Chapter 129:


    It was a post from Belle Escobar. The photo was a selfie — Belle in a car, oversized sunsses, a practiced pout. Pinned to thepel of her zer was the emerald brooch.


    The caption read: Some heirlooms just find their way to the rightful owner. Blessed. #LancasterLegacy #NewBeginnings.


    The blood drained from Isolde’s face.


    He had given it to her.


    After Alistair ordered him to return it. After his ownwyers had surely warned him. He had given her grandmother’s brooch to the woman who had helped destroy her marriage.


    Isolde took out her new phone and photographed the screen.


    “Ms. Carson?” the engineer asked quietly. “Are you okay?”


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    Isolde handed the phone back. Her hand was perfectly steady.


    “I’m fantastic,” she said. “And — get the legal team back in here. We’re filing for an emergency injunction and adding a charge of contempt of court.”


    She walked back to her office.


    For the next forty-eight hours, Isolde lived in theb.


    She was working on the bid for the new Department of Defense satellite array. InnoTech — Cheryl Juarez’spany, and Belle’s mother’s — was the mainpetitor. InnoTech was using a standard deployment mechanism. Isolde was designing something radical: an origami-inspired folding array that tripled the surface area.


    “It’s tooplex,” ire said, studying the simtion. “The torque on these hinges is immense. If one fails, the whole thing fails.”


    “It won’t fail,” Isolde said, eyes fixed on the monitor. She had been dictatingplex equations to theputer for hours, her voice growing hoarse with overuse. Her left arm, propped on a cushion, throbbed relentlessly. “I’m redesigning the hinges. Run the stress simtion again, this time with a carbon nanotube alloy.”


    Every hour, she was forced to stop — leaning back with her eyes closed as a wave of white-hot pain radiated from her wrist to her shoulder, a sensation like ground ss turning in the joint. The medication could dull it, but never erase it.


    Her phone buzzed. It was the principal of Effie’s new school.


    “Ms. Carson? You need toe in. There’s been an incident.”


    Isolde dropped everything. “I’m on my way.”


    She arrived at the private school in twenty minutes.


    Effie was sitting in the principal’s office, her hair disheveled, a scratch marking one cheek. She was not crying. She looked fierce.


    Across from her sat a boy twice her size — Jason — sniffling, his face red with humiliation.


    “Ms. Carson,” the principal sighed. “There was a confrontation. Jason was showing other children pictures from the inte and telling Effie that her father had a new daddy.”


    Isolde looked at her daughter. Effie had never been confrontational in her life.


    “What happened?” Isolde asked softly.


    “He showed me a picture,” Effie said, her voice clear and trembling only slightly with anger. “He said my daddy has a new family and my mommy is a loser who got kicked out. So I told him.”


    “Told him what, dear?” the principal asked.


    Effie looked directly at Jason. “I told him my mommy builds spaceships, and his daddy sells paper. I said my mommy is smarter.”


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