My Boss's Hidden Heir (Elara and Marcus) novel Chapter 217

What We Were

Marcus’s POV

Elara didn’t look away from him.

“We met freshman year,” she said. “He was doing his MBA, I was in my second year of design school. We were together almost two years.”

Marcus kept his face still.

“It was serious,” she continued, because she knew him well enough to know he needed the full version, not the edited on was in love with him. I thought we were building toward something.”

“And then?”

“And then one day he was just gone.” She said it simply, no dramatics behind it. “No call, no explanation. He was just gon and I never heard from him again.”

Marcus nodded slowly.

He picked up his jacket from the back of the chair and put it on, not because he was cold but because he needed somethi to do with his hands that wasn’t what his hands actually wanted to do.

“He ghosted you,” Marcus said.

“Yes.”

“And now he’s sitting across from me in my boardroom calling you babe.”

“Marcus-”

“I’m not angry at you.” He turned to look at her properly. “I need you to know that. Whatever this is, whatever I’m feeling right now, none of it is at you.”

Elara stood up and came to where he was standing and put her hand on his chest, palm flat, the way she did when she needed him to actually hear her rather than just listen.

“It’s ancient history,” she said. “I don’t feel anything when I look at him except surprise. There’s nothing there, Marcus. You’re the only thing there has been for a very long time.”

He put his hand over hers.

He believed her. That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was the thing sitting at the back of his mind that had nothing to do with Elara or history or a man who’d called ‘her babe across a boardroom table. The problem was the way Killian Wade had looked at him when he was supposed to be

looking at a stranger. The way he’d said ask your father like he already knew exactly what Richard would say. The way something about his face had felt like looking at a photograph of someone Marcus should recognize.

Instinct didn’t lie. Marcus had learned that the hard way enough times to stop arguing with it.

“There’s something else going on,” Marcus said.

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