Chapter 4: The Price of Survival
The months that followed turned Isabella into a ghost. She spent her days in the sprawling, gilded halls of the estate, managing a rotating staff of therapists, tutors, and medical professionals, all of whom were bound by ironclad non-disclosure agreements. She became a master of deflection, constantly inventing reasons why the heir could not be seen, why he could not attend the society events, and why the "future of the Vance dynasty" remained tucked away in the nursery.
Sebastian, for his part, seemed to know. He never asked about the child’s progress. He never entered the nursery. He simply looked at Isabella with an increasing coldness that told her he was waiting for her to stumble.
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Isabella began to lose herself. She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping entirely. She spent her nights pacing the corridors, checking the surveillance monitors, obsessing over every variable of the heir's life. She was the queen of a beautiful, dead world, and the cost of her survival was the complete disintegration of her identity.
She became a stranger to the woman who had married into the Vance name. She looked at her reflection and saw a mask—a beautiful, hollow shell that bore the weight of a secret that threatened to crush the estate.
