THIRTY ONE

THIRTY ONE

Chapter 31

Her legs gave out beneath her.

She didn’t fall gracefully—there was no drama, no scream—just a silent collapse, as though the weight of what she’d seen had finally crushed her bones. But the man gripping her arm didn’t stop. He kept dragging her forward, his hand tight and impersonal, hauling her out like she was a trespasser, not the woman who had once built a life with the man now standing on that stage.

A few minutes later, the iron gates of the estate clanged shut behind her, and she was left alone on the dark, empty road—staring blankly at the asphalt as the field behind her exploded into wild cheers and celebration.

The sound was deafening. It felt like mockery.

She didn’t remember the ride back to the hospital. Couldn’t recall how she hailed the taxi or how much she paid the driver. The world blurred into smudges of shadow and streetlight. Somewhere between the gate and the sterile white halls, she had hollowed herself out completely.

By the time she returned, nearly two hours later, the sky was still cloaked in black, and the hospital hallways felt colder than before.

Isabelle sat down beside her daughter’s bed and stared up at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity—unblinking, unmoving. Then she turned and stared at Sophia instead. Just watched her. Rising and falling breaths. Tiny fingers curled. Warm cheeks, flushed with the tail end of fever.

Still, she said nothing. Did nothing.

She felt absolutely nothing.

Because she couldn’t. Because if she allowed herself to feel even a sliver of what that night had done to her—she would shatter. Utterly and completely.

There was no anger. No betrayal. Not even heartbreak. Just a vast, cold silence inside her. A silence so deep and endless, it scared her.

She was afraid that if she let the pain in—if she gave it even an inch—it would come flooding through her like a tidal wave, and she would never find the surface again.

So she sat there.

And she stayed numb.

“You both should return to the island,” Isabelle said softly to Vasilis and Eleni, her voice barely more than a whisper. “Thank you—for everything. But I can manage from here.”

She didn’t look at them when she said it. She couldn’t. The words tasted like surrender, but there was no choice. She was alone again. Fighting for herself and her daughter—again.

Eleni hesitated, clearly worried, but she understood. With a quiet nod and a lingering glance at Sophia, she and Vasilis gathered their things and made their way back to the port, the same boat that had brought them here now taking them away.

By the time dawn broke through the hospital windows, pale and gold, Sophia stirred again—this time free from delirium, her skin cooler, her eyes clearer.

“Mummy,” she mumbled, blinking at the ceiling. “Where’s Papa?”

Isabelle forced a smile she didn’t feel. “He’s probably just… busy,” she said, the lie soft and practiced. She repeated it again, and again, as Sophia asked the question more than once—each time with less energy, each time expecting more than Isabelle could give.

She had no real answers.

An hour later, the doctor returned to check on her. After a brief exam and a few reassuring notes on the chart, he offered a small nod. “She’s stable. You’re good to go,” he said. “Make sure she rests, and finishes the course of medication.”

And then they were discharged.

It wasn’t until Isabelle stood there in the hospital corridor, holding a bag of medicines in one hand and her daughter—exhausted but improving—in the other, that it hit her.

She had no idea where to go.

For the past twelve hours, her entire focus had been keeping Sophia safe, finding Nic, surviving the blow. She hadn’t thought beyond the moment, hadn’t planned her next move.

But now, standing there on the edge of dawn, with Athens waking around them, she realized there was only one thing left to do. Return.

Two hours and a long, silent taxi ride later, Isabelle stood once more in front of the towering iron gates of the Dimitriou estate. The same cherub-faced angels still spouted water in the overdone marble fountain on the front lawn—mocking her now with their timeless indifference.

The same butler opened the door. That same insufferable, tight-lipped man who had served the family for generations. He didn’t blink at her disheveled state or the child in her arms. Just stepped aside, as if she were a package being delivered to the wrong address.

Outside, the cleaning crew was busy sweeping away the glitter and wreckage from last night’s celebration—the shattered glasses, scattered petals, deflated balloons. Last night’s joy had already been reduced to trash bags.

But unlike before, it wasn’t hard to find Nikolaos Dimitriou.

He stood in the corner of the grand ballroom, still wearing the remnants of his tuxedo from the night before. The bowtie undone, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up. A half-full glass of scotch dangled carelessly in his hand, and his back was turned—of course.

Isabelle set Sophia gently on a nearby chair, brushed a strand of hair from her fever-cooled forehead, and walked across the marble floor.

Her voice cracked the silence like a whip.

“So… how was the party?”

It was meant to be a barb, a cruel reminder that she knew. That she had seen everything. That he had broken her in the most public, humiliating way possible.

But instead, the words trembled. They escaped her lips not as venom—but as a whimper. A raw, hollow sob disguised as a question.

He turned.

Just briefly, his expression shifted. His eyes flicked to her—then to Sophia. They widened for a fraction of a second, just long enough to betray that he hadn’t expected this. That maybe, just maybe, he still had the decency to be startled by the sight of his sick child and broken partner in the same room he had celebrated his new engagement.

But the moment passed.

His features reset into that cool, unreadable mask—the one he wore at board meetings. The one that said nothing, felt nothing.

He blinked once before answering, his tone clipped and emotionless.

“I thought I told you to stay in Kalónera. With Sophie.”

It never failed to astonish her—how he could peel back that polished charm and reveal the man beneath. Cold. Ruthless. His face, carved in stone, betrayed nothing. No flicker of remorse. No hint of humanity.

And yet, every time he showed her this version of himself, it still managed to hurt like the first.

“So that you could enjoy your engagement party without our interference,” she said, trying to hold her voice steady, even as her legs trembled beneath her. She nodded once, a pathetic attempt at appearing composed. “I get it.”

But the words clawed at her throat. The scream she had swallowed last night—of disbelief, of betrayal, of pain—was bubbling up again, hot and desperate. She wanted to rage, to cry, to shake him until he saw what he had done.

He just stood there.

Staring at her like she was an inconvenience. An error. A memory he hadn’t quite scrubbed clean. There was something bleak in his expression—something final.

“You should have stayed in Kalónera,” he said again, quieter this time. And somehow, that made it worse.

Isabelle blinked back the sting in her eyes.

“That’s it?” she asked. “That’s all you have to say to me?”

It felt impossible. Even after everything he still managed to shock her. To gut her with so little effort.

For a moment, he said nothing. Then, with a small shrug, he exhaled.

“What do you want me to say?”

There it was. The real Nic. No masks. No pretense. Just icy, unapologetic detachment.

“I tried to keep you away from it.”