POV: Isabella
The situation was a five-alarm fire raging in silence. Charlotte knew they were onto her. Stephen Gray was compromised, his confession now a shared, volatile secret with his wife—Charlotte’s closest friend. Every passing hour felt like waiting for the detonation. Would it be a leak to the press? A preemptive strike from Charlotte’s board? The digital evidence was a live wire in the rain, sizzling with imminent disaster.
Isabella moved through the Hale Grand like a ghost. The professional whispers had morphed; now people just looked at her with a kind of pitying dread, as if she were a patient with a terminal diagnosis. The project was on life support, and she was the surgeon with shaking hands. Her work had been her only fortress, her proof of value in the gilded cage. Now,
