Chapter 81: Chapter 81
The boarding line stretched a considerable distance, a sluggish river of travelers. Elise moved forward inch by inch, anchoring her gaze to the passengers ahead of her, desperate to blend into the crowd.
She was only a few people away from the gate when hurried, heavy footsteps suddenly echoed behind her.
Before she could react, a hand clamped onto her arm.
The touch was instantly recognizable. Warm, firm, and uncompromising. The hand possessed long, defined fingers, and on the man’s wrist sat a limited-edition watch available only to a select few in the world.
Elise knew that watch intimately—she had given it to him herself as a wedding gift.
Her breath caught. Jerking her head up, her eyes collided with Dylan’s dark, simmering gaze. Her entire body froze, her mind instantly going blank. For several seconds, she even forgot to struggle.
Dylan stared down at her, a dangerous anger brewing beneath his composed exterior. His jaw was locked tight, his eyes dark enough to swallow the airport’s harsh fluorescent light. When he spoke, each word landed with the heavy, deliberate force of a hammer.
"Elise, where exactly do you think you’re taking my child?"
The sentence exploded inside her head. He knew. He knew about the pregnancy.
It felt impossible. She had run through countless scenarios in her mind over the last few weeks; she had fully expected Dylan to eventually track her down overseas. What she had never imagined was being intercepted at the boarding gate itself, mere moments before her escape.
"Are you getting on or not?" an impatient traveler grumbled behind them. "If you’re not moving, step aside!"
The irritated voices around them finally snapped Elise back to reality. Inhaling deeply, she forced a wave of calm over her panic. The worst possible outcome had arrived, and she had to face it.
Looking directly into Dylan’s eyes, she said coldly, "Let go of me."
His gaze darkened further. "Elise, do you really think you’re still leaving today?"
She already knew the answer. There was no flight for her anymore. No escape. Not today. After a brief, heavy silence, she lifted her chin stubbornly. "Since you’ve found me, then let’s talk. But let go first. Don’t hold up everyone else."
Her voice was steady, giving no hint of the storm raging inside her chest.
Dylan stared at her for a beat longer before releasing his grip. The warmth of his hand vanished immediately. Elise stepped out of the boarding line, and only then did she notice he hadn’t come alone. Two bodyguards stood a short distance away—dressed in black, expressionless, and looming like immovable stone pillars.
A slight frown creased her brow. Looking back at Dylan, she voiced the suspicion that had just begun to take root.
"You arrived in Rivergate before today, didn’t you?"
A faint, humorless smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "So you’re not completely clueless after all."
The confirmation made her heart sink. She had underestimated him. Again.
It wasn’t just that Dylan knew she planned to leave the country; he had known everything.
Every step, every detail, every contingency.
He had deliberately waited until this exact second—not when she was planning, not when she was packing, not even when she arrived at the airport. He had chosen the precise moment she believed she had won, just to destroy her victory in a single move.
It was ruthless, efficient, and entirely Dylan.
As a chill spread through her chest, a horrifying realization surfaced. For him to know this much, someone close to her had to be feeding him information.
Her breathing faltered. She slowly looked up at him, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Melisa... Melissa was working for you?"
Dylan didn’t deny it. "Yes."
One simple word was all it took to dismantle her reality.
Elise laughed softly, a hollow sound entirely devoid of amusement. She was laughing at herself, at her own carelessness, at how thoroughly she had been outmaneuvered.
Everything she believed was a clean break, a carefully orchestrated escape, had probably looked like a child’s game to him.
"Watching me spend weeks planning my departure..." Her smile grew sharper, colder. "Did you enjoy it?"
The mockery failed to provoke him. Dylan’s expression remained dead serious as he stepped closer, lowering his voice.
"The mastermind behind the kidnapping hadn’t been caught yet. Quinn and I had to keep up appearances to draw them out. To make that work, I needed to remove you from the center of the crosshairs. The divorce agreement was simply part of the act."
