Chapter 143 Chapter 143

Chapter 143 Chapter 143
Chapter 143

Two days before the wedding. Night at the facility. Quiet. Too quiet.

Isabella waited in her room until the guard passed by for the midnight check. She’d been counting their rounds for days now, timing everything, learning their patterns. Fifteen minutes between checks. Fifteen minutes to make her move.

The moment the footsteps faded down the hallway, she moved. Fast. Precise. Like she’d practiced in her mind a hundred times.

She went to the corner of her room where the old heating vent sat low against the wall. The screws had been loose for years probably, the facility old and falling apart in places nobody looked. She’d been working on them for days with the edge of her spoon from lunch, turning them slowly, carefully, silently.

Now they came out easy. The grate pulled away. Behind it, darkness. A shaft leading down into the bowels of the building.

Isabella squeezed through, her body thin from not eating much, from stress eating away at her. The metal was cold against her skin through the thin facility clothes. She crawled forward on her belly, the shaft tight and suffocating, but she kept going. Had to keep going.

The shaft opened into a larger space. Old maintenance tunnels running under the facility. She’d heard orderlies talking about them once, complaining about rats and leaks. Nobody came down here. Nobody checked here.

Her feet hit concrete. The air smelled like mold and rust and forgotten things. A small flashlight she’d stolen from a supply closet during therapy lit her way. The beam shook as her hands trembled, not from fear but from excitement, from freedom so close she could taste it.

She followed the tunnel, water dripping somewhere in the darkness, her shoes splashing through puddles she couldn’t see. The walls pressed close, pipes running overhead, cobwebs catching in her hair. She didn’t care. Didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting out.

The tunnel branched. Left or right. She chose left, instinct guiding her, desperation pushing her forward.

After what felt like hours but was probably only twenty minutes, she saw it. Light. Real light from outside, not the fluorescent prison lights of the facility. Moonlight filtering through a rusted grate at the end of the tunnel.

Isabella ran the last stretch, her breath coming hard and fast. She pushed at the grate. It didn’t move. Panic hit. No. Not now. Not when she was this close.

She pushed harder, throwing her whole body against it. The rust had sealed it shut over years of neglect. But the metal was old, weakened by time and weather. It groaned. Shifted. Gave way.

Isabella tumbled out into the night, landing hard on grass wet with dew. She lay there for a second, breathing in real air, free air, outside air. Above her, stars scattered across the sky. Behind her, the facility rose like a prison she’d just escaped.

Which she had.

She got to her feet, looking around. The facility sat on the edge of the city, surrounded by woods on one side, roads on the other. She ran toward the trees, disappearing into shadows where nobody could see her, where nobody could catch her.

She’d prepared for this. Hidden in the lining of her facility jacket was the one thing she’d managed to get before being locked up. A burner phone. Her mother had slipped it to her during one visit, thinking Isabella might need it for emergencies.

This was an emergency.

Isabella pulled it out, hands shaking as she powered it on. The screen glowed in the darkness. She dialed a number she’d memorized years ago, a number she never forgot even when she’d tried to leave that part of her life behind.

The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. Then a voice answered, rough and familiar.

“Yeah?”

“Simeon,” Isabella said, her voice hoarse from not using it much in the facility, from keeping quiet and playing sane. “It’s Isabella. I need your help.”

Silence on the other end. Then a low whistle. “Isabella Hart? Damn. Heard you got locked up. Saw it on the news. Kidnapping and shit.”

“Yeah,” Isabella said, not ashamed, not sorry. “I need you to come get me. Now. I’ll explain when you’re here.”

“Where are you?”

She looked around, finding a road sign barely visible in the moonlight. She gave him the location, a place about two miles from the facility, far enough that cameras wouldn’t catch them.

“Give me thirty minutes,” Simeon said. “Don’t move from that spot.”

The line went dead.

Isabella walked through the woods until she hit the road, staying in the shadows, watching for cars, for anyone who might see her and report an escaped patient. The orange facility jumpsuit was too obvious. She found a trash bin behind a closed gas station and dug through it until she found an old hoodie someone had thrown away. Stained and smelling like garbage, but it covered the jumpsuit. Made her less visible.

She waited by the road sign, counting minutes, counting cars that passed, counting everything to keep her mind from spinning into panic.

Twenty eight minutes later, headlights appeared. An old black sedan with tinted windows. It slowed, pulled over. The passenger window rolled down.

Simeon looked out at her, older than she remembered, harder, but still recognizable. They’d grown up in the same neighborhood before her parents got rich and moved them away. Before Isabella became someone different. But Simeon had stayed in the streets, had joined a gang, had become exactly what everyone expected him to become.

