Isabella.
Her name alone makes me forget everything else—the migraine, the pills, even breathing.
"Send her up."
I hang up and catch my reflection. The stark black shirt and pressed trousers project the image I've cultivated—successful, controlled, untouchable. My fingers smooth phantom wrinkles and adjust my already-perfect collar, a nervous habit I can't shake.
The knock comes before I can sort through the chaos in my mind. My heart pounds louder as I move to the door, knowing exactly who waits on the other side.
When I open it, she steals what's left of my composure. Her auburn hair, caught in a messy braid, has rebellious strands that frame her face like wildfire. But it's her eyes that undo me—green as summer leaves and blazing with a fury that makes my pulse stutter.
"Look at what you've done." She thrusts her phone at me, hand trembling slightly, knuckles white against the dark case. The screen shows what I've been dreading and explains my mother and Jessica's endless messages: photos of me at Isabella's house, splashed across an online gossip site. One of her by the window. Headlines as sensational as they are inevitable.
"Isabella—"
"Don't." She steps into the room, body radiating tension like heat from a furnace. Her artist's hands clench at her sides. "Fix this. Call whoever you need to call, make whatever statement you have to make, but get my name out of your mess."
The pain behind my eye sharpens to a knife point, but I force myself to focus. "My mess?"
"Yes, I don't want to be in it, because I know how it ends."
"And how is that?" My anger rises to match hers.
"With my life destroyed."
"Destroyed?" I step closer, fighting the way my vision blurs. "You're the one who destroyed everything when you stole from us. I saw the security footage—you walking into my mother's closet, taking those necklaces."
"But you didn't see what happened next!" The words explode from her like shrapnel.
"You hid them in the cott—"
"I gave them to your mother!" She surges forward, fifteen years of fury crackling in every syllable. "Your mother set me up, Ares."
I freeze, migraine forgotten. The fire in her eyes, the way she stands her ground without backing down an inch—it's intoxicating and infuriating all at once. I force myself to focus on her words, not the way her proximity makes my skin burn.
I let the security footage loop in my mind: Isabella entering, leaving with the necklaces. Jacob's voice: We found them in the cottage, sir.
But then Ethan's words echo: "Someone transferred twenty thousand dollars from one of your father's shell companies to Wells, a day after Evelyn and Bella left the property."
My stomach churns as implications click into place. Wells had been head of security, with access to every corner of the estate, every security feed, every locked door.
"Three days before everything went to hell," her voice drops, razor-sharp, "I was covering my grandmother's shift because she was sick. Your mother called me into your father's office."
Ice creeps up my spine.
"She ordered me to get two necklaces from her walk-in closet."
"They didn't allow any staff in there. Everyone knew that."
"Oh, I knew." Her laugh cuts like broken glass. "When I reminded her of that rule, she said—and I'll never forget this—'Since I make the rules and sign your grandmother's checks, you'll do as you're told.'"
My stomach lurches. I hear my mother's voice perfectly—that cultured contempt, that velvet-wrapped steel. How many times have I heard that same tone?
"I was terrified she'd fire grandma if I refused." Isabella's voice cracks. "So I obeyed. Three days later, we're accused of theft, and those same necklaces mysteriously turn up in our cottage."
Something shifts inside me—a tectonic plate of denial grinding against the bedrock of truth. I search her face, looking for any hint of deception, but find only raw, unfiltered pain etched into every line. Pain that hasn't faded in fifteen years.
"Ares," her voice softens, raw with honesty, "I handed those necklaces to your mother. She was waiting in the hallway."
