Chapter 374
Isolde looked down at her hands resting on the table. “I am Isolde Carson now, Professor. A divorcee wrapped in a very public, very messy scandal.”
Nelson huffed and picked up his coffee mug. “I don’t care about your bedmates, Isolde. I don’t care about the gossip columns. I care about your brain.” He set the mug down with a heavy thud. “Are you in?”
The sunlight streaming into Isolde’s office at Carson Dynamics felt different the next morning. It felt clean.
She sat at her desk reviewing the preliminary satellite specifications Nelson had securely transferred to her encrypted drive. The math was beautiful — complex, elegant, and entirely devoid of human emotion. For the first time in five years, she felt completely, terrifyingly alive.
Her phone buzzed violently against the glass desktop, shattering her focus.
A text from Grayson lit up the screen: We need to talk about Kaiden. Meet me at the Mercer cafe in twenty minutes.
Isolde sighed, the heavy, suffocating role of guardian yanking her back to earth. She locked her screen and grabbed her coat.
When she arrived at the upscale cafe, she found Grayson at a corner table.
And, of course, Belle was sitting right beside him.
Belle looked immaculately composed — a soft cashmere sweater, a triumphant air, all traces of the previous night’s humiliation carefully buried beneath a fortress of delusion.
Isolde walked over and sat down across from them without bothering to remove her coat.
𝗪ha𝘁 𝘦𝘃𝘦𝘳у𝘰𝗻е 𝗂𝘀 r𝖾а𝗱іոg o𝗇 𝘨al𝘯𝗈v𝘦𝗹𝘴.с𝘰𝗆
“I heard Professor Nelson gave you quite a talking to last night,” Belle said immediately, a nasty smile playing at her lips.
Isolde signaled the waiter for a black coffee and looked at Belle with flat, dead eyes. “He had a lot to say.”
Before Grayson could speak, the bell above the cafe door chimed. Daron McKnight walked in, seemingly incapable of existing outside Grayson’s immediate orbit.
“Is she crying yet?” he announced loudly, already pulling up a chair.
Grayson didn’t look at him. “Daron,” he said, his voice flat and dismissive. “The meter on my car is about to expire. Go feed it. Take your time.”
Daron’s smile faltered. He nodded quickly and scurried back out the door. The bell chimed his exit.
With Daron gone, Grayson leaned across the table. “Look, Isolde,” he began, his voice low and serious. “Don’t feel bad about last night. That old man was out of line. But we have a more pressing issue.”
Belle reached out and laced her fingers through Grayson’s hand. “Gray and I were thinking,” she said, turning to Isolde with practiced pity. “Since InnoTech is officially launching, we should settle down. Make things official.” She tilted her head. “And Kaiden needs a stable home. A matriarch.”
Isolde’s coffee arrived. She didn’t touch it. “Kaiden has a home. He lives with his father.”
.
.