CHAPTER 2: THE TRUTH COMES KNOCKING

Isabelle's pov

I had been living in my tiny Brooklyn apartment for two weeks when Marcus finally came looking for me. 

It had been two weeks of silence, of working my translation jobs from my laptop and slleeping without the weight of disappointment crushing my chest. 

Two weeks of freedom that felt strange and terrifying and wonderful all at once.

My phone had been ringing nonstop since the day after I left the papers on his desk. 

Marcus called seventeen times the first day. I counted. Then thirty-two times the second day. Then the calls stopped and I thought maybe he had finally accepted it.

I should have known better.

The knock on my door came at eight on a Thursday evening. 

I was in sweatpants and an old t-shirt, eating instant ramen because it was cheap and I needed to make my savings last. 

I opened the door without checking and there he was. Marcus Wei in his perfect suit, his perfect hair, his perfect everything, standing in my doorway looking at my apartment the way someone might look at a particularly disgusting piece of garbage.

"This is where you've been living?" His voice dripped with disbelief and contempt.

I should have slammed the door in his face but shock kept me frozen. 

He pushed past me without waiting for an invitation and stood in the middle of my small living room that was also my bedroom and also my kitchen.

 Everything I owned fit in this one room and he was looking at it with his lip curled in disgust.

"You left our mansion for this?" He turned in a slow circle, taking in the secondhand furniture and the water stain on the ceiling and the radiator that clanked all night. "Are you insane?"

"What are you doing here, Marcus?" I was surprised by how steady my voice sounded when inside I was shaking.

"I came to talk sense into you." He pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and tossed it on my coffee table that was really a cardboard box I had covered with a tablecloth. "Divorce papers. You can't be serious about this."

"I'm completely serious." I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly aware that I wasn't wearing a bra and my hair was in a messy bun and I probably had soy sauce on my shirt. 

The old me would have been mortified. The new me didn't care what Marcus Wei thought of my appearance.

"You're making a mistake." He said it like he was explaining something simple to a child.

"You'll regret this for the rest of your life. You're throwing away everything."

"I'm throwing away nothing." The words came out harder than I meant them to. "You can't throw away something you never had."

He blinked at me, genuinely confused. "We had a home. Security. My name means something in this city."

"Your name means nothing to me anymore." I picked up the envelope and held it out to him. "Sign the papers, Marcus."

"Don't be stupid." He didn't take the envelope. Instead he pulled out his phone and tapped something, then showed me the screen. A bank transfer for one hundred thousand dollars. "I'll give you this if you stop this nonsense and come home. It's more money than you've ever seen in your life."

The arrogance of it took my breath away. He actually thought I would sell myself back into that prison for a hundred thousand dollars. He actually believed I was that desperate, that cheap, that pathetic.

Maybe two weeks ago I had been all those things but not anymore.

"I don't want your money." I set the envelope on top of the cardboard box table. "I want you to sign the papers and leave."

"You're not thinking clearly." His voice got sharper, more frustrated. He wasn't used to people telling him no. "You have nothing, Isabella. No family, no job, no prospects. What are you going to do, live in this dump and translate documents for pennies? You need me."

"No." The word came out quiet but determined, "I really don't."

I looked at him standing there in my small apartment and felt absolutely nothing – no love, no anger, no pain. 

It was just emptiness where he used to live inside my chest. 

 I had wasted three years loving this man who couldn't even bother to show up when I lost our baby. Three years begging for scraps of attention from someone who saw me as nothing more than an obligation.

I was done begging.

"Sign the papers, Marcus. I'm not asking again."

Something in my voice must have finally gotten through to him because his expression changed. 

The arrogance flickered and underneath it I saw something confusion, or maybe even hurt. 

He had expected tears and pleading and desperation. He had expected the old Isabella who would have crawled through glass for his approval.

He was meeting someone new and he didn't know what to do with her.

"You'll regret this," he said finally, pulling a pen from his pocket. "When you're alone and struggling and you realize what you gave up, don't come crawling back."

"I won't." I meant it with every part of my soul.

He signed the papers right there on my cardboard box table, his signature angry and harsh. Then he straightened up and looked at me one last time. "You'll never find anyone better than me."

"I'm not looking for better." I opened the door for him. "I'm looking for nothing. That's still an improvement."

He left without another word and I closed the door behind him and locked it. Then I slid down to the floor and sat there for a long time, staring at the signed divorce papers. I was free, completely free.

So why did I feel so hollow?

Three days passed. I worked, I slept, I existed. 

