From Unwanted Ward To Unattainable Queen

I was the orphan Marcus Thorne took in. He was my guardian, my savior, and the man I foolishly fell in love with.

But when he caught me sketching his portrait, he didn't see devotion. He saw a mess.

He called my feelings "inappropriate" and told his fiancée I was just a "minor household issue" before shipping me off to Italy to get rid of me.

He thought I would pine for him. Instead, I erased him.

I blocked his number, deleted his photos, and sent him a check for every single cent he spent on me with two words: *Debt paid.*

Three years later, Marcus showed up in Florence. He looked wrecked, desperate, and furious that his "property" had walked away.

He tried to order me home. He tried to claim he finally loved me.

He expected the girl who used to worship him to fall into his arms.

But I looked at the man who broke my heart and felt absolutely nothing.

"You don't love me, Marcus," I said, stepping back into the arms of a man who actually valued me.

"You just hate losing."

And for the first time, I watched him crumble while I walked away.

Chapter 1

Ellie POV

My pencil dragged against the paper, a sound that felt dangerously loud in the heavy silence of the study.

I wasn't just drawing a man. I was capturing the sharp curve of his jaw, the way his brow furrowed when he read contracts, and the absolute authority in his posture.

I was drawing Marcus Thorne.

The man who had taken me in when I was ten. The man who was legally my guardian.

And the man I had foolishly, desperately fallen in love with.

I shouldn't have been doing this.

I looked up at the photo of my parents on the desk. *Don't judge me,* I pleaded silently. *I know it's wrong.*

"Ellie."

The voice came from the doorway. Deep. Cold.

I jumped, my hand jerking across the page, smearing charcoal and ruining the line of his lips.

Marcus stood there, his presence filling the room, sucking the air out of my lungs. He walked toward me, his eyes locked on the sketchbook.

"What are you hiding?"

"Nothing," I lied, scrambling to close the book.

But he was faster.

His large hand clamped over mine, forcing the book open. He looked down.

The silence stretched, turning into a physical weight that crushed my chest. He stared at his own face, rendered in charcoal with a tenderness that betrayed everything I had tried to hide.

"This," he said, his voice devoid of emotion, "is inappropriate."

The word was a slap.

"Marcus, I-"

"Stop." He pulled the sketchbook from my hands. "I am your guardian, Ellie. Not your muse. Not your... whatever fantasy this is."

My phone buzzed on the desk. It was Chloe. His fiancée.

Marcus glanced at the screen, then back at me. The look in his eyes changed. It wasn't anger anymore. It was disappointment. It was distance.

He answered his own phone a second later.

"Chloe. Yes, I'm here. No, just dealing with a minor household issue."

*A minor household issue.*

That's what my love was to him. A nuisance. A mess to be cleaned up.

He hung up and looked at me, his expression hardening into stone.

"I've made a decision. You're going to Florence."

I blinked, the room spinning. "What?"

"The art program you looked at. You're going. Immediately."

"But... my life is here. You're here."

"That is exactly the problem," he said ruthlessly. He tossed the sketchbook onto the desk. It landed with a heavy thud.

"You need to grow up, Ellie. You need distance. And frankly, so do I."

"Are you sending me away?" My voice cracked.

"I am sending you where you can focus on something other than... this." He gestured vaguely at me, at the drawing, at the suffocating air between us.

"Do not come back until I say you are ready. Until I say you are allowed."

He turned his back on me.

"Pack your bags," he said over his shoulder. "You leave tomorrow."

The world didn't end with a bang.

It ended with the click of a door latch as he walked out, leaving me alone with a sketch of a man who didn't exist.