My husband abandoned me on a glacier in Norway. Not metaphorically. Literally left me standing on a sheet of ancient ice while he chartered a helicopter to save another woman. But I'm getting ahead of myself. "Elena, look at your face." Marcus actually smiled at me this morning. A real smile, not the polite one he reserves for business dinners where I play the devoted wife. "You look like a kid on Christmas." I probably did. After two years of marriage—if you can call our contract that—this was our first real trip together. Just us. No executives to impress, no merger to finalize, no carefully choreographed public appearances. I'd traded three double shifts at the hospital to get this week off. My supervisor thought I was insane, giving up that much overtime pay. She didn't understand that I would have traded a month's salary for one genuine moment with Marcus Chen. God, I was pathetic. "I've never seen the Northern Lights," I said, zipping up the expensive parka he'd bought me. Everything I owned now was expensive. The clothes, the jewelry, the penthouse apartment. All of it felt like costume pieces for a role I was playing. "Thank you for bringing me here." "You've mentioned it forty-seven times since we landed." But his tone was teasing, almost affectionate. My heart did that stupid flutter thing it always did when he looked at me like I was more than just a signature on a contract. Like I was someone he actually chose. The glacier hiking tour was scheduled for ten a.m. Our guide, a weathered Norwegian man named Sven, fitted us with crampons and harnesses while explaining the route. Marcus kept his hand on the small of my back the entire time—a gesture so casual, so husband-like, that I almost forgot it was all performance. Except there was no one here to perform for. The ice stretched endlessly in every direction, blue-white and otherworldly. I'd spent the last two years in sterile hospital corridors and Marcus's cold penthouse. This felt like being on another planet. "It's beautiful," I breathed. Marcus was checking his phone. Of course he was. "The Northern Lights are supposed to be visible tonight," Sven was saying. "Very strong solar activity. Best viewing around nine p.m." I squeezed Marcus's arm, unable to contain my excitement. "Did you hear that?" He pocketed his phone and nodded. For a moment—just a moment—I let myself believe this was real. That we were a real couple on a real vacation, and tonight we'd stand together under dancing lights and maybe, maybe he'd look at me the way he looked at his phone when her name appeared on the screen. Vanessa Wright. His childhood sweetheart. The woman he would have married if his father hadn't needed an alliance with my family's pharmaceutical empire. I was the consolation prize. The business transaction. The replacement wife. But I'd signed the papers anyway, because I'd been in love with Marcus Chen since I was twenty-three years old, since the night we met at that charity gala and talked for three hours about everything and nothing. I'd been so sure he felt it too, that connection. Then his father died, and Marcus needed capital to save Chen Industries, and my father needed access to Chen's distribution network, and suddenly Marcus was proposing with a thirty-page contract instead of a love letter. "Two years," he'd said. "After that, we can renegotiate or part ways. No hard feelings." I'd said yes because I was an idiot who thought I could make him love me. We were two hours into the hike when his phone rang. Marcus's face went white. "What? When?" I watched him transform. The relaxed, almost-happy man from this morning vanished, replaced by the cold, calculating CEO I knew too well. "I'm on my way. Tell them not to contact the police. I'll handle it." He grabbed my shoulders, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "Elena, I have to go." "Go where? What's wrong?" "It's Vanessa. She's been kidnapped." The glacier suddenly felt very cold. "The ransom—they want twenty million by midnight. I have to get back to Oslo, arrange the transfer—" He was already pulling out his phone, fingers flying across the screen. "Marcus, wait—" "Sven can take you back to the hotel. I've already arranged for a helicopter pickup at the base camp." He wasn't even looking at me. "I'm sorry, Elena. I know how much you wanted to see the lights." "You're leaving? Now?" "She's in danger." He said it like I was being unreasonable. Like I was the one breaking apart our first real moment together. "What do you expect me to do?" Watch the lights with your wife, I didn't say. Stay with the woman you married, even if it was just a contract. Choose me, just once. But I knew better. "Of course," I heard myself say. "Go. Save her." The helicopter appeared twenty minutes later, a mechanical insect against the pristine sky. Marcus kissed my forehead—a brotherly gesture, nothing more—and climbed aboard without looking back. I stood on that glacier and watched him disappear into the distance, flying toward the woman he actually loved. Sven cleared his throat awkwardly. "Should we head back, Mrs. Chen?" Mrs. Chen. What a joke. "No," I said. "I came here to see the Northern Lights. That's exactly what I'm going to do."