“Get in,” he said.

Isabella climbed into the car. It smelled like cigarettes and something else, something chemical she didn’t want to identify. The back seat had two other guys she didn’t know, both watching her with expressions that weren’t friendly.

“Drive,” Simeon told the driver, and the car pulled away, tires humming on asphalt, taking her further from the facility, further from capture, closer to what she needed to do.

They didn’t speak during the drive. Twenty minutes later, they pulled into a neighborhood Isabella vaguely recognized. Run down buildings, graffiti on walls, streetlights broken or flickering. Simeon’s world. His territory.

The car stopped in front of a building that looked abandoned but probably wasn’t. Simeon led her inside, up stairs that creaked under their feet, through a door into a room that served as his hideout.

It was exactly what she expected. Mattresses on the floor, beer bottles scattered around, weapons displayed on a table like trophies. Guns. Knives. Everything someone needed if they lived the kind of life Simeon lived.

“Sit,” Simeon said, gesturing to a chair.

Isabella sat, her body exhausted from the escape, from crawling through tunnels, from running. But her mind was sharp, focused on what came next.

Simeon grabbed a gun from the table. A pistol, black and cold looking. He checked it, made sure it was loaded, then held it out to her.

“Figure you might need this,” he said. “Whatever you’re planning.”

Isabella took it, the weight foreign in her hand but somehow right. Power. Control. Ability to make things happen the way she wanted them to happen.

“So what’s the plan?” Simeon asked, sitting across from her, lighting a cigarette and watching her with eyes that had seen too much, done too much, didn’t care about much. “You didn’t escape that place just to run. You’re going after someone.”

Isabella looked at him, then at the gun in her hands. Her fingers curled around it, feeling the trigger, imagining what she’d do with it.

“There’s a wedding,” she said, her voice steady, calm, certain. “Day after tomorrow. Landon Callahan marrying Sienna Blake. Saint Thomas Church. Five hundred guests. Media everywhere. Everyone celebrating.”

“And?” Simeon prompted, already knowing where this was going, already seeing the madness in her eyes.

Isabella smiled. Not a happy smile. Not a sane smile. A smile that promised violence, that promised chaos, that promised everything wrong.

“I’m going to turn it into a bloodbath,” she said simply, like she was talking about the weather, like she was discussing something normal and not a massacre.

Simeon stared at her for a long moment, smoke curling from his cigarette, weighing her words, weighing the consequences, weighing whether to help her or turn her in or just walk away.

Then he laughed. Dark. Rough. Genuine.

“You’re crazy,” he said, but not like it was a bad thing. Like it was a fact. Like crazy was just another word for determined.

“I know,” Isabella agreed, still smiling, still holding the gun, still planning.

“You know they’ll kill you,” Simeon said, serious now. “Cops. Security. Callahan family has private army probably. You won’t make it out alive.”

“Don’t care,” Isabella said, meaning it. “As long as I take her with me. As long as she doesn’t get to have him. As long as I destroy what they think they’re building.”

She looked at the gun again, then back at Simeon.

“I just need to get into that church,” she said. “Need to get close enough. Then I’ll do the rest.”

Simeon nodded slowly, understanding. Not agreeing exactly, but understanding. In his world, revenge was currency, loyalty was blood, and crazy was just another word for committed.

“I can get you a car,” he said. “Clothes that don’t look like you escaped from somewhere. Maybe fake ID if you need to get past security.”

“Thank you,” Isabella said, meaning it.

“Don’t thank me,” Simeon said, stubbing out his cigarette. “This is suicide. You know that, right? This is you dying so you can kill someone else.”

“I know,” Isabella repeated. “But if I can’t have him, nobody can. If I can’t have my life, she doesn’t get hers.”

Simeon stood, walking to the window, looking out at the street below where his people moved in shadows, where violence was just part of life, where death happened every day.

“Wedding’s in two days,” he said. “That’s not a lot of time.”

“It’s enough,” Isabella said, standing too, tucking the gun into the waistband of her pants, hidden under the hoodie. “It’s all I need.”

She walked to the window beside him, looking out at the city, at the lights in the distance, at the world that kept turning without her, that celebrated while she suffered, that gave Landon to someone else.

Two days. Forty eight hours. Then everything would end. Either she’d win or she’d die trying. But either way, Sienna wouldn’t walk down that aisle. Wouldn’t say those vows. Wouldn’t get her happy ending.

Not if Isabella had anything to say about it.

Not without blood. Not without fire. Not without making everyone pay for choosing Sienna over her.