Chapter 146:


    The doors chimed and began to slide open.


    “Isolde!”


    A hand mped around her wrist — not a gentle hold, but a desperate, bruising grip.


    She spun around, her hair whipping across her face. Grayson stood there, chest heaving, eyes wide with a panic that didn’t suit him.


    “You can’t leave,” he gasped.


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    Isolde looked at his hand on her arm. Then she looked at his face. Her expression was so cold it could have frozen the blood in his veins.


    “Don’t touch me,” she said. Her voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of a judge’s gavel. “Go find his mother. She’s the one you want — she was just here, wasn’t she?”


    She yanked her arm back. He didn’t let go.


    “She left,” Grayson admitted, his voice strained. “Once the doctor said he was stable, she said she needed to go home and get some things. She couldn’t handle the stress.” He swallowed. “I’m alone here, Isolde.”


    Isolde let out a short, incredulous breath. “Of course she did. The moment the drama fades, the audience leaves. And you want me to fill the void?”


    “If you walk out those doors,” Grayson said, his voice dropping to a low, ugly register, “Effie’s tuition at St. Jude’s is gone. Tomorrow.”


    Isolde froze. The air left her lungs.


    “You would use your own daughter?” she whispered, staring at him as if seeing a monster for the first time. “You would pull her out of the only ce she feels safe — to ckmail me?”


    Grayson flinched, but he didn’t back down. He fixed his gaze on a spot on the wall above her shoulder. “I will do whatever is necessary to save my son. You know I will.”


    Isolde’s fingernails dug into her palms. St. Jude’s wasn’t merely a school. It was Effie’s sanctuary — the first ce where teachers hadn’t called her slow, where she had begun to smile again.


    She looked at the elevator. Freedom was right there. But the cost was Effie’s happiness.


    She closed her eyes and drew a breath that tasted of antiseptic and defeat.


    “Fine,” she said. The word fell like a stone dropping into still water. “I will save him. But remember this, Grayson — this is thest time. This is thest drop of mercy you will ever squeeze out of me.”


    She turned and walked back toward the VIP suite. Grayson followed, looking like a man who had won a battle and lost the war.


    Inside the room, chaos reigned. Kaiden was thrashing on the bed, his face swollen and flushed. A young resident fumbled with a syringe while a nurse tried to hold the boy still.


    “Hold him down!” the doctor shouted. “I’m administering 5mg of Midazm.”


    “Stop.” Isolde’s voice cut through the room like a whip.


    The doctor froze, the needle hovering inches from Kaiden’s arm.


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