Isabella
The charcoal card is cool and heavy in my hand. A single name. A phone number. It feels like the only real thing in this sterile, silent hotel suite. Outside, the city I used to own mocks me with its glittering indifference.
I won't let them break me.
I shower, the water scalding hot, washing away the scent of him, of whiskey, of last night’s desperate gamble. I dress with the precision of a soldier preparing for battle. Not a dress. Not something soft or vulnerable. I pull on a pair of black trousers, sharp enough to cut, and a silk blouse the color of clotted blood. My heels are high, my makeup a perfect, impenetrable mask. I slide Chase’s card into my wallet. A secret weapon. A promise.
My childhood home doesn't feel like home. The Greer estate is a museum of my father’s success, all gleaming marble and cavernous silences. The air is thick with disapproval before I even step into the drawing room.
They’re all there, of course. A tribunal. My father, Arthur Greer, stands by the fireplace, his posture rigid, a tablet in his hand like a stone commandment. My stepmother, Eleanor, is perched on the edge of a velvet sofa, her hand resting protectively on Chloe’s shoulder.
And Chloe. She’s in the center of it all, dressed in pale cashmere, her baby bump prominent. She looks up at me, her eyes wide and wet, a perfect portrait of wounded innocence. Julian stands behind her, his hand on her chair, the loyal, concerned partner.
My father doesn’t greet me. He just turns the tablet in his hand, the screen glowing with the Page Six article. With my face.
“Explain this,” he says. His voice isn’t angry. It’s worse. It’s the voice he uses when a hotel manager has failed to meet quarterly projections. Cold. Final.
“There’s nothing to explain,” I say, my voice steady. I walk to the drinks cart and pour myself a glass of water, my hands perfectly still. “I attended a party and I left.”
“You made a spectacle of yourself, Isabella,” he clips out. “You dragged the Greer name, our brand, into a gutter brawl with the Vances.”
“The Vances dragged me into this when Julian knocked up my stepsister,” I reply, taking a small sip of water.
Chloe lets out a sound, a little choked sob. Eleanor immediately starts rubbing her back.
“Arthur, please,” Eleanor says, her voice a sharp whisper. “Can’t you see she’s lashing out? She’s not well. This whole ordeal has been a terrible shock to her system.”
Julian steps forward. “With all due respect, sir, Eleanor is right. Bella is fragile right now. We’re all worried about her.”
My fingers tighten on the cool glass. “I’m not fragile, Julian. And I’m certainly not your concern anymore.”
“Of course you are,” Chloe says, her voice trembling. “You’re my sister. When I saw those pictures… my heart broke for you. You looked so lost. And that man… who is he? He looked… rough.”
Her words are a deliberate echo of our phone call. A performance for our father.
“He’s a friend,” I say, my tone clipped.
“A friend?” Julian scoffs, a condescending little smile playing on his lips. “It didn’t look very friendly, Bella. It looked desperate. You picked up the first man who looked at you in a bar.”
“It wasn’t a bar, it was your engagement party,” I correct him sweetly. “And he didn’t just look at me. He was a gentleman. Something you seem to have forgotten the definition of.”
“A gentleman?” Julian laughs, a harsh, ugly sound. “The papers are calling him a mechanic. They said he was probably wearing a rented suit. Is that your new standard, Bella? Has my leaving you reduced you to this?”
“Your leaving me was the best thing that ever happened to me,” I lie, the words tasting like acid. “It opened my eyes.”
“It seems to have opened your legs as well,” my father says, his voice dangerously low. The room falls silent. The cruelty of it hits me like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.
Chloe makes a gasping sound. “Daddy, don’t. She’s just hurting. She doesn’t know what she’s saying or doing. It’s why she found someone so… unsuitable. Someone who can’t protect her reputation because he doesn’t have one of his own.”
She looks at me, tears gathering in her eyes. “I’m just so scared for you, Izzy. A man like that… what does he want from you? Are you paying him? Is that it? Because Julian and I, we would help you. You don’t have to buy affection from… the help.”
The word hangs in the air. Help. It’s meant to be the final humiliation. The confirmation of my fall from grace.
I place my glass down on the table with a soft click. “The only person who was ever ‘the help’ in this family, Chloe, was you. Before you clawed your way into my fiancé’s bed.”
Her face crumbles. This time, the tears are real. Tears of rage. She turns and buries her face in Julian’s chest, her shoulders shaking.
“You see?” Julian says, his voice tight with fury as he glares at me over her head. “This is what I’m talking about. She’s out of control. She’s vicious.”
“She’s always been jealous of Chloe,” Eleanor adds, standing up. “Ever since I married you, Arthur. She’s never accepted us. Now she’s trying to ruin her sister’s happiness.”
The narrative is set. I am the villain. The unstable, jealous shrew, lashing out at the happy couple. They’ve twisted my pain into a weapon and are using it to beat me into submission.
My father’s face is like stone. He has made his decision.
“Enough,” he commands. “This ends now, Isabella. This public circus. This… sordid affair with this nobody. You will end it. You will stay out of the papers. You will conduct yourself with the dignity befitting a Greer. Am I understood?”
He isn’t asking me. He’s telling me. It's an order.
“And if I don’t?” I ask, my voice a quiet challenge.
“Do not test me,” he warns. “The brand, this family, is bigger than your fleeting emotional dramas. I have spent my life building an empire. I will not let you tarnish it because you can’t handle being replaced.”
Replaced. Like a worn-out part in a machine.
I look at their faces. My father’s cold disappointment. Eleanor’s smug triumph. Julian’s pitying contempt. Chloe’s tear-streaked, victorious face peeking out from Julian’s embrace.
There is no love for me here. No family. Just stakeholders in a brand I am currently devaluing.
The isolation is a physical thing, a sheet of ice closing around my heart. And in that cold, something hardens. Not sadness. Not defeat. Rage.
A pure, clean, clarifying rage.
“I understand perfectly,” I say, my voice devoid of all emotion. I turn without another word and walk out of the room, leaving their suffocating judgment behind me.
I don’t stop until I’m back in my car, the leather cool against my skin. My hands are shaking now, the adrenaline fading, leaving behind the hollow ache of betrayal. They’ve left me with nothing. No support. No family. Nothing to lose.
Which means I am finally free.
I take my phone out of my purse. My fingers find my wallet, sliding past credit cards until they touch the stiff, thick edge of the card. I pull it out.
Chase.
A phone number.
They think he’s my weakness. My mistake. My rock bottom.
They have no idea.
He’s my only move left on the board.
I press the numbers into my phone, my thumb hovering over the call button. The anger in my chest solidifies into a desperate, singular purpose.
I will not just prove them wrong.
I will burn their world to the ground.
I press call.
