Caspian drove through the city night, aimless and hollow. The neon lights of the metropolis blurred into meaningless streaks of color. His mind was a chaotic highlight reel of his time with Isolde, but every memory was now re-contextualized through the horrifying lens of the truth.
Her brave smiles now looked like triumphant smirks.
Her vulnerable tears now seemed reptilian, shed for effect.
He remembered specific comments, dropped like poison into casual conversation. “She never seemed to want a family, did she?” she’d asked one night, her head on his shoulder. “It’s a shame. She’s so emotionally distant. It must be hard for you.”
He saw them now for what they were: not observations, but calculated seeds of doubt. Each one was a small, precise incision meant to bleed his marriage dry. He had let her do it. He had welcomed it.
He wrenched the car to the side of the road, the screech of the tires a faint echo of the scream trapped in his chest. He pulled out his phone, his hands shaking, and scrolled to a single name: `Eleanora Hawthorne`.
His thumb hovered over the call button. He desperately wanted to confess, to hear his grandmother’s sharp, unwavering wisdom. To seek guidance from the one person whose moral compass he had always trusted.
But the shame was a physical weight, pressing down on him, suffocating him. He had failed her so completely. He couldn’t bear to hear the disappointment in her voice again, not now that he knew just how right she had been. He couldn’t admit the depth of his foolishness. Not yet.
He closed the contact list.
A moment later, he opened it again. His finger scrolled past the familiar names to a different kind of contact. Marcus Thorne. Head of Corporate Security for `Hawthorne Industries`. A man whose loyalty was to the family, not to any single member, and whose discretion was legendary.
He made the call. When Thorne answered, Caspian’s voice was a ghost of its former self. It was cold, flat, and devoid of all emotion.
“Marcus,” he said, skipping all pleasantries. “I need a full, deep-background investigation run on Isolde Finch. Everything. Financials, associates, medical history. I want to know who she’s spoken to for the past year. Use any resources necessary.”
He paused, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel.
“And it stays off the books. No one knows.”
About the Author
