Chapter 198:


    Isolde walked into the living room. It smelled of lemon polish and emptiness.


    She went to the master bedroom and opened the closet. Grayson’s suits were arranged by color. His shoes stood in neat rows.


    She pulled out the shipping boxes she had picked up on the way and began to pack — methodically, deliberately, her bandaged left hand stiff and aching as she folded the expensive fabrics. Armani. Tom Ford. She wrapped his shoes in tissue paper. His watches. His golf clubs.


    She sealed each box with packing tape and wrote on the side in thick ck marker: DONATION. C/O BEATRICE LANCASTER FOUNDATION FOR THE HOMELESS. His grandmother’s pet charity.


    Then she went to the safe and entered the code. 0505. Effie’s birthday.


    The door swung open.


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    Inside were papers. Deeds. Passports.


    And a small velvet box.


    Isolde opened it. A diamond ne —rge, ostentatious. There was a note folded inside. For Belle. Happy Anniversary.


    Isolde stared at it. Her stomach turned not with surprise, but with the cold, final confirmation of a long-suspected truth. Five years. Their entire marriage had been a lie, funded by her family’s name. He and Belle had been together since the beginning — since before Effie was born.


    She didn’t throw the ne. She put it in her pocket.


    She took the passports. She took the deeds.


    She walked out of the bedroom and crossed to the main control panel for the penthouse’s integrated smart-home system. The screen glowed to life. She was an engineer — she knew these systems intimately. She had helped design the security subroutines years ago, insisting on a failsafe administrator protocol that Grayson had dismissed as paranoid.


    Twenty minutester, having exploited the very backdoor she had built, it was done. She created a new master administrator profile — herself — and deleted Grayson’s. His biometrics, his passcodes, his key fobs: all rendered useless.


    She locked the door from the inside, then left through the service elevator, whose ess she had preserved for herself.


    She took out her phone and dialed And.


    “It’s done,” she said.


    “Where are you?” And asked.


    “Leaving the tower. I’m going to the office.”


    “Now? It’s nearly midnight.”


    “I have an idea,” Isolde said. “About the cooling system. If InnoTech’s design is failing, I know how to fix it.”


    “Why would you want to fix it?” And asked.


    “I don’t,” Isolde said. “I want to build a better one. And when his crashes, I want to be the only option left.”


    She stepped into the service elevator.


    “And?”


    “Yeah?”


    “Call thewyers. File the papers. And tell them to serve him tomorrow morning — at the office, in front of everyone.”


    “Copy that,” And said. “Wee back, Valkyrie.”


    Isolde hung up. She watched the floor numbers count down.


    Penthouse… 40… 30… 20… Lobby.


    The doors opened.


    She walked out into the night. It was raining again, and she didn’t have an umbre.


    This time, she didn’t mind. It felt like a baptism.


    She was clean. She was free.


    And she wasing for them.


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