Page 74 of Her Soul to Own

I was assigned to protect Isola during a six-week diplomatic circuit through France. Dinners with foreign dignitaries, art auctions, and appearances at embassies. She called it “the pageant,” like it was some performance she couldn’t escape. And it was. She smiled until her cheeks ached and wore gowns like they were armor.

Our conversations were brief. Professional. But I listened when she needed to vent and stood guard when she needed the peace.

She was never flirtatious. Not with me. And I never wanted that. I respected her too much to imagine crossing that line. I was attracted to Serena anyway. Serena, her younger sister, with whom I had shared a few nights. But it didn’t last. Serena never wanted to be tied down, and I couldn’t imagine leaving my job. What I wanted was to preserve whatever pieces of her were still unbroken.

Isola called me “the ghost with the sad eyes.”

One night at the Ritz, she caught me watching her and whispered, “If I ever vanish, remember, it wasn’t weakness. It was war.”

I didn’t understand then. But I do now.

It was early spring. Rain had swept through Paris all day, leaving the streets slick and glistening, a mirror for the city’s lights. The air outside the Hôtel de Crillon was cool and clean, that rare breath of Paris when the tourists have gone to bed and the ghosts wake up.

Inside, Isola was supposed to be preparing for a gala at the Palais Garnier. It was to be the final event of the circuit, the one with the most cameras and the most pressure. Her dress had arrived, a gold satin marvel, custom Dior. Her schedule was tight but clear. She’d excused herself for a final fitting andmakeup touch-up, leaving her private suite under the watch of the interior team.

Noah and I were posted outside. Standard protocol. Our assignment was to secure transport and sweep the route while she got ready. We were the outer ring of a circle meant to close around her like protection.

The car pulled up. We stood at the ready. And waited. Five minutes. Ten.

Then one of the housekeepers stepped out, looking nervous, and said Mrs. Vane had complained of a migraine and asked not to be disturbed.

Evander didn’t even blink when he heard. He brushed it off, said she was tired, and that maybe she wouldn’t attend.

But my gut twisted. I felt it. That wrongness. The quiet before a disaster.

I looked at Noah. He looked at me. And we moved.

We split up, with me checking the hallway cameras, then her suite. Her room was empty. No signs of a struggle, no scent of perfume. The bed hadn’t been used, and the dress was still on its hanger.

I called her assistant. Her driver. Her stylist. No one had seen her.

Noah joined me as I swept the side streets. We called in favors from local authorities under the radar. We searched rooftops and alleys and every back entrance of that hotel like dogs chasing smoke.

That night, neither of us slept.

Two days later, her body surfaced in the Seine. Near Pont de l’Alma. There were no bruises, no wounds. She was just a ghost, her eyes closed like she was finally asleep.

The coroner ruled it complications from cancer and said she must’ve wandered off in a fugue.Quietly ill for years, the report said.

But we saw her body.

It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t an illness. It was something darker, calculated, and clean. It was the kind of death that leaves no evidence but chills every instinct in your bones. Isola wasn’t the type to quietly slip away into the night. She was full of life, full of spite and beauty and defiance. She had plans. She had love for her daughter, and a hatred for the gilded prison Evander kept her in.

Noah and I knew.

We didn’t say it out loud, but the truth lived in our stillness.

Someone wanted her gone. And they made sure it looked like she just… disappeared.

Closed casket, no press, a funeral conducted at dawn. There was no time to grieve.

Evander erased her like she never existed.

Closed casket, fast burial, no press, no mourning.

Evander made sure of that.

When I stormed into a board meeting to confront him, I grabbed his collar and slammed him against the glass wall of his penthouse office, my voice cracking from rage. “What did you do?”

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