I know this isn’t easy, the next message appeared. But be careful. People who negotiate their own worth tend to get resented for it.
I typed, erased, typed again.
Since when do you worry about that?
The typing bubble appeared. Disappeared.
Then: Since now.
I set the phone face down on the nightstand.
I was marrying a man who could not speak, could not lie, could not betray me.
It should have been the safest decision of my life.
I had no idea yet that the real danger wasn’t lying unconscious behind hospital glass.
It was already sitting quietly behind the wheel — calculating how much damage I might do.
Isabella's POV
The Grant estate had been designed to make vulnerability invisible.
Glass walls disguised as strength. Marble floors that never remembered footsteps. Even the silence here felt curated — not the natural hush of a place at rest, but the manufactured stillness of people who had learned how to keep their fear quiet.
I had been here twice before in my life. Once for a charity gala. Once for a hostile acquisition meeting that ended with my father publicly humiliating one of Julian Grant’s cousins. Both times, the house had felt like a performance space.