Chapter 7: What Isabella Never Said Out Loud
For a moment, neither woman spoke.
Marcus moved toward the door.
"I'll wait outside."
"Stay," Khloe said.
She didn't look at him.
She was looking at Isabella.
Isabella sat in the chair with her coat still on, hands folded in her lap, eyes on the floor.
Without the fury and without the tears, she looked like someone who had been running for a very long time and had finally stopped.
"How long have you believed he was going to choose you?" Khloe asked.
Isabella's jaw tightened.
"Since I was seventeen."
"Your father told you."
"My father built my entire life around it." She looked up.
"Every school I attended.
Every event I was prepared for.
Every introduction he arranged.
It was all pointed at one outcome." A short, humorless sound.
"I didn't choose to want Marcus.
I was raised to expect him."
"That's not his fault," Khloe said.
"I know that." The words came out sharp, then softened.
"I know that.
I have known that for years.
It doesn't make it easier to watch."
"So you decided to destroy what he had instead."
Isabella looked at her directly.
"I decided to remind him what he owed.
What his family owed mine." Her voice was steady but something underneath it wasn't.
"I didn't come here tonight to hurt you.
I came to make him feel the cost of what he chose."
"You shoved a pregnant woman into a marble table," Khloe said.
"Whatever you intended, that's what you did."
Isabella looked away.
Her hands tightened in her lap.
"Is the baby—" She stopped.
"The baby is fine," Khloe said.
Isabella nodded once.
She didn't say anything else.
But something in her posture changed — a slight drop of the shoulders, a loosening around the jaw.
It wasn't an apology.
But it was something.
---
"I want to ask you something," Khloe said.
"And I want an honest answer."
Isabella looked at her.
"The document.
The agreement your father had Marcus sign.
Did you know about it before tonight?
Before you came up to that suite?"
Isabella was quiet for a moment.
"Yes."
"Did you know about the shell company?
About Meridian?"
A longer pause.
"I knew there was a structure.
I didn't know the details."
"Did you know about the second name on the filing?
The forged signature?"
Isabella's eyes sharpened.
"What second name?"
Khloe watched her face.
The confusion was real.
Whatever Dominic had done with his d\*ad partner's identity, he had done it without telling his daughter.
"Your father has been using a forged signature to maintain his position in Thorne Capital," Khloe said.
"A man who d\*ed four years ago."
Isabella stared at her.
The color left her face in a slow, visible wave.
"He didn't tell you," Khloe said.
"No." Isabella's voice had gone very quiet.
"He didn't tell me."
She sat with that for a moment.
Then: "He sent me in there tonight.
He told me to confront you.
To make Marcus feel the pressure.
He said it would force Marcus to come back to the table." Her hands unfolded in her lap.
"He used me."
"Yes," Khloe said.
"He did."
---
The door opened.
Richard leaned in.
"Dominic's lawyer wants another ten minutes."
"He can have five," Nora said without looking up from her tablet.
The door closed again.
Isabella stood up slowly.
She walked to the window and stood where Marcus had stood earlier, looking out at the city.
"What happens to me?" she asked.
"After tonight."
"That depends on the statement you give security," Khloe said.
"If it's complete and accurate, we won't pursue the civil case."
"And if I give you something else?" Isabella turned from the window.
"If I give you documentation — things my father sent me, messages, instructions — things that show the pressure campaign against your marriage was coordinated and deliberate?"
Marcus straightened.
"What kind of documentation?"
"Emails.
From the past eight months.
My father directing me on when to appear at events.
What to say to Marcus.
What to say near you." She looked at Khloe.
"He was running a strategy.
I was the instrument.
I have all of it on my phone."
The room was very still.
"Why would you give us that?" Marcus asked.
Isabella looked at him.
For the first time all evening, her expression held nothing calculated.
"Because he sent me in there tonight without telling me what he'd done.
Without telling me about the forged documents.
He was willing to let me take the full consequence for something he engineered." She paused.
"I have spent my entire life being useful to my father.
I'm done."
Khloe looked at Nora.
Nora was already opening a new screen on her tablet.
"I'll need your phone," Nora said to Isabella.
"And I'll need you to sit back down."
Isabella sat.
Outside in the hallway, footsteps.
Dominic and his lawyer were coming back.
Khloe reached over and pressed the call button for the nurse — not because she needed anything medically, but because she wanted another witness in the room.
The door opened.
May you like
Dominic stepped in and looked at his daughter.
Isabella looked back at him, and didn't look away.
