Chapter 467
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Chapter 467:
Isabelle smiled — a vicious, ugly expression. “Have you met Dr. Chloe Monroe yet p>
The name struck Jocelyn’s chest like a physical blow. Her lungs constricted involuntarily. She remembered the arrogant woman in the white suit at the Soho House.
Isabelle caught the microscopic flinch in Jocelyn’s eyes and lunged at the opening. She began to construct her lie with surgical precision, weaving toxic fiction around just enough truth to make it believable.
“Gaston has severe psychological trauma,” Isabelle said. “Chloe is the only person who can calm him down. They were inseparable. But the Collins board would never permit him to marry his own therapist.” She took a step closer, her eyes moving slowly across Jocelyn’s face. “So he needed a PR decoy. Someone from a respectable family. Someone who looks the part.” She paused deliberately. “Haven’t you noticed, Jocelyn? You have the exact same eyes as Chloe p>
“Shut up,” Jocelyn said, her voice tightening.
“You’re just a shield!” Isabelle hissed, her face twisting with cruel delight. “A fake wife protecting his real obsession p>
“Get out!” Jocelyn snapped, rising so sharply her chair crashed into the wall behind her.
Isabelle let out a short, sharp laugh — bright with victory — and walked out, letting the doors swing shut behind her.
Jocelyn sank back against her desk. The air in the room felt suddenly thin.
Qu𝗮𝘭𝗂𝗍𝗒 t𝗋a𝗻sl𝗮𝗍𝘪𝗈𝘯𝘀 o𝘯
Her mind did not spiral. She did not believe, even for a moment, the desperate lies of a woman who had just been financially broken and publicly dragged to her knees. Gaston had proven his loyalty in blood and fire — the evidence was irrefutable. But the venom still burned. It wasn’t doubt that tightened her chest. It was fury. The sheer audacity of it — that this woman, a proxy for Gaston’s messy past, had dared to enter her sanctuary, her place of power, and deploy the exact same replacement narrative that Kieran had once used to torture her — felt like a violation. It scraped hard against an old, ugly wound. What rose in Jocelyn was not the fear of being replaced. It was a fierce, righteous indignation. She would not be made into collateral damage in someone else’s history.
By the time the sun set over the Manhattan skyline, the atmosphere inside the Collins penthouse was suffocating.
Jocelyn stood in the center of the master bedroom wearing cold silk pajamas, her face a flawless mask of ice concealing the furious indignation burning beneath it. She opened a small leather overnight bag and began dropping her toiletries and a few changes of clothes inside.
She glanced at the walk-in closet — the long rows of custom haute couture gowns Gaston had chosen for her. She wasn’t running away, and she didn’t believe a word of Isabelle’s pathetic lies about being a PR puppet. But she absolutely refused to share a bed with a man whose unresolved, toxic past was actively trying to tear her down. She needed space. She needed him to understand that she would not be made into collateral damage in his history.