Lydia reached out and touched his arm. “This transition will smooth itself out,” she said.
Isabella laughed softly. “You did not take my security detail,” she said. “You took the last person who still believed I was human rather than a threat.”
She left without another word.
That night, Isabella sat alone in the east wing with her laptop open, reviewing dormant patents and trial registries that had been abandoned because no one had bothered to look closely enough. Power did not roar when it moved. It reorganized.
She locked the velvet case containing her engagement ring and placed it in the back of her drawer.
Julian Grant still could not choose her.
But Ethan had.
And this time, he had chosen to stand against her.
Third Person's POV
The invitation arrived before breakfast, slipped beneath Isabella’s door by someone who did not knock and did not wait for permission.
She found it when she stepped out of the bathroom, still tying the sash of her robe, her hair damp and heavy against her shoulders. The envelope was thick cream stock, the Grantstone emblem embossed in restrained gold, her name written in Clara Grant’s precise hand.
Isabella Blackridge
Private Luncheon — Board of Directors