Chapter 578:

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She sat back. Pulled her knees to her chest. Wrapped her arms around herself and stared out at the rain — at the city passing in grey blurs, at a future she couldn’t see and didn’t want to imagine.

Behind her, she heard him shift. Felt his eyes on her, heavy and considering.

Then, impossibly, she heard him laugh.

Soft. Genuine. The sound of a man who had found something precious in the wreckage of his own cruelty.

The candy clicked against his teeth as he settled back, the mint filling the small space between them — clean and sharp and utterly out of place.

T𝘩e 𝘣𝖾𝘀𝘁 𝘳е𝗮di𝗇𝗴 ех𝗉𝗲r𝘪𝗲nce 𝗈ո g𝖺𝘭𝗻о𝘃𝖾𝗅s.𝖼𝗈𝘮

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the drive.

The car stopped.

Isidora felt the shift in momentum, the subtle change in engine vibration that signaled arrival. She didn’t look up. Hadn’t moved in twenty minutes, her forehead pressed against the cool glass, her breath fogging and clearing in slow, rhythmic patterns.

The door opened. Rain and city noise flooded in, then cut off as it closed again.

“Miss Wyatt.” Miles’s voice, carefully neutral. “We’ve arrived.”

She unfolded herself slowly, joints stiff from tension and immobility. The velvet box was still in her lap — she didn’t remember taking it, didn’t remember closing her fingers around it, but there it was. Heavy. Warm from her body heat.

She looked at Cedrick. He was watching her, the mint candy still visible in his cheek, his expression unreadable in the dim light.

“I’ll keep them.” The words came out before she could stop them — defensive and revealing. “Not because you gave them to me. Because they’re worth something. Because I can sell them, or —”

“Keep them.” His voice was soft. “Wear them. Throw them in the river.” He reached out, his hand finding her knee, pressing once with terrible gentleness. “It doesn’t matter. They’re yours. Everything is yours. It always has been.”

She jerked away. Climbed out of the car without accepting his hand, without looking back — her heels finding wet pavement and the familiar chaos of a Manhattan evening.

The building rose before her — Garrison Group headquarters, glass and steel and the weight of empire. She didn’t belong here. Had never belonged here.

But her feet carried her forward, through the revolving door, past security that didn’t stop her, into an elevator that seemed to know her destination before she pressed the button.

The penthouse was empty.

She stood in the center of the living room, the box clutched against her chest, and listened to the silence. No footsteps. No breathing. Just the hum of climate control and the distant wail of sirens.

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