---- 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 ---- woman he had once sworn to protect with his own life. A low, guttural sound of agony tore from his throat. He curled into a ball on the floor, his body shaking with violent, racking sobs. The carefully constructed world of Blake Wallace-the power, the wealth, the arrogance-had crumbled to dust, leaving only a hollow man drowning in a grief so vast it had no bottom. He refused to believe she was gone. For weeks, he poured his fortune into the search and rescue operation. He hired private teams, the best in the world, to supplement the official efforts. He stood on the deck of a command ship, staring out at the vast, indifferent expanse of the ocean, his face gaunt and unshaven, his eyes burning with a feverish intensity. He didn't sleep. He barely ate. He was fueled by a mad, desperate hope. He convinced himself it was all a ploy. That she had somehow survived, that she was hiding, orchestrating this whole thing to punish him. And he deserved it. He deserved every second of this torment. He welcomed it. "Find her," he would rasp at his team leaders every morning. "| don't care what it costs. Just find her." They found pieces of the plane. They found luggage. They found the heartbreaking, scattered remnants of the lives that had been lost. But they didn't find her. ---- Then, one day, a diver surfaced with something small and metallic. It was a ring. A woman's wedding band, twisted and scorched by the explosion, but still recognizable. On the inside, an inscription was still faintly visible. B.W. to E.S. Forever. They brought it to him. He took the small, mangled piece of gold in his trembling hand. He stared at it, the last, undeniable proof. His mad hope, the only thing that had kept him standing, finally died. He collapsed. The world went black before he hit the deck.