Chapter 438

Chapter 438:

Isolde looked at him. For a moment, she saw the man she used to love — the man trapped in a golden cage.

“Then leave,” she said. A simple, impossible challenge.

Grayson looked back at the massive, lit-up mansion — at his grandmother silhouetted in the window, at Belle standing defiantly in the doorway.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “It’s who I am p>

“Then that’s why we are divorced,” Isolde said, her heart aching with a familiar, dull pain.

She got in the car and drove away.

Grayson stood in the rain until her taillights disappeared — a lone, broken figure against the backdrop of his gilded prison.

Inside, Belle watched him from the window. She saw the longing in his posture. She saw the ghost of a love that refused to die, and a cold, venomous fury coiled in her gut.

𝖲𝗵𝗮𝗿𝖾 𝘺o𝗎𝗋 𝘵h𝘰𝘶𝗀𝘩𝘵s o𝗻 𝗴𝘢lո𝗼𝗏𝘦𝘭𝘀.с𝗈𝗺

She pulled out her phone, her hands shaking — not with fear, but with the adrenaline of a predator about to strike. She opened an encrypted messaging app and sent a single word to a contact labeled Benefactor: Now?

A moment later, a reply appeared: The funds have been transferred. Leave no trace.

A notification from a Swiss banking app followed immediately, confirming a deposit that erased all her debts and left a staggering surplus. A cruel smile touched her lips.

She opened a new message to a headhunter, her thumbs moving with cold precision.

Subject: Project Decapitation.

Message: I want to hire every single engineer at Carson Dynamics. Offer them double. Gut the company.

A few days later.

The elevator doors slid open with a whisper, revealing the private foyer of the penthouse.

Isolde held her breath. She swiped her keycard across the sensor panel one last time. The light blinked green, followed by the heavy clack of the deadbolt retracting — a sound of finality, like a guillotine blade dropping.

She pushed the door open. She expected silence. She expected the cold, museum-like stillness that usually permeated this place.

Instead, she was hit by a wall of noise.

The surround sound system was blasting a cartoon. Laughter — bright, unrestrained, and jarring — echoed off the marble floors.

Isolde stepped inside, her heels clicking sharply on the stone. She rounded the Art Deco screen that separated the foyer from the living room and stopped.

The scene before her was like a knife to the gut. Or it would have been, if she had any organs left to bruise.

The living room, usually a pristine display of Italian furniture, was a chaotic playground. Thousands of Lego bricks were scattered across the Persian rug. Grayson was sitting on the floor, his injured leg stretched out, his right arm still in the heavy sling, using his good hand to help Kaiden snap a gray wing onto a massive plastic spaceship. Belle was perched on the edge of the sofa, a glass of wine in one hand and an iPad in the other, occasionally pointing at the instruction booklet.

“No, sweetie, that piece goes there,” Belle cooed.