Blackjack

🖤♣️The Collapse🖤♣️‎“Isabella, put away your Barbie dolls and come to the dinner table.”‎Her mother’s voice floated through the wide halls of the mansion—warm, steady, familiar.‎Seven-year-old Isabella Marisol Reyes sat cross-legged on the polished marble floor, her dolls arranged in careful, deliberate rows. Not scattered. Never scattered. Even at her age, there was order in everything she did.‎She tilted her head slightly, studying them.‎One doll sat apart from the others.‎“Not you,” she murmured, adjusting it with quiet precision. “You don’t belong there.”‎Her small fingers moved with surprising certainty, placing each figure exactly where she wanted them. A game, to anyone else. But to Isabella, it was something else—control. Structure. A world where nothing happened unless she allowed it.‎“Isabella,” her mother called again, a little firmer this time, though still gentle. “Now.”‎She sighed softly, the sound far too measured for a child her

The Woman They Fear♣️‎♣️ ISABELLA'S POV‎‎I don’t sleep much.‎Not because I can’t.‎Because I don’t need to.‎The city stretched beneath me in a quiet glow, California alive even in the early hours of the morning. Lights flickered in the distance, cars moving like slow streams of gold across the highway. From up here, everything looked small.‎Manageable.‎I lifted the glass to my lips, taking a slow sip of red wine as I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of my bedroom.‎White silk brushed against my skin, my robe loosely tied, barely clinging to my frame. The air was cool, but I didn’t feel it. I rarely felt anything I didn’t choose to.‎My phone buzzed against the glass table behind me.‎I didn’t turn immediately.‎I already knew who it was.‎It rang again.‎Persistent.‎I sighed softly, placing the wine down before walking over, picking it up on the third ring.‎“Uncle.”‎“You didn’t call.”‎Straight to the point.‎Always.‎I moved back toward the window, resting my hip lightl