“She’s a manipulative performer, that’s all this is,” Isolde seethed, her fingers clenched around her phone as she watched the glowing reviews pour in. “Look at them. They’re eating it up.”
Caspian stood by the window, staring out into the manicured darkness of the estate grounds. “It’s meaningless noise,” he said, his voice clipped.
But it wasn’t.
He wouldn’t admit it to Isolde, or even to himself, but Lyra’s words had found their mark. A performance for an audience of one. The lyric echoed in his mind, a cold shard of truth he couldn’t dislodge. He had seen their life together as a duty, a placeholder. He never considered what it felt like from inside the cage. A flicker of unease, unwelcome and persistent, stirred beneath his anger.
His private phone, the one reserved for family, buzzed on the marble countertop.
The screen read: `Eleanora Hawthorne`.
He answered, forcing a calm he did not feel. “Grandmother.”
Her voice was not angry. It was far worse. It was glacial. “Caspian. I trust you are watching this… spectacle you have created.”
“It’s being handled,” he said stiffly.
“No,” she replied, her tone cutting through his defenses with surgical precision. “It is not. You have taken a private matter and turned it into a vulgar public brawl. You have brought shame on a name that my husband and I built on a foundation of dignity.”
Each word was a perfectly aimed blow.
“You have taken a good woman, a woman I chose for you, and you have allowed her to be savaged in the press while you stand beside… that other one.” The disdain in her voice was palpable. “I am profoundly disappointed in the man you have become.”
The line went dead.
Caspian stood frozen, the phone still pressed to his ear. Disappointed. The word struck him harder than any shouted accusation ever could. His entire life had been built around earning his grandmother’s approval, carrying the weight of the Hawthorne legacy.
He had failed.
In the background, Isolde was still complaining, her voice a sharp, grating noise. For the first time, it sounded like nothing more than static.
About the Author
