---- Chapter 11 The name on the passenger list was a branding iron, searing itself into Blake' s soul. Ellen Strong. It couldn't be real. It was a mistake. A typo. "Check again," he croaked, his voice a broken rasp. He looked at the airline executive, his eyes wild with a desperate, irrational hope. "There has to be a mistake. She wouldn't have been on that flight." The executive shook his head, his expression full of pity. "Sir, the list has been verified. We cross-referenced it with the boarding passes scanned at the gate. She was on the plane." "No!" Blake roared, lurching to his feet. He grabbed the man by his shirtfront, his knuckles white. "You're lying! She's not dead! She wouldn't die. She's just trying to punish me! She's hiding somewhere, laughing at me!" The thought was insane, born of a grief so profound it shattered reason. But it was the only thing he could cling to. The idea that she was alive, even if she hated him, was infinitely better than the black, empty finality of her death. The executive gently removed Blake' s hands from his shirt. ---- "Mr. Wallace, | understand this is a shock. We have grief counselors available..." Blake shoved him away, stumbling back. He slid down the wall, landing in a heap on the floor. His world had lost its axis. The floor, the ceiling, the walls-they all seemed to be spinning. He couldn't breathe. His chest was tight, a band of iron squeezing the life out of him. She was gone. The words echoed in the silent, screaming cavern of his mind. Gone. Forever. And the memories came. Not the recent, ugly ones. Not yet. The good ones. The ones he had buried so deep he'd almost forgotten they existed. He saw Ellen on their first date, laughing so hard at one of his stupid jokes that she snorted, then covered her mouth in embarrassment, her cheeks flushing a beautiful pink. He saw her at the motocross track, her face anxious but proud, her eyes never leaving him as he flew over the ramps. He saw her asleep in their bed, her face soft and peaceful in the morning light, her hand resting over his heart. He saw her on their wedding day, her eyes shining with so much love and trust as she said her vows. "To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, until death ---- do us part." Death had parted them. But he had been the one to push her toward it. The good memories were a torment, a cruel reminder of the paradise he had willingly, stupidly set on fire. And then the other memories came, the ones he had tried so hard to ignore, the ones that were now crawling out of the darkness to devour him. He saw his father-in-law, Douglas, a kind, simple man, on his knees on their marble floor, his face a mask of confusion and pain. He heard Celesta' s sneering voice, and his own, cold and dismissive, telling Ellen it was for his own good. He saw Ellen in the courtyard, kneeling in the freezing rain, her voice a raw whisper as she chanted the humiliating words he had forced her to say. He saw her in the hospital bed, a part of her body stolen, her eyes filled with a dead, hollow emptiness that had terrified him even then. He saw her in the frozen lake, her blood staining the water, her body going limp. He heard his own voice on the phone, cool and detached, ordering his men to leave her there. Each memory was a fresh stab of a poisoned knife. He had done that. He had done all of that. To her. To the one person in the world who had loved him unconditionally. The