POV: Isabella
The realization didn't strike like lightning. It seeped in, a slow, freezing tide that left her numb in its wake. Isabella sat in the pristine silence of her estate office, the hum of the computer the only sound. Her hands rested on the keyboard, but her mind was miles away, trapped in the groaning service elevator with Xavier’s words.
Charlotte is the legal heir.
Every memory she had of Charlotte Thorne shifted, reframed under this new, glaring light. The woman’s elegant poise, her quiet but undeniable authority within the hotel, her deep-seated, almost proprietary knowledge of its history—it wasn’t just dedication. It was a birthright she didn’t know she possessed.
And the vendetta. The cold, surgical destruction of Isabella’s career was a direct result of her broken en
