Page 27 of Breaking Isolde
My anger is so clean, so sharp, I can almost taste it. It’s not the messy, hot kind. It’s cold, precise, directed. The kind of anger that plans, not reacts.
The sky outside is gray, the first touch of dawn turning the campus to a negative print. I close the blinds, go to the mirror, and look at my face. I don’t recognize myself. Not in the way that means “I look different,” but in the way that means “there’s nothing left of the person who used to live here.”
I go back to the desk, grab the red marker again, and write across the bottom of the grid: “You’re first.”
I stare at the wall until the rage calms, until it’s just a slow, even burn.
Rhett thinks he’s a wolf. He thinks he can hunt me like he did my sister.
But I am not my sister.
And I’m not running anymore.
Next time he comes for me, I’ll be waiting.
This time, I’ll be the one who bites.
Chapter 6: Rhett
She’snotinclass.
My brain tries to downshift into the lecture, but all I see is the empty chair. The professor’s words fade to a thin background hum, overrun by the sharp, statistical calculation of absence.
She’s never absent. Not for class, not for conflict. She’s methodical, punctual and precise. This little deviation is driving me fucking nuts until it’s the only thing I can think about. I wait for her to slither in late, holding a cup of tea with that little notch at her lip from where she bites the rim. I wait, and the waiting becomes its own form of violence.
Halfway through the hour, I snap my pen in two. The jagged edge draws blood from my thumb, and I stare at the drop of red until it beads and falls onto my notebook. I smear it across the page with my forefinger.
I don’t hear a word of the lesson.
After class, I walk the halls, scan the quad, check all the usual spots she would be at this time. Nothing. Isolde Greenwood has evaporated. The phrase runs on repeat, hissing under my breath:not here, not here, not here.
Maybe she’s plotting. Maybe she’s run. Maybe she’s in her room, licking her wounds.
I choose option three.
Archer House is empty. The other two girls have classes and lucky me… one of them left the front door unlocked. I move silent, ghosting heading up the stairs to her room.
Her door is locked, but locks are a suggestion, not a rule.
I turn the master key, slow and precise, and listen to the satisfying click of tumblers yielding. The handle is cold. The smell hits first: lavender, faint but persistent, overlaying a darker undercurrent of ink and dried sweat and the chemical tang of rage.
Inside, the room is chaos, but not in the way of a normal girl’s lair. There are no clothes on the floor, no swirl of makeup or shelves of cream and candles. Every surface is covered in paper, files, clippings, sticky notes in block capitals. The blinds are half drawn, slashing the space with rectangles of white light and gray shadow.
The hall is short and her bedroom door is open. Her bed is on the right. She’s curled on her side, knees drawn up, hair tangling over her cheek and pillow. Her chest rises and falls in a rhythm so slow it looks deliberate. She wears cotton pajamas, white with thin purple stripes and pearl buttons running to the hollow of her throat.
I freeze at the sight of her. Not for fear, but because the wall above her desk is a fucking masterpiece.
Red string crisscrosses from thumbtack to thumbtack, the kind of conspiracy cliché I thought only existed in bad TV. But this is different. She’s annotated every connection, mapped every face, every alias, every Board member. My own yearbook photo is dead center, linked to Casey’s in a savage double underline, then spun outward to names and events I recognize, and more that I don’t.
There are photos. Not gory, but clinical—copies of campus security logs, press releases, death certificates. Next to Casey’s name is the phrase: “Failed acquisition. Witness: Grey, Rhett.” Underlined in blue ink. She’s highlighted it three times, as if the repetition could summon the truth.
My pulse drums out a count. I pace the wall, absorbing each detail, cataloguing her methodology. It’s beautiful. It’s dangerous. It’s exactly what I would have done, if I were her.
On the desk: a list of names, scrawled in her blocky hand. At the top, “Greenwood, Casey.” Underneath: “Current Prey: Greenwood, Isolde.”
I look back at the bed. She hasn’t moved.
The room is cold; the vent by the ceiling hums on high, making the air dry and sharp. Her hand twitches once, then curls back under her chin. Her lips are parted, a thin line of drool collecting at the corner. She looks younger like this. Innocent. Almost.
