Chapter 3 - The Price of Treachery
The hospital wing had become a fortress. By dawn, the story had leaked. It wasn't the 'scandal' Isabella had hoped for; it was a war.
Khloe lay in a private ward, hooked up to monitors that hummed in a rhythmic, comforting cadence. The doctors had confirmed the baby was safe, though Khloe was battered and traumatized. Marcus hadn't left her side for a single second. He sat in a chair by the bed, his tuxedo jacket discarded, his tie undone, his eyes fixed on her face.
"I’m sorry," Marcus whispered, his hand finally daring to cover hers. "I brought you into this world. I let her get close enough to hurt you."
Khloe turned her head, her face pale but her eyes clear. "You didn't know, Marcus. You couldn't have. But I did."
Marcus stiffened. "What do you mean?"
"I knew she was poisoning the well. I knew she was whispering to your partners, trying to undermine the gala, trying to make me look 'unfit.' I thought if I ignored her, she would stop. I thought being 'above it' was the right thing to do."
"Never again," Marcus vowed. "From now on, we don't ignore threats. We dismantle them."
Outside, the world was burning. Isabella Rossi’s life was evaporating in real-time. The footage of her kicking a pregnant woman had gone viral within forty-five minutes. Advertisers had pulled her endorsements, her father’s shipping conglomerate was facing a massive stock sell-off, and the social elite who had once fawned over her were now scrubbing their feeds of her existence.
But Isabella wasn't a woman who surrendered. She was holed up in her penthouse, her phone ringing off the hook with threats, her mind twisting the narrative. She blamed the world. She blamed the cameras. Most of all, she blamed Khloe for having the audacity to exist.
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"She thinks she won," Isabella hissed to her reflection in the mirror, her eyes manic. "She thinks a video is the end of me. She doesn't know what it’s like to lose everything. She’s about to find out."
She picked up her phone and dialed a number she hadn't called in years—a man who dealt in shadows, a man who didn't care about reputations or news cycles. If she couldn't be the queen of Chicago, she would make sure there was no throne left for Khloe to sit on.