For a second, Elise could barely process the staggering absurdity of what she was hearing.
Without consulting her, he had staged an elaborate performance with Quinn. A performance that had handed Quinn endless opportunities to humiliate her, that had thrown the company Elise built into utter chaos, and that had turned her into the premier laughingstock of North City.
Everyone knew the wealthy Mrs. Bennett had supposedly been betrayed by the scholarship student she once supported. She had endured the whispers, the ridicule, the heartbreak, and the isolation.
And now he was dismissing it all as a casual necessity. Part of the act.
The anger she had buried for months surged violently through her veins, but she kept her voice under strict control.
"I was serious about the divorce," she said, her eyes turning icy. "The agreement was drafted by professional lawyers. We both signed it. It’s legally binding."
To her disbelief, a small, infuriating smile touched Dylan’s lips.
"It is legally binding. But, Elise, you’ve outsmarted yourself." His gaze dropped briefly to her abdomen before lifting again, the smile vanishing.
"You concealed the pregnancy. Which means the agreement contains significant omissions and legal disputes."
Elise froze completely.
Now, she fully understood the depth of her trap. From the very beginning, she had never been ahead of him. Not once. Leaving home, requesting a divorce, planning her flight abroad—he had predicted it all. That was why he had signed the papers so readily. He had never intended to let them become the end.
Her hands slowly curled into fists as she forced herself to breathe. Panic would solve nothing. No matter what happened, she could not continue this marriage. Not anymore. Not even for the sake of the child. If she couldn’t escape quietly, she would have to lay all her cards on the table.
Instinctively, her hand settled over her stomach. Looking straight at him, she said, "If you think this baby will make me abandon the divorce, you’re wrong. Dylan, listen carefully."
A painful determination flashed in her eyes. "If you try to use this child to trap me, I’ll give up the child."
Dylan’s brows knit together fiercely. "Elise, do you even understand what you’re saying?"
"Of course I do." A bitter laugh escaped her, and her eyes began to redden.
"I know no mother should say something like that. But what choice have you left me? You’re more powerful than I am. Smarter than I am. I can’t beat you. But I truly, deeply do not want to live with you anymore. If you insist on using this child to keep me beside you, you’re the one forcing me into a corner."
Dylan’s expression shifted. For the first time, something complicated flickered through his eyes—frustration, conflict, and perhaps even a rare trace of helplessness. After a long silence, he sighed.
"I know you’ve never been happy about Robin," he said, his voice softening slightly. "I told you before that his identity can be corrected. He’s still young, he has no father, and his mother can’t care for him. As his biological uncle, I have a responsibility to raise him."
"You still don’t understand." A deep, bone-weary exhaustion washed over Elise.
"At first, when I didn’t know who Robin really was, I couldn’t accept him. But once the truth came out, I told you clearly: you can raise him however you want. I have no objection. The reason I insist on divorcing you has nothing to do with Bennett."
She paused, finally uttering the words she had carried in her heart for months. "It’s because I genuinely believe we are incompatible."
The air around them seemed to plummet in temperature. Dylan’s face darkened visibly, his voice dropping an octave.
"We’ve been married for five years, and you’re ending it with a single sentence about incompatibility? Elise, marriage isn’t a game."
The irony was so sharp it cut. Elise let out a short, disbelieving laugh, the hurt she had suppressed for so long finally spilling over.
"Oh, now you know marriage isn’t a game? When you were carrying out your grand plan, did you ever stop to think about me? About what it felt like to be your wife? The entire city believed my husband was having an affair with a girl I personally supported. I became a joke, a topic of cheap entertainment. I endured every bit of that humiliation, and now you expect me to smile and forgive everything because it was all part of a transaction?"
She stared at him without blinking, feeling the vast, unbridgeable distance between them.
"Mr. Bennett," she said, her tone cold enough to cut glass. "If anyone treated this marriage like a game... it wasn’t me."
