Chapter 197:


    A tear slid down Isolde’s cheek before she could stop it. “I know.”


    “Don’t let him break you,” Saul said, his voice fierce despite its thinness. “You have fire in you, girl. I saw it when you were a kid — building those rockets in the backyard. Where did that girl go?”


    “She’s been sleeping,” Isolde whispered.


    “Then wake her up,” Saul said. “Before it’s toote.”


    Isolde wiped her face. She looked at the door where Grayson had gone.


    She thought about the lipstick. The perfume. The two hundred million dors. The lies stacked on top of lies. And then she thought about Effie.


    “She’s awake,” Isolde said. Her voice was steadier now, quiet and certain. “She’s awake.”


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    The reception wound down. The guests trickled out. Isolde helped Ellyn pack up the leftover food.


    “Did Grayson say when the funds would be released?” Ellyn asked nervously.


    “Tomorrow morning,” Isolde said. “Don’t worry, Mom.”


    She put Ellyn in a cab and made sure Saul was safely aboard his medical transport. Then she stood alone on the sidewalk.


    She didn’t call a car service. She didn’t go back to the apartment.


    She walked. She walked for blocks, letting the cool air work through her, and pulled out her phone to open the email from And.


    It was a PDF. InnoTech Technical Audit — Confidential.


    She scrolled through it. The picture it painted was a disaster. The cooling system was fundamentally wed. The chip architecture had been giarized from a generic Chinese manufacturer. The so-called proprietary algorithm was nothing more than a basic loop script.


    And Grayson had bet the farm on it.


    She scrolled to the bottom. There was a photograph — taken yesterday at the ribbon cutting. A close-up of Belle holding the blueprints, the technical specs clearly visible in the frame.


    Isolde zoomed in.


    The thermal dissipation equations had been copied from a decade-old textbook, with a critical variable missing entirely. It wasn’t innovation. It was a high school science fair project dressed up with a nine-figure budget. Belle couldn’t even see the fatal w in her own design.


    Isolde started tough — a quiet, shakingugh that she muffled with her bandaged hand.


    She stopped walking. She was standing in front of a twenty-four-hour electronics store.


    She went inside.


    “Can I help you, miss?” the clerk asked.


    “I need a military-grade encrypted SSD,” Isolde said. “The most secure one you have.”


    “Big project?” the clerk asked, visibly impressed.


    “Something like that,” Isolde said.


    She bought the drive, then stepped back outside and hailed a cab.


    “Where to?”


    “Lancaster Tower,” Isolde said. “But I need to make one other stop first.”


    Isolde walked into the lobby of Lancaster Tower. It waste. The night shift security guard nodded at her — he didn’t know she was the ex-wife yet.


    She rode the elevator up to the penthouse. The car ascended in smooth, perfect silence.


    The doors opened into the foyer. It was dark. Grayson wasn’t home. He was probably with Belle.


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