Chapter 598

Chapter 598:

Isolde reached out and gently lowered Harper’s arm.

She did not hide her face. She did not turn away. She stood tall, her bare feet planted firmly on the dirty subway tiles, and looked directly into the lenses of the cameras.

“Let them take pictures, Harper,” she said, her voice carrying clearly through the quieted crowd. “Let the entire world see exactly how the Lancaster family treats a mother and child in a storm p>

Within minutes, the photographs were uploaded and spreading across every platform. The image was devastating: the beautiful, brilliant Sophia—barefoot and soaked to the bone, fiercely shielding her child in a filthy subway station—abandoned by the billionaire heir.

A train screeched into the station. Isolde carried Effie into the crowded car, found a corner, and held her daughter close. As the train rattled forward into the dark, Isolde stared at her reflection in the black glass of the window. The woman looking back at her was hollow—the love gone, the hesitation gone, every last reservation burned away.

Grayson had chosen his path. Now, Isolde was going to burn his empire to the ground.

Miles away, the Cadillac SUV pulled up to the emergency room entrance of Mount Sinai. Grayson jumped out, calling for a stretcher. Paramedics rushed Victoria inside.

He stood alone in the sterile hallway, his chest heaving as the adrenaline slowly drained from his body. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

а𝗰𝗍𝗶𝗏𝘦 𝘤𝗈𝗺𝘮𝗎n𝘪𝗍𝗒 𝘰𝗇 𝗴а𝗅ո𝗈𝘃е𝘭𝗌.𝘤om

A strange, cold feeling settled in his stomach. He thought of the look in Isolde’s eyes through the rain—not anger, but desperation. He reached for his phone to call his driver, to send him back to Fifth Avenue.

But as the screen lit up, a breaking news alert from Twitter overtook it.

He stared at the photograph of Isolde, barefoot and soaking in the subway station, his daughter bundled against her chest.

The phone slipped from his fingers and shattered on the hospital floor.

He had made a fatal mistake.

The interior of Isolde’s apartment was warm, but the chill had already settled deep into Effie’s bones.

Isolde drew a hot bath immediately, scrubbing the freezing city water from her daughter’s skin. She wrapped Effie in thick flannel pajamas and pressed a mug of hot ginger tea into her small hands until every drop was gone. Once Effie was finally asleep, Isolde retreated to the bathroom.

She sat on the cold tile floor and looked down at her bare feet. The soles were lacerated—scraped raw by the abrasive Manhattan concrete and embedded with tiny shards of street gravel. Blood mixed with dirty rainwater as she mechanically poured antiseptic over the open wounds. The liquid burned with a searing, white-hot agony, but she barely flinched. The physical pain was a distant echo, entirely eclipsed by the glacial numbness in her chest.

By two in the morning, the nightmare began.