Chapter 50

Chapter 50:

Grayson grabbed her arm. “You can’t just walk out!”

Isolde looked at his hand on her arm. Her gaze was lethal.

“Let go,” she whispered.

Grayson let go. He stepped back, unnerved by the intensity in her eyes.

Isolde opened the door.

“I want my sandwich!” Kaiden screamed, throwing a toy car at her. It hit the doorframe with a crack.

Isolde didn’t flinch. She stepped out into the hallway. “Goodbye, Grayson,” she said.

She closed the door.

From inside, she heard the sound of a chair being kicked over and a string of curses.

у𝗈𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘢𝗂ly 𝗱оѕ𝘦 о𝗳 𝘯о𝘷𝘦𝘭s 𝘰𝗇 𝗀𝖺l𝘯𝘰vе𝗹s.𝗰𝗼m

She walked to the elevator, clutching the birth certificate to her chest. The air in the hallway was stale, but compared to the penthouse, it smelled like freedom.

The next morning, a ghost of unease prompted Isolde to check the penthouse’s internal security logs through her backdoor access. She just wanted to confirm her entry and exit had gone unnoticed. But what she saw made her blood run cold.

The master bedroom’s occupancy sensor, which should have been dormant, had been active all night. Not just on Grayson’s side of the bed, but on hers.

Then she saw the climate control logs. The system had auto-adjusted the temperature at 3:00 AM, citing two body heat signatures.

Belle wasn’t just a visitor. She had moved in. She was sleeping in their bed.

Isolde froze. Her hand gripped the phone.

She knew about the affair. She knew about Kaiden. But the cold, hard data confirming Belle’s presence in the bed where Isolde had conceived Effie… it was a visceral violation.

It confirmed everything. Belle wasn’t just a mistress. She had replaced Isolde in the sheets before the divorce papers were even signed.

Isolde ran to the bathroom and dry heaved over the sink.

It wasn’t jealousy. It was disgust. Pure, physical revulsion. She had spent five years trying to please a man who had replaced her with that.

She washed her face with cold water. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were red, but hard.

“Enough,” she said to her reflection.

Her cold fury drove her to dig deeper. If Belle was this brazen, she was also careless. Isolde scanned the activity logs for the penthouse’s smart home devices. There, timestamped from two nights ago, was an audio file captured by the living room’s voice-activated assistant. She played it. Belle’s voice, saccharine and sharp, filled the small apartment.

“Don’t worry about Effie’s little drawings, sweetie,” she cooed to Kaiden. “When we redecorate her room for you, we’ll throw all that sad little scribbling in the trash.”

She walked out and grabbed her cell phone. She dialed Harper.

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