Ivy ( Your Neglected Wife)
At the airport terminal, the urn containing her parents' ashes felt heavier than grief; it felt like an anchor. Ivy’s phone buzzed with a frantic, unknown number. She ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. Finally, annoyed, she answered, her voice flat. "What?" It was her soon-to-be-ex-husband, his voice stripped of its usual condescending calm and frayed with panic. "Ivy, thank God. You have to fix this. My company... the entire network is locked down. They're bleeding us dry, demanding a ransom I can't pay. They said... they said they were 'calling in a marker from the Ghost of Odessa.'" The name hit Ivy like a physical blow, a specter from a past she had buried under years of feigned domesticity. Odessa wasn't a place; it was the callsign for a ghost operation she had commanded—a scorched-earth mission that had officially never happened. The marker wasn't for his money. It was for her.