Chapter 506
[ 502 words ]
Chapter 506:
A surge of hot, violent anger shot through Caroline. She pushed herself off the counter, her fists clenched at her sides.
“That’s not love,” she hissed, the words torn from her throat. “That’s a sickness. That’s possession.”
“It was a prison,” Agnes agreed, nodding grimly. “And she tried to escape it. One night, during a terrible thunderstorm, she managed to slip past her security detail. She ran barefoot across the lawns, trying to scale the iron gates at the end of the driveway.”
Caroline held her breath, a desperate hope flaring in her chest.
“They caught her, of course,” Agnes said, extinguishing the hope with a quiet finality. “The armed guards brought her back like a captured animal and threw her at Leland’s feet on the marble floor of the foyer.”
The image was so brutal, so dehumanizing, that Caroline felt a wave of nausea.
“After that, the pretense was over. The fighting was constant, vicious. It became a scandal within the family. The General’s wife, the old matriarch, had to intervene. She used the family’s honor, its reputation, to force a truce. She shamed them into silence.”
Isabella was forced to accept her fate. She stayed. But the light in her eyes went out.
“She became a ghost in this house,” Agnes said softly. “A beautiful, silent doll, walking through these halls. Her heart was dead.”
Caroline felt a suffocating pressure in her chest. She unconsciously touched the simple gold band on her ring finger, a stark contrast to the invisible shackles that had bound Isabella. She thought of Jarrod, of the freedom he gave her, the respect he showed her, and her heart ached with a fierce, protective love.
A𝗱𝖽𝘪c𝗍𝗶v𝗲 ѕ𝘁𝗼𝗋𝗂e𝘴 o𝘯 ga𝗅𝘯𝗈vе𝗹ѕ.cо𝗺
“And it was then,” Agnes said, her voice turning dark and heavy, “when the house was at its coldest, when Leland was at his most vulnerable, that Cornelia McDowell appeared.”
Caroline let out a short, sharp breath. Of course.
“She was his new private secretary. Young, ambitious, clever. She saw the void in his life, in his ego. Isabella gave him silence and contempt. Cornelia gave him adoration. She worshipped him. She told him he was a king.”
“A vulture,” Caroline spat, the word tasting like poison on her tongue. She finally understood the cloying, manipulative sweetness Cornelia exuded. It was a weapon, honed over years of practice.
“Leland was preparing to file for divorce,” Agnes continued. “To finally cut his losses and install Cornelia as the new lady of the manor. But then a message came from the family doctor.”
Agnes paused, her eyes meeting Caroline’s.
“After a routine physical, it was discovered that Isabella was pregnant.”
The air in the kitchen crackled with the revelation.
“It was Jarrod.”
Caroline’s hand flew to her mouth, a soft gasp escaping her lips.
“Leland was… ecstatic,” Agnes said, the word sounding obscene in the context of the story. “He didn’t see a child. He saw the ultimate chain. A son. His blood. The one thing that could bind Isabella to him forever, something no prenuptial agreement could ever undo.”
He began a frantic, desperate campaign to win her back.
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