Chapter 96:


    “You smell like him,” Isolde said, her voice low and precise.


    Belle blinked, caught off guard. “Excuse me?”


    “You smell like his cologne,” Isolde said, her nose wrinkling. “It’s soaked into you. It’s disgusting.”


    “It’s… it’s Chanel,” Belle stammered, touching her neck self-consciously.


    “No,” Isolde said. “It’s the smell of a shadow trying to be a person. It’s the smell of rot.”


    Grayson stepped forward, his face darkening. “Watch your mouth, Isolde. Belle is ady.”


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    Isolde turned her gaze to him. “Ady? She’s Cheryl Juarez’s daughter. She learned from the best, didn’t she?”


    The air in the coffee shop seemed to vanish. Belle gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.


    “Your mother spent thirty years waiting in hotel rooms for another woman’s husband,” Isolde said, her voice cutting like a scalpel. “She could never wait for a ring. And now here you are — wearing another woman’s husband like a trophy. It’s gic, isn’t it? The inability to stand on your own two feet.”


    “Shut up!” Belle shrieked, herposure shattering. “I have two PhDs! I am an executive!”


    “You are a thief,” Isolde corrected. “You steal designs. You steal husbands. You steal lives because yours is empty.”


    Grayson’s hand shot up. It was a reflex — a sh of violence born of humiliation. His palm rose as if to strike her.


    Isolde didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. She tilted her chin up, exposing her throat, daring him.


    “Do it,” she whispered. “There are three cameras in this shop. Hit me. Give Arthur Stone the ammunition he needs to put you in prison.”


    Grayson’s hand froze in mid-air. His chest heaved. He looked around. People were watching. Phones were raised.


    He lowered his hand slowly, his fingers curling into a fist.


    “You’ve changed,” Grayson hissed. “You used to be soft. You used to be kind.”


    “You killed her,” Isolde said. “The kind Isolde is dead. You buried her.”


    She stepped around Belle, deliberately bumping her shoulder hard enough to make her stumble.


    “Enjoy the coffee,” Isolde said over her shoulder. “I hope it burns.”


    She walked out onto the street and dropped her full cup into the nearest trash can. She couldn’t drink it. The taste in her mouth was already too bitter.


    By three o’clock that afternoon, Isolde’s body had begun to fail her.


    She had been at the Orbitalb since the meeting with Stone, poring over schematics for the new thruster assembly. She hadn’t eaten lunch. The adrenaline from the morning’s confrontation had burned away, leaving her hollow and shaking.


    She stood up from her desk, grabbing a roll of blueprints. The room tilted.


    ck spots danced at the edges of her vision. Her knees felt like water.


    Hypoglycemia, her brain registered, clinical even now. Stress response.


    She stumbled into the hallway and leaned heavily against the ss wall. She needed sugar. She needed to sit down.


    The elevator at the end of the corridor chimed open.


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