Chapter 129

Chapter 129:

It was a post from Belle Escobar. The photo was a selfie — Belle in a car, oversized sunglasses, a practiced pout. Pinned to the lapel of her blazer was the emerald brooch.

The caption read: Some heirlooms just find their way to the rightful owner. Blessed. #LancasterLegacy #NewBeginnings.

The blood drained from Isolde’s face.

He had given it to her.

After Alistair ordered him to return it. After his own lawyers had surely warned him. He had given her grandmother’s brooch to the woman who had helped destroy her marriage.

Isolde took out her new phone and photographed the screen.

“Ms. Carson?” the engineer asked quietly. “Are you okay?”

𝖣𝘰𝗐𝗻𝗹o𝘢𝘥 P𝗗𝗙ѕ f𝘳𝗲𝘦 оn 𝗀𝘢l𝗻𝘰𝘃𝗲𝗅s.с𝗈𝗺

Isolde handed the phone back. Her hand was perfectly steady.

“I’m fantastic,” she said. “Arland — get the legal team back in here. We’re filing for an emergency injunction and adding a charge of contempt of court.”

She walked back to her office.

For the next forty-eight hours, Isolde lived in the lab.

She was working on the bid for the new Department of Defense satellite array. InnoTech — Cheryl Juarez’s company, and Belle’s mother’s — was the main competitor. InnoTech was using a standard deployment mechanism. Isolde was designing something radical: an origami-inspired folding array that tripled the surface area.

“It’s too complex,” Claire said, studying the simulation. “The torque on these hinges is immense. If one fails, the whole thing fails.”

“It won’t fail,” Isolde said, eyes fixed on the monitor. She had been dictating complex equations to the computer for hours, her voice growing hoarse with overuse. Her left arm, propped on a cushion, throbbed relentlessly. “I’m redesigning the hinges. Run the stress simulation again, this time with a carbon nanotube alloy.”

Every hour, she was forced to stop — leaning back with her eyes closed as a wave of white-hot pain radiated from her wrist to her shoulder, a sensation like ground glass turning in the joint. The medication could dull it, but never erase it.

Her phone buzzed. It was the principal of Effie’s new school.

“Ms. Carson? You need to come in. There’s been an incident.”

Isolde dropped everything. “I’m on my way.”

She arrived at the private school in twenty minutes.

Effie was sitting in the principal’s office, her hair disheveled, a scratch marking one cheek. She was not crying. She looked fierce.

Across from her sat a boy twice her size — Jason — sniffling, his face red with humiliation.

“Ms. Carson,” the principal sighed. “There was a confrontation. Jason was showing other children pictures from the internet and telling Effie that her father had a new daddy.”

Isolde looked at her daughter. Effie had never been confrontational in her life.

“What happened?” Isolde asked softly.

“He showed me a picture,” Effie said, her voice clear and trembling only slightly with anger. “He said my daddy has a new family and my mommy is a loser who got kicked out. So I told him.”

“Told him what, dear?” the principal asked.

Effie looked directly at Jason. “I told him my mommy builds spaceships, and his daddy sells paper. I said my mommy is smarter.”

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