Chapter Five

MARCO'S POV

I watched the only woman after my mother who had just spoken to me rudely and gotten away with it.

She sat back down into the chair, her eyes wide as saucers as she stared at grandpa.

Good thing she wasn't looking at me. It gave me more chance to observe her body language and read her subtly.

I couldn't get too close to her. Somehow, she was the only one who had managed to stir me in a way I had never felt before.

That night, three years ago, when the jerk she was married to abandoned her at the gala just to follow his mistress remained imprinted in my mind.

Perhaps it was the vulnerability in her eyes despite being drunk.

Perhaps it was the genuine love in her words when she spoke about her husband.

But something had tugged at his heart when I took her into my car that night and drove her home. She didn't seem to remember me though.

Something that none of the countless women grandpa had brought for me could stir.

But she was a married woman. Wanting her would be chasing shadows!

So I buried her somewhere in the back of my heart and poured myself into my business.

Seeing her now again, feisty and stubborn as she was, building something that mirrored my vision felt like life playing to my advantage.

But she was a closed book.

Her tongue swiped her pink lower lips before she asked, “What? How is that possible? Why does he want to also build a bunker?”

Funny. She wouldn't tell me why she was building hers but she wanted to know mine.

I couldn't tell her though. She'd most likely think I was crazy and I had definitely heard a lot of that within the past few days.

My mother was somewhere around the other side of her world, looking for a therapist to cure me of my madness.

But I knew what I had seen.

The weather was deceitfully calm and peaceful, but I had seen beyond it.

Snowy mountains. A sudden blizzard from hell. Panic rising in the world. Empty and raided supermarkets. People downgrading to emotionless beings brutally fighting over food.

What were the odds that I'd meet the only woman who my heart and body accepted, now divorced and working on the same project that had kept me awake for a week now?

Fate was such a strange thing.

“I'm right here, you know.”

She ignored me again, and that hurt.

“Tell me, Mr. Francis, and I might consider telling you why I'm building mine.”

Grandpa turned to me with a nod. “Are you going to tell her?”

She peered into my eyes. “I don't trust you.”

I raised a brow. “Okay?”

“But tell me and I might believe you.”

My palms clenched naturally. Her eyes seemed like she would believe anything.

Before I could speak, two figures walked directly into the tent, grinning.

They had their eyes on Lena since I and my father sat further into the tent, where the shadows ruled.

Adrian and his mistress, Vivian. They walked hand in hand.

Lena visibly grew visibly tense, making my jaw clench. What did these two want?

“Wow, I can see that you've finally lost it and gone nuts!” Adrian stated cooly, staring back at the site where construction was ongoing.

Vivian chuckled, clinging to his arm like a leech. “You really should get your brain checked. You're literally building in the middle of nowhere.”

“I knew that leaving me would damage you but I didn't think it would be this bad,” Adrian's words dripped with mockery.

But Lena didn't slouch or look bothered by them… that intrigued and confused me more.

“If you have nothing else to do than laugh, then you can take your leave.”

Wow. This was definitely not the Lena I had seen three years ago.

Something was very different about her and it wasn't just that she wasn't with Adrian.

She seemed confident about something that no one else knew about.

Something that I desperately needed to know too… or maybe I already did!