Isabella woke before dawn on the morning of the gala, three days ahead of the original timeline nobody had quite managed to prepare for, and lay still for a long moment in the gray early light, one hand resting over her stomach, listening to Ethan's steady breathing beside her.They hadn't spoken much since the argument in the war room. Not coldly, exactly, but carefully, the particular caution of two people who loved each other and had genuinely disagreed about something neither was willing to pretend didn't matter. She missed the ease of the six days before that argument, the small warmth of watching him and Nico bicker over floor plans, and understood, lying there in the quiet, that some of what they'd built back together over the last six weeks was going to require more work than either of them had expected, even after everything.The room was quiet around them, the estate itself holding an unusual stillness in these early hours before the day's inevitable chaos began, a
Last Updated : 2026-09-11 Read more