Chapter 1267 Isabella’s Ending

Chapter 1267 Isabella’s Ending

"Honey?"

"What?"

"I love you. So much. So, so much."

Alexander looked at her flushed cheeks and understood. She was afraid he'd want to make love again.

But how could he?

He had learned restraint. He had learned to be gentle with her.

Three days later, Isabella's surgery was complete. But with her body's systems continuing to fail, the outcome was…

Isabella lay in the hospital's private care unit. Arthur stood beside her bed, watching her.

"I told you," he said. "Your odds of surviving were ten percent."

"Ten percent either way, with or without the surgery. Wasn't it?"

Isabella's voice came out barely above a whisper.

"Yes."

"Whatever Victoria endured, I can endure too. You tell her — she will never, ever be anything more than someone I beat."

"I won't go out of my way to bother her," Arthur said, his tone unhurried. "Right now, let's talk about you. Your mother has been released. She'll be here in the next day or two — to spend your final days with you."

The words 'final days' hit Isabella like a physical blow. A tremor moved through her whole body.

She hurt everywhere. Every inch of her. And no one had given her anything for the pain — no pills, no injection, nothing. It was the kind of pain that tore straight through you, like something inside was being ripped apart.

Had Victoria felt this too?

How had she survived it?

Isabella found herself desperate to ask her—what did you do? How did you hold on through something like this? Her own body felt like it was rotting from the inside out, like she was already dissolving.

She caught a smell. Something sour and wrong.

Was that coming from her?

She'd been cared for, she knew that. Someone had been tending to her, keeping her clean. And yet that smell — that thick, festering smell — it was still there.

"If you're willing to tell me where you've hidden your assets," Arthur said, "I'm willing to arrange a good burial plot for you. I'll visit your grave every year on the anniversary of your death."

He knew better than anyone how desperately Isabella had always craved someone to care about her.

The fact that her calls to him had been getting shorter each time — that alone told him everything. She needed him now. She couldn't help it.

But his words landed without warmth.

Assets. A burial plot. An anniversary visit.

Not a single word she wanted to hear.

Was she really going to die?

Was there truly no miracle waiting for her?

Miracles happened. They were real. Victoria was proof of that — Victoria, who should not have survived, and did.

If a miracle could find Victoria, why couldn't one find her?

"It's fine if you won't tell me," Arthur continued. "Sooner or later, everything that belongs to the Montgomery family will be mine anyway. Dad's never getting out of prison." He paused. "Honestly, sis — you're the one who brought us here."

Isabella's eyes strained to focus on him.

Was he blaming her?

"If you hadn't been so greedy. If you hadn't manipulated things to get Victoria into our father's bed — the Montgomery Group wouldn't be the hollow shell it is today. Dad wouldn't be spending the rest of his life behind bars. If you had never gone after Victoria. If you had walked away from Alexander and married someone else — any of that, and none of this would have happened." His voice shifted, and for a moment it was almost earnest. "You're barely thirty years old, Isabella. Do you actually want to die?"

Isabella didn't feel she had done anything wrong. Gone after Victoria? Victoria was nobody.

But she was barely thirty.

She was supposed to have her whole life ahead of her. And instead, she was lying here, dying.

If she died, Victoria would probably be thrilled.

The only thought moving through her mind, over and over, was this:

'Do I really have to die? Can I not die? I don't have to die. I'm only in my thirties.'