Chapter 162:


    Isolde didn’t answer. She dried her hair in brisk, aggressive strokes, then tossed the towel onto the back seat.


    “Just say what you want, Grayson,” she said, staring out the window. “So I can say no and we can get on with our lives.”


    “I want the Summit,” he said.


    “You can’t have it. The Phoenix-X7 is Orbital’s keynote. I’m presenting.”


    “That’s where you’re wrong,” Grayson said, his voice turning smooth and predatory. “You’re not.”


    Isolde watched the Lincoln carrying her daughter in thene ahead — a lifeline she refused to let out of her sight.


    She sat as far from Grayson as the spacious cabin allowed, pressing herself against the door. The heat of the car was seeping into her frozen bones, making her shiver despite herself.


    Then therge infotainment screen on the dashboard flickered to life, piercing the dim cabin with high-definition brightness. Grayson’s phone had automatically connected to the car’s system, syncing his cloud data.


    A notification banner slid across the top: “On This Day: 5 Years Ago.”


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    Before Grayson could swipe it away, the slideshow began. A massive, crystal-clear image filled the screen — not a spreadsheet or a boardroom, but a world of turquoise water and white sand. In the center of the frame, Grayson sat at a table inside a ss tunnel surrounded by deep blue ocean and tropical fish. He was holding a champagne ss, smiling at the camera — at Belle. On the table before him sat a decadent chocte cake, its icing spelling out words legible even from the back seat: Happy 5th Anniversary.


    Grayson cursed under his breath, his hand pping the screen frantically until he found the Disconnect button. The image vanished, reced by the dark navigation map. But the afterimage lingered in the air like a ghost.


    Isolde didn’t react. She didn’t gasp. She slowly turned her head, her expression unreadable, and watched Grayson’s reflection in the dark window.


    The silence that followed was deafening — heavy, suffocating, violent.


    She let it stretch until it was thin and sharp.


    “Va Private Ind,” she said atst, her voice eerily calm. “The underwater restaurant. And the date on the screen — October 14th.” She paused, letting the date hang between them. “That would have been the week Kaiden had pneumonia. The week I was running a 102-degree fever and hadn’t slept for four days straight. You told me you were in London for the merger.”


    Grayson didn’t turn around. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle feathered in his cheek.


    Isolde gave a small, mirthless smile that never reached her eyes.


    “It wasn’t a marriage anniversary, was it, Grayson?” she said, her voice dropping to a soft, chilling whisper. “The cake said five years. Five years since you started…”


    Grayson nced at her in the rearview mirror. He had expected screaming. He had expected tears. He had expected the Isolde who used to beg for his attention.


    Instead, he saw a woman examining a specimen under a microscope.


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