Chapter 153:


    The tablet ttered further down the hall, its screen spiderwebbing on impact.


    Pain — white-hot, blinding, nauseating — exploded up her arm, radiating into her shoulder, her neck, her teeth.


    She looked down. Her right hand — the hand that had drafted the Phoenix-X7, the hand that had steered race cars at two hundred miles per hour — hung at a grotesque angle.


    Silence fell over the corridor.


    Grayson stood frozen in the doorway, eyes wide. He looked from the tablet to Isolde’s wrist.


    “Isolde…” he whispered.


    He took a step forward. “Liam! Get a doctor! Now!”


    Isolde scrambled backward, pressing herself against the wall. “Stay away from me!”


    “I need to see it!” Grayson said, panic cracking through his voice.


    “No!” The edges of her vision were going gray. Sweat broke out across her forehead.


    Inside the room, Belle was wrapping her arms around Kaiden, murmuring softly. “Shh, shh, baby. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. She’s so clumsy. It was an ident.”


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    Isolde heard it. Through the roaring in her ears, she heard every word.


    She started tough — a wet, broken sound. Tears ran down her face, mixing with the cold sweat of shock.


    “An ident,” she choked out.


    She looked at Grayson. “You heard her. It’s my fault I slipped.”


    Grayson looked helpless. “Isolde, please—”


    “That snap,” Isolde said, her voice trembling but carrying. “That was the sound of thest thread holding me to you.”


    She pushed herself off the wall. Every movement sent jagged spikes of agony through her arm.


    “Tell your son,” she hissed, “that this debt will be paid. With interest.”


    She turned. She dragged herself toward the elevator, unable to feel her fingers.


    She stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor with her left hand. The doors slid closed, shutting out the image of Grayson’s pale face.


    Isolde leaned her head against the cool metal wall. She pulled out her phone, her left hand clumsy and trembling. She opened her contacts.


    Grayson Lancaster. Block. Belle Escobar. Block. Lancaster Residence. Block.


    She walked out of the hospital into the blinding afternoon sun and raised her hand for a cab.


    “Where to?” the driver asked.


    Isolde cradled her broken arm against her chest. “Nearest emergency room. Then St. Jude’s School.”


    The driver nced in the rearview mirror and saw her wrist. His face went pale. “Lady, you need an ambnce.”


    “No,” Isolde said, staring out at the New York skyline. “I need my daughter.”


    The Tribeca apartment was stark and silent. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the Hudson, the afternoon light glinting off minimalist steel and ss furniture.


    Isolde sat on the low-slung grey sofa, her right arm encased in a heavy ster cast that extended to her elbow. Her left arm — still aching from the drone strike — was out of its brace but stiff and weak. The ER doctor had called it a bad break. A distal radius fracture. Surgery might be neededter. For now, it was immobilized.


    The painkillers made her head swim.


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