Chapter 16:


    Grayson stood there, watching her go. Behind him, in the VIP room, Kaiden yelled, “Daddy! I want the iPad!”


    For the first time in five years, the sound of Kaiden’s voice grated on Grayson’s nerves like a nail on a chalkboard.


    Isolde returned to Room 402. The air was heavy with the hum of the oxygen concentrator.


    Effie was awake. She was staring at the ceiling tiles, counting the dots.


    “Mommy?” she rasped.


    Isolde rushed to the bedside, dropping the cold coffee. “I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”


    Effie turned her head. Her eyes were huge in her pale face. They looked too old for a five-year-old.


    “Mommy,” she whispered. “Did I do something bad?”


    Isolde smoothed the hair back from Effie’s forehead. “No, sweetie. Never. You are perfect.”


    Effie’s chin trembled. A tear slid down into her ear.


    “Then why doesn’t Daddye?” she asked. “Why does he only like Kaiden?”


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    Isolde opened her mouth to give the standard lie—Daddy is busy, Daddy loves you in his own way—but the words died in her throat. She couldn’t lie anymore. Not afterst night.


    Effie sniffled. “Kaiden told me.”


    “Told you what?”


    “He said…” Effie paused, looking ashamed. “He said I’m a ‘bastard child.’ He said that means I’m a mistake.”


    The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Isolde froze. Her hand stopped stroking Effie’s hair.


    Bastard child.


    Kaiden was five. He didn’t know that word. He had heard it. He had heard it from Belle. Or worse, from Grayson.


    A cold, white rage settled in the pit of Isolde’s stomach. It wasn’t the fiery anger of the night before. This was something else. This was the calction of an engineer looking at a structural w that needed to be demolished.


    They hadn’t just ignored Effie. They had been poisoning her.


    Isolde gripped Effie’s hand. “Look at me.”


    Effie looked up.


    “Kaiden is a liar,” Isolde said firmly. “And the people who taught him that word are liars. You are not a mistake. You are a miracle. You have a brain that can see things they can’t even imagine.”


    Effie blinked. “Like the rockets?”


    “Better than rockets,” Isolde promised. “You are going to be so bright that they will need sunsses just to look at you.”


    A nurse bustled in to check the IV drip. “Visiting hours are starting soon. You might want to freshen up, Mom.”


    Isolde nodded. She stepped out into the hallway. She needed to do something with this rage before she screamed.


    She pulled out the burner phone.


    She texted And Roth.


    Isolde: I want the specs for the SkyLine exhibition. Everything. Bandwidth, power consumption, disy resolution.


    The reply came in ten seconds.


    And: You deciding to fight back?


    Isolde: I’m going to burn them to the ground.


    And: Sending encrypted file now. Wee back, Valkyrie.


    Isolde pocketed the phone. She felt a grim satisfaction. The war had started.


    When she walked back into the room, Effie was sitting up. She had taken the paper wrapper from a straw and was folding it. Her small fingers moved with dizzying speed.


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