The hollowness started to feel normal. Maybe this was just what life felt like when you stopped hoping for things you would never have.

Then came the knock that changed everything.

I opened the door to find a man in his late fifties with gray hair and kind eyes and a suit that probably cost more than my car used to be worth before I sold it. 

He stood very straight and very formal, but his expression was gentle.

"Miss Chen?" His voice was quiet and respectful. "My name is James Morrison. I'm head of security for the Morrison family. May I come in? I have something very important to show you."

Morrison. The name rang bells in the back of my mind. The Morrison family was old money, real power, the kind of wealth that made the Weis look like they were playing pretend.

 I had translated documents for one of their subsidiary companies once.

"What could you possibly want with me?" I stepped back to let him in, my curiosity overwhelming my caution.

James Morrison didn't look around my apartment with disgust the way Marcus had. He simply sat in the chair I offered and set a leather folder on the cardboard box table. His hands were shaking slightly.

"I've been searching for you for a very long time," he said, opening the folder. "Twenty-eight years, to be exact."

He pulled out a photograph and handed it to me. It showed a young woman, maybe twenty-five, with dark hair and a bright smile. 

She was beautiful and happy and she looked exactly like me. 

"Who is this?" My voice came out as a whisper.

"Her name was Sarah Morrison." James pulled out more documents, his movements careful and deliberate. "She was Alexander Morrison's only daughter. Twenty-eight years ago, she was in a car accident with her newborn baby. Sarah died at the scene. The baby was never found."

My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.

James handed me another document. A DNA test with my name on it. "We recently discovered that the accident was orchestrated by a business rival named Richard Blackwood. He bribed hospital staff to fake the baby's death and give her to an orphanage under a false name." He looked at me with eyes that were bright with unshed tears. "That baby was you, Miss Chen. You're Isabella Morrison. You're Alexander Morrison's granddaughter and heir."

The room spun. I couldn't breathe right. This had to be a mistake or a scam or some kind of cruel joke.

"That's impossible." I shook my head, backing away from the table and all those documents. "I'm nobody. I grew up in an orphanage. I have no family."

"You have family." James stood up slowly, carefully, like he was approaching a spooked animal. "You have a grandfather who has been searching for you since the day you disappeared. You have four uncles who are desperate to meet you. You have a family, Isabella. You've always had a family."

I looked at the DNA test again. The numbers swam in front of my eyes but they were clear enough. Ninety-nine point nine percent match. 

"I don't understand." My legs felt weak so I sat down hard on my secondhand couch. "Why now? Why find me now?"

"We never stopped looking." James sat back down across from me. "Alexander Morrison has spent millions on private investigators over the years. We finally found evidence of what Richard Blackwood did, traced the payments to the hospital staff, followed the paper trail to the orphanage. It led us to you."

He pulled out more photographs. A distinguished older man with white hair and sad eyes. Four younger men who all looked powerful and dangerous in different ways.

"Your grandfather is waiting to meet you," James said softly. "He's been waiting twenty-eight years. Will you come with me?"

I should have said no. I should have asked for time to process this insanity. But I looked around my tiny apartment with its water-stained ceiling and cardboard box furniture and I thought about Marcus's sneer and Catherine's cruelty and three years of being nobody from nowhere.

What did I have to lose?

"Okay." The word came out stronger than I felt. "I'll come."

The drive to the Morrison estate took an hour. James drove a black car that was so smooth and quiet I could barely tell we were moving. He didn't try to make conversation, just let me sit with my thoughts and the folder full of documents that said my entire life had been a lie.

The Morrison estate rose before me like something from a dream or a nightmare, I couldn't tell which yet. 

Massive iron gates opened automatically, revealing a tree-lined driveway that seemed to go on forever. James drove in silence, giving me time to absorb what he'd told me.

I was Isabella Morrison, not Isabella Chen, the orphan and not Isabella Wei, the unwanted wife. Isabella Morrison, granddaughter of Alexander Morrison, one of the richest men in the country.

The car stopped in front of a mansion that made the Wei estate look like a garden shed.

The front door opened and an elderly man stepped out. Even from a distance I could see he was crying.

"She looks exactly like Sarah," he whispered to James, his voice breaking. "Exactly like my daughter."

He walked toward me and I saw in his eyes something I'd never seen before in my entire life – unconditional love.

"Welcome home, Isabella," he said, opening his arms.

And behind him, standing in the doorway like a wall of beautiful, dangerous men, were four figures watching me with intense interest.