“What?” The word barely came out.
Edward lifted a hand when she reached for the folder. “There’s no need to review it. Just understand your position. Sign now, and you leave with whatever dignity you have left. Fight us, and you leave with nothing.”
Isabella’s pulse roared in her ears.
It was absurd. She hadn’t betrayed Ryan—not even after she learned he’d been seeing his executive assistant. She’d held onto the last thread of loyalty like it meant something.
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And now they were trying to paint her as the villain.
“That’s a lie,” she whispered.
Brooke leaned in, perfume sharp and invasive. “You never thought we’d catch you. We knew what you were from the start.”
Isabella turned to Ryan, desperate for one honest look.
“You know it’s not true,” she said. “You know me.”
Ryan stared past her—out toward the manicured garden—like the shrubs mattered more than the woman he’d married.
In that moment, clarity hit her harder than any insult:
Ryan wasn’t just weak.
He was part of it.
Edward checked his watch. “Five minutes. We don’t wait on nobodies.”
Isabella closed her eyes.
And in the dark behind her eyelids, she heard her mother’s voice—old as prayer, steady as stone:
Dignity is the one thing no one can steal… unless you hand it over.
Isabella opened her eyes.
“I need to make a call.”
Margaret laughed like Isabella had told a joke. “To who? Your father? The guy everyone said fixes engines for a living?”
Even Ryan let out a small, pathetic smile.
Isabella didn’t blink.continued on next page
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