Chapter 3

The old conservatory stood behind the estate, abandoned after the glass roof cracked in a winter storm. I chose it because no one came there after dark, and because Mother would not be the one to find me.

Before I sat down, I unlocked my phone and left a short video on the screen.

In it, I looked paler than I expected.

“Mom,I’m leaving.Don’t look for me. Don’t wait for me.”

“Forget me slowly, if you can.”

By the time Julian found me, the cold had already settled deep into my body. My thoughts were loose and fading, and for one brief moment, I thought the Program had finally let me go.

Then Julian’s coat settled over my shoulders.

He crouched in front of me, checked my pulse with two fingers, and cursed under his breath.

“Isabella, what the hell are you doing?”

He was still in his wedding suit, though his tie had been pulled loose and rain clung to his sleeves. He looked as controlled as ever, the kind of man who could cut a bullet out of a Bellandi soldier without blinking.

He had once been my trust target.

When I first broke down in this world, Julian was the one Dante called in the middle of the night, not because he cared, but because a Bellandi daughter losing control in public would embarrass the family. Julian took me to the private clinic under his name, locked the reporters out, silenced the nurses, and stayed beside me until my hands stopped shaking.

For a while, I trusted him more than anyone.

He knew which pills made me sick, which rooms triggered panic, which questions made me stop speaking. He once deleted a psychiatric report before Dante could use it against me, and when the tabloids called me unstable, he told me I was not a diagnosis and not a scandal.

His score rose quickly after that.

I really thought he might save me.

Then Sophia released edited videos and fake messages, making it look as if I had used the Bellandi name to harass her and turn the city against her. By morning, every gossip account in Chicago was calling me a jealous mafia princess, a spoiled lunatic, a woman desperate enough to ruin another woman’s life for Adrian Moretti.

Julian saw the headlines.

He saw Sophia crying in his office.

Then he looked at me and said my depression had become convenient, my breakdowns were calculated, and my pain was just another weapon.

So I failed again.

I looked at him now and asked flatly, “Shouldn’t you be at Sophia’s wedding?”

Julian’s hand paused as he checked my pulse.

“I left early.”

“Because watching her marry Adrian hurt too much?”

His face darkened. “That’s none of your business.”

Of course.

He had once given up London because Sophia said she needed him nearby.

Julian’s gaze fell on my phone. The video was still open, frozen on my face. Something shifted in his expression before anger covered it.

“So this is what tonight was?” he asked. “One last message to make everyone feel guilty?”

I stared at him without answering.

He let out a cold laugh. “Still the same trick, Isabella. You disappear, you fall apart, and you wait for someone to panic.”

I had heard those words too many times to react.

He was a doctor. He knew my illness was real. He had seen the records, the medication, the nights I could not breathe without help. If even he could call it fake, then maybe being unloved really did turn truth into performance.

I pushed his coat away and tried to stand.

Julian rose with me, close enough to stop me but careful not to touch.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere you won’t find me.”

For the first time that night, fear broke through his face.

“Isabella,” he said, his voice lower. “Don’t.”