Chapter 507

Chapter 507:

Belle stared at the signature and the symbol. Her hands shook so badly that the paper slipped from her fingers and drifted to the floor.

“No… it’s not true…” Her legs gave out beneath her. She sank down, the world collapsing around her. “If this is real… what were the last five years for? What was any of it for p>

Dr. Merrick looked down at her, his expression cold and without mercy.

“Arrogance is just a mask for ignorance, Miss Escobar. You earned this loss p>

Belle broke apart entirely, her sobs filling the quiet of the VIP lounge.

Grayson stared at her for a moment without a trace of sympathy, then turned and walked quickly out of the room. He had to find Isolde. He had to ask her why — why she had hidden the truest, most extraordinary part of herself from him for five long, wasted years.

J𝗼𝘪𝗇 𝘵𝘩𝗈𝗎𝗌an𝗱ѕ 𝗼𝗳 𝗳𝘢ո𝘀 𝗈ո

The crystal trophy was heavy, cold, and sharp against Isolde’s palm. It caught the morning light flooding her corner office at Phoenix Aeronautics, refracting it into a spectrum of arrogant rainbows. She didn’t want to look at it. She opened the bottom drawer of her filing cabinet, shoved the Innovator of the Year award behind a stack of tax records, and kicked the drawer shut.

She didn’t need a physical reminder of her victory. The hum of productivity beyond her glass walls was reminder enough.

A knock sounded at the door — tentative, barely a tap.

“Come in,” Isolde said, without looking up from the schematic on her tablet.

Her assistant, a young woman named Sarah who had been with her since the company’s inception, stepped inside. She looked at Isolde with a mixture of deep respect and something close to awe.

“Ms. Carson. The R&D team is waiting in Conference Room B. All of them p>

Isolde stood and smoothed the front of her white button-down shirt. It was crisp, unadorned, and strictly utilitarian. Since launching Phoenix — since the truth about Sophia had come out — she had stopped dressing to please anyone but herself. She dressed to work.

“Let’s go,” she said.

She walked through the bullpen. Conversations paused respectfully. Heads turned, eyes tracking her movement with a quiet hunger for a glimpse of the woman who had built a billion-dollar company from the ashes of her old life.

The conference room hummed with intellectual energy. Twelve engineers — men and women who had followed her from Skyline or been recruited from the finest firms in the country — sat with their notebooks open.

Isolde did not sit. She walked to the projection screen where a complex fuel injection system was displayed and tapped the surface.

“Delete this redundancy,” she said, her voice low but carrying to the back of the room. “The secondary valve adds weight and drag. We do not sacrifice zero-point-one percent of efficiency for aesthetic symmetry. Fix it p>

A senior engineer cleared his throat. “But, Ms. Carson, the safety protocols suggest p>

Isolde turned her gaze on him. It was flat and clinical.