CHAPTER THREE

Isabella strode up and down the fabulously decorated halls of Drake Tower, heels drumming against the polished marble as she tried to quiet a beat—a sound she didn't truly recognize. The lacquered walls of the painstakingly carved mouldings, rimmed with subtle gold, magnified long-held secrets and long-lost dreams. She passed clusters of perfectly combed guests, their murmurs laced with a current of mystery. Now and again, she heard this conversation; bits of it, half-words in the dark that hinted at a conspiracy that preceded the ungainly way she found herself here,

Once, as she stood next to a wide archway, she caught a fragment of a conversation between two crisply dressed staff members. Their voices — quiet yet urgent — described plots set in motion long before she came. "It's all been set up," one said with a tone that brooked no contradiction; the other concurred, saying, "Ye, the pieces are set." The idea that her fate had been foretold made Isabella's skin crawl; she felt her pulse quicken. And the conversation there faded to murmurs, then silence. She pressed her back against the cool wall, straining to hear.

At the next hall, each shadow, each glint, became a significance. The gilded cage here, what at one time had felt like an impressive enclosure, now felt like an inescapable cage. He staged this whole elaborate charade: I kept going in her head, thinking: Who orchestrated this? What role did she have in a scheme so meticulously plotted? Beautiful chandeliers above cast soft, shifting light over her face, showing worried eyes and a jaw clenched in determination.

Standing at the end of the hall, a solitary man in an immaculate suit paused in front of a plain door. She caught the smallest glimmer of a smile on his lips, and he glanced around conspiratorially. The furtive, knowing look they exchanged made her spine sing. Had he been part of that earlier conversation, or was he an actor unto himself in this elaborate game? The air was heavy with unspoken oaths and impending doom.

Isabella paused in a cramped side hallway; questions pricked her skin. Her unease has deepened with every echo of her footfall through the naked pale moonlight, whispering winds conc merchants of fate, and bidding sinister forces which trail her to make themselves known. Unlike some sort of creaking myth, she felt destiny calling, both hazardous and absolutely irresistible.

Isabella stepped into a darkened reception room, polished surfaces and whispered conversations swarming the background, her heart racing fast. The man across the way wore a tailored suit that gave him a cool detachment. Ice-blue eyes fixed on a spot at the back of the room, Christian Vanderbilt appeared untouchable. His own presence, right down to a jagged scar on his hand and a calm, measured manner, had the resonance of beauty and concealed injury. When they locked eyes, the room faded into nonexistence, time came to a standstill, and she felt very little more than someone standing in front of him with a sheet wrapped around her, but she reigned all the same.

Christian's gaze swept across her without speaking, and in a voice as cold as marble, he inflicted on her his verdict: "Damaged goods." Over the church's creaking, the tattered threads of the larger family dug deeper with every word. Discomfort drifted through her veins as anger, a strange combination of anger and sadness, bubbling up, reminding her of what felt like a fire diked down from that anger. She squared her shoulders, eyes narrowing in unuttered defiance. "I don't know." She said, low, her voice quiet but strong against his rejection, "Maybe."

The unsaid between them was thick in the air. The eyes in the room were electric, everyone acutely aware that this was not just another meeting of ceremony but something much more. Isabella's heart raced with eagerness and fear as she struggled to steady her shaking voice and speak without trembling. Every second loomed, stretched to half a lifetime, the conflation of low thrum of conversation and faint rattling of glassware swirling about the room. Before Isabella could process what just transpired, Christian spun on his heel and strode away. He flitted into the crowd, his shiny shoes clapping against the marble floor. The room sighed as one, and whispers reemerged, heavy with speculation. Isabella froze in place, watching him walk away, the fire of his words etched in the electrolyte of her inner self. A boiling concoction of fury and determination churned inside her, compelling her to look for answers. At the same instant, she silently promised him to see him much, not letting that word lose value. Isabella heard nothing of what happened after he had gone, but their silence told her that there, in their broken promises, lay a fault that had not healed; now this silence haunted her heart as a question: One beat of her heart, one that swore to discover the reason for the way the man who had been so cruel to her had acted.

Alone with Christian in the claustrophobic, Amish-style quarters of an amenities, glass elevator, Isabella was there. The door whispered closed behind them, leaving them in a deserted world with barely visible parallel lines but no cross lines, no dividing lines, out of the splendour of the Drake Tower. The low whirr of the elevator and ambient glow of overhead lights suffused the encloser with a surreal atmosphere, where a second could become a minute. A thrill of adrenaline surged through Isabella as she caught Christian's gaze, both staring in unison at each other with an equal z-strike of misperception. "She had something in her blue eyes that was unreadable — something boiling under the surface, pain and longing intertwined without a clear signature.

For an instant, the silence was palpable. And then Isabella, as if possessed by an impulse beyond the tension, removed her violin from its case. This enclosure served as the stage for the pouring out of her heart. Her fingers trembled as she began a mournful refrain, a racked note of loss and yearning that billowed against the naked walls with a fullness that filled the little room. Christian's face softened slightly, the lines of his expression releasing into vulnerability. The lyrics were tales of lost wishes and scarred hearts, each note a hushed testament to her power. As she dumped every bit of soul into the performance, the notes of the violin melding with the heartbeat throbbing in her chest, Isabella's eyes drifted closed.

Christian pressed back against the wall, fighting between his emotions. There, in that summer all too brief, the world outside dissolved, and there was only the flickering murmur of the music and the connection that shimmered between them. His eyes glimmered with pity and regret, and for one beat, Isabella thought she felt a fragility behind the frigid veneer. As the elevator doors began to slide apart, diffuse light burst into the cramped space, breaking the intimate spell. Isabella's gaze hitched up to Christian's anxious brow — its ailed brightening glinted in dark strain. There, in that instant, his face revealed a war he was so reliving to leave behind. Chuckling behind him, clearing her throat as the elevator buzzed him out of sight, and his hand still seemed to tug at her oiled skin. The remnants of her off-the-cuff singing lingered in the silence around him, along with the static electricity of whatever she would say next. All she heard was their silent chords beating à tempo.