From Unwanted Ward To Unattainable Queen

From Unwanted Ward To Unattainable Queen

Gavin

5.0
Comment(s)
40
View
30
Chapters

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

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.

Continue Reading

Other books by Gavin

More
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Mafia

4.5

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

When Love Turns to Ash

When Love Turns to Ash

Romance

4.0

My world revolved around Jax Harding, my older brother's captivating rockstar friend. From sixteen, I adored him; at eighteen, I clung to his casual promise: "When you're 22, maybe I'll settle down." That offhand comment became my life's beacon, guiding every choice, meticulously planning my twenty-second birthday as our destiny. But on that pivotal day in a Lower East Side bar, clutching my gift, my dream exploded. I overheard Jax' s cold voice: "Can't believe Savvy's showing up. She' s still hung up on that stupid thing I said." Then the crushing plot: "We' re gonna tell Savvy I' m engaged to Chloe, maybe even hint she' s pregnant. That should scare her off." My gift, my future, slipped from my numb fingers. I fled into the cold New York rain, devastated by betrayal. Later, Jax introduced Chloe as his "fiancée" while his bandmates mocked my "adorable crush"-he did nothing. As an art installation fell, he saved Chloe, abandoning me to severe injury. In the hospital, he came for "damage control," then shockingly shoved me into a fountain, leaving me to bleed, calling me a "jealous psycho." How could the man I loved, who once saved me, become this cruel and publicly humiliate me? Why was my devotion seen as an annoyance to be brutally extinguished with lies and assault? Was I just a problem, my loyalty met with hatred? I would not be his victim. Injured and betrayed, I made an unshakeable vow: I was done. I blocked his number and everyone connected to him, severing ties. This was not an escape; this was my rebirth. Florence awaited, a new life on my terms, unburdened by broken promises.

You'll also like

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book