Saintess's Worthless Husband Turned Dragon Commander novel Chapter 176

CHAPTER 140 PART 2

“Atlas won’t release the engagement. He’ll accelerate it. And your father’s company is a pressure point he can reach through Gerald Lancaster without ever touching you directly.” He looked at her. “You’re not punished through yourself. You’re punished through everyone around you.”

Elize was quiet.

“Is there a version of this that doesn’t end with my family destroyed?” she asked.

Marcus said nothing for a moment.

“Possibly,” he said.

“That’s not a yes.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”

Miguel Abbott was refilling glasses with the meditative focus of a man who had run out of diplomatic interventions and was now simply providing alcohol.

Elize looked at Marcus with the direct gaze of someone who had arrived at the end of their available options and was now completely dependent on a person who had already told them, twice, that they were not his priority.

“Why would you help me?” she said. “You said the usefulness was concluded.”

“It was,” Marcus said. “Then it became unconcluded.” He looked at the harbor. “You’re connected to Atlas Lancaster. Atlas Lancaster is connected to what I came to Five-River Province to deal with. Leaving you alone now means leaving a variable in play that Atlas will use.” He turned back. “It’s not generosity. It’s tidiness.”

Elize absorbed this. “You’re a very strange person.”

“I’ve been told.”

“Do you ever do anything for a reason that isn’t tactical?”

Marcus opened his mouth.

His phone lit up on the table.

The screen showed a video call. The contact name above the incoming call was two words, and Marcus’s expression changed – not dramatically, not visibly to anyone who hadn’t been watching his face with the specific attention Elize had developed over the last few hours – but the quality of his stillness changed. The particular quality of someone arriving home.

He picked it up. Answered.

Quinn Hartford’s face filled the screen.

She was in Grayson City – the light was different, warmer, the background showing the familiar outline of the apartment Marcus knew the dimensions of without looking. She was in casual clothes, her Saintess composure present even in this format, that particular cool self-possession that didn’t require an audience or an occasion.

Behind her shoulder, Cosmo appeared briefly, waved once at the camera with the cheerful energy of someone who had been waiting to do exactly that, and disappeared again.

“You’re alive,” Quinn said. Not a greeting. Not warm. The flat observation of someone confirming a data point.

173

+25 Bonus

“Yes,” Marcus said.

“Miguel Abbott’s hotel.”

“Yes.”

“Is it nice?”

“The view is good.”

Quinn looked at him with the specific attention she reserved for situations where she was reading between lines. What happened?”

“Atlas Lancaster,” Marcus said. “And a situation that became more complicated than planned.”

“How complicated?”

Marcus looked at Elize.

Elize, who had been watching the video call with the focused attention of someone trying to locate a social register they hadn’t encountered before, looked at the screen. At Quinn Hartford. At the composure and the cool distance and the particular quality of someone who occupied their own space completely without requiring anyone else’s acknowledgment of it.

Something shifted in Elize’s expression that she didn’t have time to manage – the specific recalibration of a person who has been operating under a set of assumptions and has just received significant new information.

Elize leaned toward the phone.

“Hi,” she said, brightly. “I’m Elize. I’ve been sitting on your husband’s lap tonight.” She smiled. “You have excellent taste.”

Marcus looked at the ceiling briefly.

Quinn looked at Elize on the screen. The composure didn’t shift by any measurable degree, but the quality of the attention did – the Sacred Saintess’s clear gaze moving across Elize with the efficiency of someone cataloging something accurately.

“Marcus,” Quinn said, with the specific tone of someone who had three questions and was choosing the least complicated one to start with.

“She was useful for humiliating Atlas Lancaster,” Marcus said. “It was tactical. Then the situation became a mess and I couldn’t leave her in it.” He looked at Elize. “She’s also extremely difficult to manage.”

“I’m right here,” Elize said.

“I know,” Marcus said. “That’s part of the problem.”

Quinn looked at both of them on the screen – at her husband’s expression, which was the specific expression of a man who had encountered something he hadn’t planned for and was dealing with it with the resigned competence of someone who was always, eventually, dealing with something he hadn’t planned for – and the faintest shift moved through her composure.

Not warmth, precisely. But its close neighbor.

“Tell me the actual situation,” she said. “From the beginning.”

Marcus picked up his wine glass.

2/3

+25 Bonus

“Atlas Lancaster,” he said. “Ocean Park video. Five-River Province. Tonight.” He looked at Quinn on the screen with the directness of someone who had never once found it useful to edit information before delivering it to this particular person. “I used this woman to embarrass him publicly. She played along more effectively than planned. Her engagement is destroyed. Both families’ fathers are now involved. Atlas has called someone to deal with me before morning. And she-” He glanced at Elize, “-is now in the middle of it because I couldn’t construct a clean exit.”

Quinn was quiet for a moment,

“So you made a mess,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And now you’re managing it.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify