Page 37 of Breaking Isolde
But I know he’ll be back.
They always come back, the wolves and the ghosts.
But this time, I’ve decided what my game plan is.
Love… make it hurt and destroy his soul from the inside out.
I crawl back into bed, curl up around the promise I made to Casey, and fall asleep with a smile on my face.
Chapter 8: Rhett
There’sahierarchytoevery event at Westpoint, no matter how much the Board insists otherwise. Every hand-shake, every nod, every measured smile is a ritual execution of power. The annual donors’ masquerade is the highest of these sacrifices—the one where even the old money brings out its sharpest blades.
I send Isolde the invitation a week in advance, hand-delivered in a velvet envelope with her name in embossed silver. She reads it before Economy, standing in the corridor, blue eyes narrowing as she scans the calligraphy.
She doesn’t tear it up or drop it. She folds it, slides it into her pocket, and walks on.
I don’t need to see her reaction to know she’ll come.
The next morning, a courier arrives at Archer House with a box. Inside: the dress, custom-ordered to fit her exactly. White silk, sleeveless, hitting just below the knee. Demure, but not enough to pass for innocence. The mask is Venetian, half-face, paper-thin, the edge banded in gold, with fresh lavender and miniature white roses sewn into the crown.
I leave no note this time. There’s no need for one. She knows what I want her to do.
The day of the masquerade, the sky is purples and pinks. By dusk, Westpoint’s main hall is already crawling with staff and early arrivals, all of them in various shades of black, blue, and gold. The committee has outdone itself this year: the chandeliers drip with cut glass, the velvet drapes have been swapped for midnight blue, and the marble floor has been scrubbed to a lethal shine.
Every guest is masked. The men mostly stick to tradition—opera masks, sharp profiles, minimal ornament. The women, and the men who know how to win, go for spectacle: feathers, lace, fanged grins painted onto porcelain. Each mask is a challenge, a coded dare.
The Feral Boys arrive as a unit, all in formal suits. Julian in blood-red velvet with a half-mask, black, of course; Colton in understated black with a simple cutout, his hair tamed and slicked back; Bam in blue, the mask covering his whole face except for a single eye. I wear classic white, trimmed in gold,with a matching mask, a single line of black through the left eye. We take our station at the raised platform near the orchestra, right where the real business happens.
The first wave of donors filters in: hedge fund titans, politicians, Euro trash with skin like milk and eyes like knives. The Westpoint Board is already present, hands clasped and jaws clenched, scanning the floor for threats or opportunities, depending on the time of night.
There’s no sign of Isolde for the first hour. The wait is a test, I’m sure… a way to see if she can exert control over the one domain I haven’t already stolen from her.
I nurse a scotch and amuse myself by watching the way the Feral Boys dissect the crowd.
Jules is already making a game of it. “Which one is the sex trafficker, you think?” he says, nodding at a blond man with an accent thick as syrup and a girl on each arm.
Bam snorts, “Does it matter? They all are.”
Colton barely glances up from his glass. “You’re both idiots,” he mutters, but the left corner of his mouth twitches.
They’re distracted enough not to notice her arrival.
But I do.
She steps into the archway at exactly nine PM, a minute ahead of the formal presentation. The dress fits her perfectly. The mask covers enough of her face to render her anonymous to anyone who doesn’t already know the set of her mouth. The flowers in her hair are fresh, a little too fresh, as if she clipped them herself minutes before walking in.
She stands for a full thirty seconds at the entrance, taking in the view. She walks with her shoulders set, her hands relaxed at her sides, her chin level.
Every man in the room tracks her path. Half the women, too. She cuts across the marble, weaving through clutches of laughing donors, never hesitating. Some of the Board wives make a show of noticing her dress, their whispers trailing in her wake.
All asking who she is.
She glides to the far end of the hall, feigning interest in the artwork. Her mask catches the chandelier’s light, making her look like she’s glowing. She’s playing the game to perfection.
But the dress is a marker. She’s prey. The room senses it and orients accordingly.
She’s cornered almost immediately by a pack of underclassmen, who belong to the people that will donate to the Academy, all in tailored tuxes, their own masks more bravado than anonymity. One of them leans in, mouth so close to her ear I can see the brush of lips on cartilage. She doesn’t flinch. She responds witha single word that makes the boy recoil. The group disperses, snickering, but one keeps looking back over his shoulder.
