---- Chapter 19 The downfall of the Vance family was swift and brutal. Ethan, armed with years of insider knowledge and a cold fury, systematically dismantled their empire. Anonymous tips to the SEC. Leaks to investigative journalists. Illicit business dealings, tax evasion, carefully hidden skeletons dragged out of closets and into the harsh light of public scrutiny. The Vances, once titans of New York society, became pariahs. Their assets frozen, their reputation in tatters. Isabella was forcibly institutionalized. Not in a luxury spa in Switzerland this time, but in a stark, state-run facility. She arrived screaming, threatening lawsuits, invoking names that no longer held any power. "You can't do this to me! ' m Isabella Vance! Ethan will save me! He loves me!" Her delusions were met with indifference. The staff, reportedly under quiet instruction from connections ---- Ethan still maintained, were not gentle. Her designer clothes were replaced with a drab uniform. Her pleas for her lawyer, for her father, went unanswered. Days turned into weeks. Her defiance crumbled. She' d weep, begging for Ethan, promising she' d be good, that she' d do anything he wanted. Her beauty faded, replaced by a haunted, hollow-eyed despair. The torment was relentless, a mirror image of the cruelty she ' d so casually inflicted on Mia. One cold morning, months later, Isabella was found in her room. She had used a shard of a broken mirror. It was a quiet, ignominious end for the queen bee of New York society. Ethan received the news via a discreet text message from one of his lawyers. He read it, his face impassive. He felt... nothing. No triumph. No sadness. Just a vast, empty quiet. He deleted the message, then tossed the burner phone he' d been using into the Hudson River. ---- One chapter closed. But Mia... Mia was still out there. And he still had so much to atone for.