Chapter 13 - Isabella’s Perfect Life Cracks
By evening, Isabella Rossi’s face was everywhere.
Not the face she liked.
Not the magazine-cover version with diamonds at her throat and a soft smile practiced for charity pages.
This was hallway footage of her leaving the donor wing.
A still image, blurred but unmistakable.
Crimson gown.
Head turned.
Hand on the private suite door.
The police had not released the hospital room video, but the hallway image leaked from somewhere no one admitted. It was enough. Her own earlier lie had created the hunger. Now the public wanted proof, and proof had a color.
Red.
The same red as her gown.
The internet did what the internet always did. It chose a symbol and sharpened it.
The woman in red.
The hospital heiress.
The fake victim.
Antonio ordered Isabella not to look at her phone.
She looked anyway.
Comments poured in faster than she could read.
She said Khloe attacked her, but why was she sneaking into Khloe’s room?
Who smiles like that before checking on a pregnant woman?
Marcus chose his wife. Good.
Where is Helena now?
That last one stung the most.
Helena had stopped answering Isabella’s calls.
All day, Helena had promised strategy, protection, calm. Now there was silence.
Isabella threw the phone across the room.
It hit the wall and fell onto the carpet without breaking.
Antonio stood near the window, speaking quietly to someone on another phone.
“No, we deny coordination. No, Helena’s memorandum is not ours. No comment on Vetter. Keep Vivian’s name out of it until we know what she gave them.”
Isabella stared at him.
“Vetter talked?”
Antonio ended the call.
“Not officially.”
“That means yes.”
He didn’t answer.
She stood. “You said people like us don’t get destroyed by people like her.”
Antonio turned sharply.
“Khloe Thorne is not ‘people like her’ anymore. She has Marcus, Mercer, Naomi, hospital security, and public sympathy.”
“She had all of that before.”
“No,” Antonio said. “Before, Marcus was silent.”
That silenced her.
Because it was true.
Isabella had not lost because Khloe was stronger than expected.
She lost because Marcus finally became what Khloe had needed him to be.
A husband in public.
Her humiliation twisted into anger again.
“She doesn’t deserve him.”
Antonio stared at his daughter, and for one second, he looked tired.
“Isabella, this was never about deserving.”
“It was to me.”
“That is why you failed.”
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the penthouse.
Antonio did not move.
Isabella froze, shocked by herself.
His face turned slowly back toward her.
“Pack a bag,” he said.
Her voice shrank. “What?”
“You’re leaving tonight. Private plane. No interviews. No posts. No calls unless through counsel.”
“You’re sending me away?”
“I am keeping you from making this worse.”
“No,” she whispered. “You’re hiding me.”
Antonio’s eyes hardened.
“I am saving what can still be saved.”
She looked at him and understood.
He did not mean her.
At the hospital, Khloe asked to see the sunset.
The nurses could not move her far, so Marcus adjusted the bed and opened the curtains. The city burned gold beyond the glass.
For the first time since the attack, the room felt less like a crisis.
Naomi was on a call in the hallway. Elias was with investigators. Elaine had gone to provide her statement. Security stood discreetly at both ends of the corridor, visible but not suffocating.
Khloe watched the sky.
“I used to love sunsets in hospitals,” she said.
Marcus looked surprised. “Why?”
“When my mom was sick, Uncle Eli would sneak me into staff rooms with windows. He said hospitals needed proof the world still existed outside pain.”
Marcus sat beside her.
“I wish I had met your mother.”
“She would have liked you.”
He looked doubtful.
Khloe smiled faintly. “Eventually.”
“What would she have hated?”
“Your suits.”
He almost laughed.
“And your habit of speaking like every sentence has been approved by legal.”
“That seems fair.”
“She would have told me to make sure the man behind the empire knew how to sit with ordinary sadness.”
Marcus looked at the sunset.
“I’m learning.”
Khloe studied him.
“I don’t know what happens to us after this.”
The words hurt, but Marcus did not flinch.
“I know.”
“I need healing. I need trust rebuilt. I need to know I won’t become invisible again the next time your world gets uncomfortable.”
“You won’t.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Then don’t believe it yet,” he said. “Watch it become true.”
Khloe turned to him.
That was the first thing he had said all day that did not ask something from her.
No forgiveness.
No reassurance.
Just time.
She reached for his hand.
He took it carefully.
In the hallway, Naomi ended her call and looked through the glass panel at them. Elias joined her, holding a folder.
“What is it?” Naomi asked.
“Paul Vetter signed a statement.”
Naomi’s eyes sharpened.
“And?”
“He says Helena requested the camera maintenance review. Antonio paid him through a consulting channel. Isabella was told which suite Khloe would use.”
Naomi’s face went still.
“That gives us preparation.”
“There’s more,” Elias said.
He opened the folder.
“Vetter says the plan changed at the last minute.”
Naomi looked up.
“Changed how?”
Elias lowered his voice.
“Someone told Isabella that if Khloe lost the baby, Marcus would never forgive himself enough to fight for the marriage.”
Naomi’s expression turned to ice.
“Who said it?”
Elias glanced toward Khloe’s room.
“That’s the problem.”
Naomi took the folder.
May you like
The name at the bottom of Paul Vetter’s statement was not Helena.
It was someone inside Marcus’s own company.
