"Isabella."
"Let's get a divorce."
I sobbed until I shattered, screaming her name.
"Isabella, please. Just let me go."
She didn't agree.
She just watched me fall apart—cold, unmoved—as I spiraled into hysteria. Then she dropped a single line.
"Dana."
"You're not thinking about yourself."
"But what about your mother?"
Right.
My mother was still in the ICU.
The entire medical team—every specialist, every nurse—Isabella had personally arranged them all. For my mother's sake, I had to endure. I could only endure.
So I'd swallowed it all, day after day, until today.
Until I stared at the messages flooding my phone from Tyler, and opened the latest video.
Isabella was clearly drunk, draped over Tyler, slurring:
"Dana won't divorce me."
"Even if he doesn't stay for me—"
"He'll stay for his mother. That's exactly why. No matter how far I push him, he can only take it."
A dull ache spread through my chest. I'd known for a long time that Isabella and I could never go back to what we were. But hearing her say it—hearing her use my weakness as a leash—still cut deep.
I listened as Tyler asked her why.
She let out a soft laugh.
"There's a secret."
"Something Dana never knew."
"Dana, you see—" Isabella beckoned with a finger, and Tyler leaned closer. "His mother always had a chance. Overseas treatment. Eighty percent cure rate. But I said no."
"And I buried every trace of it."
Ice shot up my spine.
My hands shook so violently I nearly dropped the phone. Isabella's voice—flat, clinical—kept pouring into my ears.
"I buried it all. Made sure Dana never found out."
"Because I needed him."
"Bound to me."
"For the rest of his life."
"Dana, you see—"
The rest of it.
I couldn't hear anymore.
Tears blurred my vision completely. I clamped a hand over my mouth, choking on silent sobs, remembering—
My mother. Climbing that mountain with the village herbalists to scrape together my college tuition. The fall. The coma that had swallowed her whole.
Years. So many years.
She'd always been the wound I couldn't heal.
I still remembered how I'd nearly destroyed myself back then. How I'd wanted to die.
Then Isabella appeared.
The untouchable heiress, standing before me, pulling me into her arms so tight it hurt.
"Don't be afraid, Dana."
"You have me. You don't have to be afraid of anything."
Isabella had held my shattered pieces together. My breakdown. My entire life. She'd brought in the best doctors for my mother. Paid my tuition.
Isabella.
Isabella.
She'd made me who I became.
And Isabella—
My phone wouldn't stop ringing.
The hospital.
My heart seized. Before I could answer, a new message from Tyler cut through—mocking, venomous:
"What a shame."
"Looks like your mom lost the will to live once she learned the truth."
The video showed my mother's face. Tears sliding from the corners of her eyes.
I stabbed at the screen to answer. The doctor's voice came through.
"Mr. James."
"Your mother—"
Silence stretched on the other end.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The world went quiet—so quiet I could only hear my own heartbeat. And my own voice, cracking:
"My mom..."
"What happened to my—"
"Your mother passed away at 6:35 this evening."
"We're deeply sorry."
"Please accept our condolences."
Isabella's nights of drinking herself unconscious were nothing new. Everyone knew the Fox heiress wore warmth like a mask—underneath, she was colder than anyone.
But she had one weakness.
One soft place she couldn't armor.
Dana.
Dana.
"Dana..."
Isabella's eyes snapped open. She grabbed the phone that wouldn't stop buzzing, glanced at the caller ID, and snarled into the receiver.
"This better be important!"
"Ms. Fox..."
The voice on the other end stumbled, unable to form a complete sentence.
Isabella's eyelid twitched. Her heart seized.
She didn't even have time to react.
Through the phone, Vincent Fox finally managed to speak, his voice trembling.
"Mr. James, he..."
"Mr. James's mother passed away last night."
