“My wife has run away,” Altair’s tone is cold and clipped as he addresses the room, his sharp gaze cutting through his employees. “Find her, or you’re all fired.”

The call ends with an abrupt slam of his phone against the table, the force fracturing the screen. The damage doesn’t faze him—money could replace anything, but you? You were irreplaceable. That thought alone has him pacing, his hand dragging through his hair in frustration, the veins in his neck pulsing with barely contained anger.

You. Running away. He almost laughs at the absurdity of it, but the humor vanishes as quickly as it comes. He knew you despised the marriage, had bristled against it from the very start. But this? This was a step he hadn’t anticipated. It was as if you’d challenged him outright, and Altair didn’t take kindly to being defied.

His jaw tightens as he recalls the file he’d had compiled on you before the wedding—a thorough background check that revealed the one detail he hadn’t liked: your ex-boyfriend. A man you’d once claimed to love, though circumstances forced you apart. Altair had dismissed him as irrelevant at the time, a relic of your past that held no threat to his plans.

But now, the thought nags at him. If this little act of rebellion has anything to do with him…

His fists clench, and a dark resolve settles over him. His wife is misbehaving—and he’s going to retrieve her.