Chapt 13. If Mr. Lancaster Hadn’t Come, I Would Have Stripped

A collective gasp ran around the terrace. Pei Song sputtered and flailed in the pool. He looked at Dominic as if the world had just tilted beneath his feet. “What the hell, Mr. Lancaster? What do you mean?!”

Dominic’s response was slow and effortless. 

“You were saying there was nothing to play with? Well, play’s on.”

Cold water in winter bites the way only those who’ve fallen in know. No one in the crowd dared to make a sound—Dominic Lancaster was not a man to pick a fight with. Even the wealthiest scions here, used to having the city bend around their whims, shrank in the shadow of his calm.

Pei’s laughter choked into spluttering curses as others scrambled to pull him out. Someone finally hauled him from the pool, drenched, humiliated, soaked to the bone. But the moment he staggered free, his eyes landed on the bottles Isabella had half-cleared. His expression darkened; he glanced at Dominic, then down at the empty crates. Clearly, his ego had been bruised—publicly outplayed.

Dominic didn’t bother responding to Pei’s sputtered protests. Instead, with impossible casualness, he lifted Isabella into his arms and turned away, striding through the crowd as if they were invisible. Heads swiveled. Conversations stuttered into stunned silence. People stared as he carried her like an elegant burden—like possession made flesh.

Once inside the elevator, the doors slid shut and the world narrowed to metal and mirrored reflections. Dominic set her down with a motion that was almost careless; Isabella’s legs trembled when he released his grip. She steadied herself against the elevator wall, breathing hard, still reeling from the humiliation and the sudden rescue.

Dominic watched her with those cold, unreadable eyes. He let the silence stretch, and then, with a voice as dry as winter air, he asked, “If I hadn’t come—what would you have done next? Public striptease? Dance for them?”

The question landed like a slap. Isabella’s throat worked. The truth had already been forming in the pit of her stomach for hours—long before Dominic’s arrival—and now it rose to the surface with a bitter clarity. Her fingers curled around one another until the knuckles blanched. “If you hadn’t come,” she said quietly, “I would have taken it off.”

Dominic’s brow creased, anger and incredulity flickering across his face. His voice dipped into something almost predatory. “So what he said was true. Isabella, you really… are shameless. If I hadn’t come, would you have tried to find some rich idiot to drag you out of here?”

She swallowed. Her hands trembled so badly she had to force her fingers still. “Yes.” The single word was a confession and a surrender both, and it came out hollow. “Yes, I would have. But what then? You think one rescue would change anything? I’m a woman accused of attempted murder, abandoned by my family, spat on by colleagues—stripped in front of people is only the beginning. This is what my life is now. Who would keep saving me?”

Her voice cracked on the last line, but she didn’t cry—at least not at first. There was a strange, wilting beauty to her composure: the same face that once had been the Carter heiress’s pride, now worn thin with exhaustion and shame. Dominic’s gaze flickered, and for a moment the façade of control loosened—something like pain pricked his chest, small and immediate.

“What did you just say?” he asked, as if he hadn’t quite heard.

She leaned forward as though pushing the truth out of herself. “You lectured me about ruining Sophia. But—” She stopped, swallowed, and then the confession poured out like a long-held breath. “She ruined me. You loved her, so you used me as the instrument to extract her revenge. What about me? What about what I lost? My whole life is destroyed because of her. If I didn’t fear you taking it out on my family, I’d have welcomed death. Your world—the one you all live in—has been my personal hell.”

Dominic’s face shifted; a memory—perhaps of the hollow stare she had upon leaving prison—seemed to pass through him. For a second he was very still. “And if you hadn’t found me that day,” he said, quieter now, almost casually, “what then?”

She met his eyes, and in the dim lift light her pupils looked like wells. For a heartbeat she did not answer. Then the elevator’s pale lights seemed to narrow; Dominic’s hand snapped out and caught her wrist with a grip that hurt. “Answer me,” he ordered.

Pain shocked through her hand, and with two small struggles she did not break free. Exhausted, she let the last barrier fall. “If I hadn’t met you,” she whispered, trembling, “I would have killed myself. Are you satisfied now?”

The confession emptied her. The fight went out of her like air from a punctured balloon. She sagged against the cold metal and the hard tile. Tears came then—slow at first, then in a rush—hot, unstoppable. She had held them back for so long that releasing them felt both like betrayal and relief.

Dominic stood there, the reflection of his face in the elevator mirror showing a storm that did not reach his expression. The pain that had pricked him a moment ago seemed to sharpen into something more complicated—anger, perhaps, at the world; at himself; at her. He didn’t move to comfort her. He simply watched, as if cataloguing each tear, each tremor, making note of the exact moment she fractured.

Outside, the city continued, indifferent—lights glittering, cars passing, life proceeding on as if none of this had happened. Inside the elevator, the sound was only her crying and the faint hum of the building. Isabella’s shoulders shook until finally, exhausted, the sobs faded into a ragged whisper.

“Why didn’t you say this sooner?” Dominic’s voice was low and dangerous, but it contained a tremor she’d never heard before.

She could barely meet his eyes. “What good would it have done?” she asked. “What could my words do against everything that’s already been decided?”

He said nothing. The doors opened with a small mechanical sigh, and for a moment they both stood at the threshold between the rooftop’s bright humiliation and the sterile corridor beyond. Isabella wiped her face with the back of her hand, trying to collect whatever dignity remained. Dominic’s fingers uncurled from her wrist, and at last he stepped aside.

As she walked out, the corridor lights fell across her like a spotlight on a broken play. She didn’t know if he would ever offer mercy. She only knew one thing with a terrible clarity: she had said the truth, and saying it had cost her everything, even as it took some small, necessary thing from within her—perhaps the last shred of self she’d been trying to protect.