Chapter 556

Chapter 556:

Unseen, from a parked car half a block away, Grayson’s driver Arthur lowered his phone. The image was clear: Isolde, standing vulnerable and composed under the streetlight, accepting something from a handsome, well-dressed stranger as he dropped her at her door. Arthur pressed send.

Miles away, in his cavernous study, Grayson’s phone lit up. He opened the message.

The image filled the screen. Isolde. A man he didn’t recognize. A car he didn’t recognize. The intimate setting of her apartment entrance. The way the man leaned toward her.

Jealousy — ugly, potent, and entirely without right — coiled in his chest like something alive. The possessiveness was so absolute that the sight of her with another man felt like a violation of something he had already forfeited.

He set the phone down on his mahogany desk with a sharp clatter.

“Julian Thorne,” he said into the intercom, the name already retrieved from a quick, furious search of the hospital’s staff directory. “Find out everything there is to know about this man. Everything p>

Back in her apartment, Isolde went directly to the bathroom. She dabbed the cool ointment from the white tube carefully around the wound. A soothing, numbing sensation spread immediately across her skin, quieting the burning.

She didn’t open her makeup bag. She didn’t glance at the concealers.

Instead, she walked to her home office and powered on her laptop. The screen illuminated her face in the dim room — the white bandage a stark slash of contrast in the blue light. On the display, the complex, luminous schematics of the Phoenix-X7 engine glowed steadily.

Tomorrow was the final battle. And she was ready.

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was a hive of controlled chaos. Black SUVs lined the curb, disgorging tech moguls, investors, and defense contractors onto the red carpet in an unbroken stream. The flashbulbs were blinding.

𝖶𝘦 u𝗉𝗱𝖺t𝘦 𝘦𝘃𝗲𝗋y 𝗐𝗲𝘦𝗸 𝘰𝗇 𝗀a𝗹𝗻o𝘷е𝘭ѕ.𝗰𝘰𝘮

Grayson stepped out of his car alone. He ignored the shouted questions about Cheryl’s arrest and walked toward the entrance with his face a mask of stone.

A few minutes later, a murmur moved through the crowd.

Belle Escobar arrived on the arm of Daron McKnight — a venture capitalist known in equal measure for his deep pockets and his casual contempt for anyone he considered beneath him. Belle was smiling, but the expression was brittle around the edges. She wore a high-necked, conservative dress, every inch of it calculated to project innocence.

Daron was already holding court with a nearby reporter, his voice carrying easily over the noise.

“The X7-B is a triumph by InnoTech,” he boomed. “They took a brilliant but commercially impractical concept and made it viable. That is real engineering p>

Belle laughed — a light, tinkling sound with nothing genuine behind it.

Then the crowd went quiet.

A sleek black sedan pulled to the curb. Arland Roth stepped out, walked around, and opened the rear door.

Isolde emerged.