---- Chapter 18 Ethan drove towards Isabella' s penthouse, a place he now associated with a cloying, toxic sweetness that turned his stomach. His hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white. His stomach churned. It wasn' t just nerves. It was a deep, gnawing regret that had become his constant companion. He remembered Mia' s face, stained with red wine, her eyes wide with shock and humiliation. He' d tossed money at her. Like she was nothing. The memory made him physically ill. He had to pull over, gasping for air. He finally reached Isabella' s building. He hesitated before going up. He could hear her voice from the elevator, shrill, angry. Arguing with someone. He paused outside her door, listening. "..useless! All of you! | paid you good money to ruin her, and she' s still out there, probably laughing at me!" Isabella ---- shrieked. Ethan' s blood ran cold. Ruin who? Mia? "She' s in some hick town upstate, playing house with some country doctor! | want her gone! | want her to suffer!" He heard a man' s voice, placating. "Ms. Vance, we did what you asked. The blog posts, the pictures... it caused quite a stir locally." "A stir isn' t enough!" Isabella screamed. "| wanted her destroyed! Like she tried to destroy me, trying to steal Ethan!" Ethan felt a wave of nausea. He remembered the gala. The humiliating photos. He' d assumed it was just Isabella' s petty jealousy, a spontaneous act of cruelty. But this... this was calculated. Orchestrated. He remembered the investor in the Hamptons, Harrington. Had that been a setup too? Mia' s torn dress, her public humiliation... He pushed the door open. Isabella stood in the middle of her opulent living room, her face contorted with rage, surrounded by two thuggish-looking men he didn' t recognize. A laptop lay open on a coffee table, displaying a picture of Mia, ---- smiling, standing next to... another man. Noah. The "country doctor." The sight of Mia, looking genuinely happy, with someone else, was a fresh stab of pain. "Ethan!" Isabella gasped, her rage momentarily forgotten, replaced by a flicker of fear. "What are you doing here?" He ignored her, his eyes fixed on the men. "Who are you? What are you doing for her?" One of the men smirked. "Just a little... reputation management, Mr. Cole." Ethan' s gaze fell on a small digital recorder on the table. He picked it up, pressed play. Isabella' s voice, cool and manipulative, filled the room. "..make sure everyone knows what a pathetic, social-climbing whore sheis. Use the old photos. The ones from college. Make her a laughingstock..." It was a recording of her instructing these men. Proof. His world tilted. The woman he' d defended, protected, chosen over Mia, time and time again... was a monster. And he had been her willing accomplice. "You..." he whispered, turning to Isabella, his voice shaking with a fury he' d never known. "You did all this?" ---- Isabella' s face paled. She tried to snatch the recorder. "Ethan, it' s not what you think! She deserved it! She was trying to-" "Shut up!" he roared. The two men stepped forward, looking uneasy. "Hey, Mr. Cole, maybe we should just-" "She owes us money, by the way," the other one interjected, seeing an opportunity. "A lot of money. For services rendered." Ethan laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Oh, she' Il pay," he said, his eyes, cold and hard, fixed on Isabella. "She' Il pay for everything." He knew her secrets. Her family' s secrets. The carefully hidden scandals, the financial improprieties. He had the power to destroy her, and her entire family, with a single phone call. And for the first time, he was willing to use it. Not for gain, not for power. For Mia. For a chance, however slim, at redemption.