POV: Xavier
His fury had been a clean, righteous fire. Watching Lydia’s smug face dissolve into panic, witnessing the petrified silence swallow the conference room—it had felt like justice. Like dominance correctly applied. For one crystalline moment, standing over them all, he had been certain: this was the way to protect her. To burn out the infection with searing, public flame.
The certainty lasted precisely until he watched Isabella walk out of the room.
She moved like a ghost through the shell-shocked staff, her eyes fixed on some distant point on the carpet, her face pale and utterly closed. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t look at anyone. She simply disappeared, a quiet vacuum where a woman had been.
The fire inside him guttered, leaving only cold, smoking ash.
He knew, with
