Chapter 193:


    “Tomorrow. The memorial service,” Grayson said. “You will be on your best behavior. You will hold my arm. You will sit next to me. And you will smile. If Beatrice catches even a whiff of discord, the deal is off — and I will crush your mother’spany into dust.”


    Isolde gripped the phone so hard her knuckles turned white. He was ckmailing her with her own grief.


    “I understand,” she said.


    “Good girl,” Grayson said. “See you at the church.”


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    He hung up. On the screen, he pocketed his phone, adjusted his suit jacket, and walked back to Belle. He put his arm around her waist and smiled for the cameras.


    Isolde lowered her phone. She felt physically ill.


    “Good girl,” she whispered to the empty street.


    She hailed a cab. As she sat in the back watching the city slide past, she made herself a promise. This was thest time. Thest time she would beg. Thest time she would trade her pride for survival.


    She opened her phone and typed a message to And.


    He took the bait. Funds are released. But I need to elerate the n. I need the B-side evidence. Now.


    The morning of the memorial was overcast. The sky was a sheet of unbleached cotton, threatening rain but never delivering.


    Isolde stood at the entrance of the old stone church in Queens — the ce where her grandmother had been baptized, married, and where she would now be eulogized.


    She wore a simple, high-necked ck dress. Her right arm, confined in its cast, rested in a ck silk sling that blended with the fabric. Her left hand, wrapped in fresh white bandages, was held carefully at her side. She greeted the arriving guests with a solemn nod in ce of a handshake — a gesture most attributed to grief rather than the searing pain of the burn beneath the gauze. Cousins she hadn’t seen in years. Old neighbors. Business partners of herte grandfather.


    “So sorry for your loss,” they murmured. And then, inevitably: “Where is your husband?”


    “He’s on his way,” Isolde repeated for what felt like the fiftieth time. Her jaw ached from holding the same brittle smile.


    Ellyn stood beside her, weeping into a handkerchief, grief having stripped her of her usual frantic energy. Uncle Saul rolled up in his wheelchair, a portable oxygen tank at his side, his face gaunt but his eyes still sharp.


    “He’s not here,” Saul rasped. It wasn’t a question.


    “He’sing,” Isolde said, adjusting the nket across Saul’sp.


    “He should be here now,” Saul grumbled. “Disrespectful. If I had my legs —”


    A sleek ck Rolls Royce pulled up to the curb.


    Isolde straightened. Finally.


    But when the driver opened the door, it wasn’t Grayson.


    It was Beatrice.


    The matriarch stepped out, leaning heavily on a cane. She wore a ck hat with a veil that did nothing to conceal the disapproval in her eyes. She walked straight to Isolde — no hug, no condolences.


    “Where is he?” Beatrice demanded.


    Isolde felt a spike of panic. “He had ast-minute issue at the office. He’s driving himself.”


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