Chapter 223:


    He sprinted into the living room, grabbed a bag of chips from the coffee table, and shook it violently, sending crumbs flying across the pristine carpet like confetti. Then he leaped onto the beige sofa and began jumping with his shoes on, screaming incoherently.


    Isolde didn’t yell. She didn’t rush to stop him. She didn’t clean up a single crumb.


    She walked calmly to the vase, lifted it with great care, and carried it into the guest bedroom. She set it gently on the bedside table, walked out, and locked the door behind her with the key she had kept on her ring.


    Then she sat down at the dining table, opened herptop, and began to work. She wasn’t here to parent him. She wasn’t here to be the maid. She was here for the vase.


    Time passed. The sun set. The room grew dark until the automatic lights flickered on.


    Kaiden, realizing his audience wasn’t reacting, eventually grew bored of his destruction. He stomped over to the dining table and mmed his hand down beside Isolde’sptop.


    “I’m hungry!” he demanded. “Make me pasta! The kind with the white sauce!”


    Isolde didn’t look up from her screen. “There’s pizza in the freezer. You can heat it up yourself.”


    “I don’t eat frozen food!” Kaiden screamed, his face turning red. “I want fresh pasta! Make it now!”


    Isolde looked at him. Her gaze was calm, almost bored. “Then you can starve.”


    Kaiden froze. His mouth fell open. In the past, a single tear from him would have sent Isolde rushing to the kitchen. He blinked, unsure how to process this new reality.


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    “I’m going to tell Dad!” he threatened, his voice climbing to a shrill pitch. “I’ll tell him you’re abusing me!”


    Isolde let out a short, dryugh. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms.


    “Go ahead,” she said. “Call him. Tell him everything. And while you’re at it, tell him I quit. But tell him I’m taking the vase with me.”


    Kaiden stared at her, small fists clenched at his sides. He couldn’t understand it. The woman who used to read him bedtime stories, who used to bandage his scraped knees with such tenderness, was looking at him as though he were aplete stranger.


    He didn’t know what to do. His power over her was gone.


    Isolde turned back to herputer. She reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of noise-canceling headphones, slid them over her ears, and the sound of Kaiden’s frustrated screaming was instantly reced by silence.


    The world was finally quiet.


    But as she stared at the spreadsheet on her screen, the numbers blurred. Her chest felt like the vase in the other room — cracked, glued back together, but fundamentally broken. The boy standing behind her, screaming for attention, was the child she had once raised as her own.


    And he was ruined. Thoroughly, tragically ruined.


    Saturday morning sunlight spilled into the penthouse, illuminating a scene of absolute chaos. Toys were scattered across the Persian rugs, cushions had been thrown from the sofas, and sticky juice stains marred the ss coffee table. It looked as though a hurricane had swept through the living room.


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