxi slowed when the driver noticed me lying in the rain. He jumped out immediately, horrified by my condition.
"Miss, are you all right? Should I call an ambulance?"
I shook my head despite the pain shooting through my body.
"No hospital."
The Croft family owned half the private medical network in Denver. If I appeared there, Julian would know before the doctors finished examining me. He believed I had nowhere else to go. He believed fear would keep me obedient.
He was wrong.
The driver helped me into the back seat without asking another question. As the city lights blurred through the rain-covered window, I reached into the torn lining of my handbag. Hidden beneath the fabric was something I had not touched in five years—a small black satellite phone. It had no contacts except one.
My thumb hovered over the screen.
Five years ago, I had promised never to use it again.
Back then, I believed love was worth abandoning everything.
I believed Julian loved me enough to build a simple life together, far away from boardrooms, billion-dollar negotiations, and family dynasties. So I walked away from New York without looking back. I buried my real identity so deeply that even my closest friends believed I had disappeared forever.
Tonight, Julian dug it back up with his own hands.
The phone connected after a single ring.
A calm, elderly voice answered immediately.
"Miss Evelyn?"
My eyes closed as I heard the familiar voice.
"It's me, Arthur."
For a brief moment, there was only silence.
Then I heard a chair scrape violently across the floor.
"My God... Is it really you?"
"Yes."
"Where have you been? We've searched for you for years."
"I'm finished hiding."
Arthur inhaled sharply, as though he already understood what those words meant.
"What happened?"
I looked down at the blood soaking through my blouse.
"My husband ordered his bodyguards to break eight of my ribs."
The silence that followed was heavier than anything either of us could say.
When Arthur finally spoke again, his voice had changed completely.
Cold.
Controlled.
Dangerously calm.
"I'll prepare the jet immediately."
"I need to be in New York before sunrise."
"It will be waiting. The board never appointed another chairperson. They refused every candidate because they believed one day you would return."
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat.
"They waited?"
"They never stopped."
The call ended.
Outside the taxi window, the Denver skyline slowly disappeared behind sheets of rain.
Inside the Croft mansion, Julian probably believed tonight's lesson had ended my resistance forever.
He thought he had broken me.
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He had no idea that with one phone call, he had awakened the woman the entire financial world had been waiting five years to see again.
And when my plane landed in New York, Evelyn Ashford—the sole heiress to an empire worth hundreds of billions of dollars—would finally come home.
