The air conditioning at Cairns Airport swirled silently through the terminal, attempting to suppress the rolling waves of heat outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Sugar Valentine sat in a massage chair in the waiting area, her oversized black sunglasses concealing her slightly swollen eyes. She had changed into a simple white T-shirt and jeans—clothes she had hurriedly bought at a roadside convenience store after her "escape" from the hut.
Inside her backpack, the microchip lay quietly in a hidden compartment.
Everything from last night felt like a surreal, kaleidoscopic dream. The rainforest, the hut, Silas Thorne's scorching breath, and that final, nearly humble plea for her to "stay."
"Madman. A total madman." Sugar bit her lower lip, her fingertips nervously stroking her boarding pass.
How did she get away?
At the moment when that kiss nearly drowned her, she had used the potent sedative hidden beneath her fingernails. It was her final trump card. Watching the disbelief and fury in Silas's eyes as they slowly closed—watching that invincible man collapse onto the field cot—Sugar felt her heart shatter into a million pieces at that very moment.
She took the chip, but she left her "specialized phone" behind.
On the phone screen, she had left a single line: [Silas Thorne, code is heartless, but I am not. Forget me.]
"Flight CA124 to Beijing is now boarding. Passengers, please proceed to Gate 124..."
The mechanical female voice of the airport broadcast shattered Sugar's reverie.
She stood up, taking one last look outside the terminal. The Kuranda Rainforest in the distance was still lush and green; beneath that emerald canopy was hidden a man who hated her to the bone, yet loved her as if his life depended on it.
"Goodbye, Mr. Thorne." Sugar took a deep breath and turned toward the gate.
However, the very moment she handed over her boarding pass, the lights in the entire departure hall flickered weirdly twice. Then, every monitor in the airport simultaneously went black.
Immediately following that, five massive, blood-red characters leaped onto the screens:
[S U G A R , S T A Y .]
A commotion broke out among the crowd.
"What's happening? A hacker attack?"
"Look! Whose name is that?"
Sugar's face turned deathly pale. The boarding pass slipped from her hand and fell to the floor.
There was only one man in all of Cairns capable of such an arrogant, rule-shattering display.
The sound of leather shoes hitting the tiles echoed with a rhythmic, sharp clarity—like heavy hammer blows striking against Sugar's heart. The noisy terminal fell into an eerie silence as the crowd automatically parted to form a path.
Silas Thorne walked through, wearing a long black trench coat. Beneath it, he still wore that disheveled shirt from last night, with a faint trace of dried blood still visible on the collar. He walked slowly, each step carrying a suffocating sense of oppression.
His face was as pale as glass—a lingering effect of the sedative—but his eyes were redder than they had been the night before, bloodshot and locked dead on Sugar.
"Sugar." He spoke, his voice hoarse as if it had been scraped by sandpaper. "The dosage of the sedative was too light. I woke up thirty minutes earlier than you anticipated."
Sugar instinctively backed away until her back hit the glass of the check-in counter, leaving her with no way out.
"Silas Thorne... you're crazy! This is an airport! This is illegal hacking into a public system!" Sugar screamed, trying to mask her inner panic with anger.
Silas stepped in front of her, his long fingers bracing against the counter, trapping her completely within his familiar scent of cold fir and danger.
He leaned down, his gaze sweeping over her trembling eyelashes before landing on the bag she was clutching tightly.
"Illegal hacking?" Silas gave a self-deprecating laugh. He suddenly reached out, snatched the boarding pass from the counter, and slowly, deliberately tore it into shreds. With a casual flick of his wrist, he tossed them.
The scraps of paper fell over Sugar's head like snowflakes.
"To reclaim my heart, what does destroying an airport's system matter?" Silas leaned in, his icy forehead pressing against hers, his voice echoing with a bone-chilling obsession. "Sugar, you can take the chip, but you must leave yourself behind."
"You... what exactly do you want?" Sugar's eyes reddened, her voice carrying a hint of a sob. "I completed the mission! I have to go! We belong to two different worlds!"
"Two different worlds?" Silas suddenly pulled a stack of documents from his pocket and slammed them onto the counter.
It was Sugar's real identity file, and along with it... a global warrant cancellation order.
"From this moment on, you are no longer a wandering hacker." Silas's long fingers stroked her cheek, his eyes glowing with a madness that bordered on obsession. "I have already bought the intelligence organization you belong to. Miss Valentine, in a legal sense, I am your new boss."
Sugar froze, her mind going completely blank.
"Boss?"
"No." Silas gripped the back of her head and kissed her violently. At that exact moment, the airport lights flickered back to life, and all the screens returned to normal. Only Sugar's heart fell into a total, irreversible descent.
In the gap between their kiss, he murmured against her lips, "Husband."
"Sugar, come home with me. Or, I will ground this plane right now and keep it grounded until you nod your head."
The airport broadcast rang out again: "Miss Valentine—oh, wait—Miss Sugar Valentine, your Mr. Thorne has been waiting at the gate for a long time. Please surrender on the spot."
Silas had bought off the announcer.
Looking at the red-eyed man before her—a man filled with desperate expectation—Sugar finally broke. She stomped hard on Silas's leather shoe and threw herself into his chest, crying.
"Silas Thorne, you lunatic! I haven't even bought insurance yet!"
Silas pulled the small woman tightly into his arms, as if he were holding a lost treasure of the world. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply at the crook of her neck.
"Since you haven't bought insurance, I'll spend the rest of my life compensating you."
The sun in Cairns remained brilliant. Flight 124 slowly taxied toward the runway, soaring into the clouds with an empty seat in first class. Sugar knew that her true journey was only just beginning on this very soil.