Isabella's POV

The kiss of the stranger had lost its touch on my skin, but the flames still burned in between me and that guilt. A line crossed that I never thought I would, and it felt like an echo of the betrayal I had suffered through. Adrian destroyed our vows, and last night I destroyed everything else.

This morning, though, my decision was clear and unchangeable. I walked up into my lawyer's office with my neck held high, although there was queasiness inside.

"I want a divorce," I said earlier than he could even greet me.

He set down his pen and sized me up carefully. "Mrs. Cole-"

"Isabella," I snapped. "Just Isabella. Don't call me by his name again."

He furrowed his brow but nodded. "Isabella, divorce from Adrian will be messy. His team will fight tooth and nail to protect his reputation. Are you ready for that?"

"I don't care what they fight for. I'm not staying in this sham another second. Draft the papers."

He hesitated. "Do you want to discuss settlements, assets-"

"Not today." I stood quickly, my pulse racing. "Just start the process. He can have the money, the cars, the image. I want my freedom."

His silence felt heavy, but I didn't care. I left before my resolve cracked.

---

The walls were echoing worse than ever, making all the memories I wish to forget invisible under the surface. But laughter cut the noise. A woman's laugh.

I froze.

The ground beneath my feet continued on its arc toward the living room; there she was-Clara. Adrian's manager. The woman on the tape. Sitting pretty there on my couch balance like it owned her.

"You have got to be kidding me," I spat.

She squirmed, but there was Adrian standing up quickly, his complexion paling, "Izzy-"

"Don't you dare call me that." My eyes burned into him, then slid to her. "Why is she in my house?"

Clara wanted to open her mouth. "I just came to-"

"Don't," I cut her off. "I don't want to hear lies from you. Not in my living room."

Adrian took a careful step forward. "Isabella, listen. I asked her here. I wanted to talk. I need to explain-"

"Explain?" I laughed bitterly. "Explain how you betrayed me with your manager? How you dragged our marriage into the gutter while smiling for cameras?"

Clara looked at the floor, but Adrian's voice grew desperate: "It wasn't what you think. I was lost, I-"

"Lost?" My voice rose, shaking. "Lost men don't end up in bed with the same woman who books their flights and answers their calls. Don't insult me."

His eyes flickered with panic. "I still love you. I want to fix this. We can go to therapy, we can-"

"Love?" My chest ached with the word. "If you loved me, you wouldn't have humiliated me in front of the entire world. You wouldn't have broken us."

That silence stretched, like a knife between the two of us. My hands trembled as I grabbed my purse.

"I'm finished," I said through clenched teeth. "Stay with her. Reconcile. Ruin each other for all I care. But don't expect me to stay and watch."

He stormed out, leaving behind the echo of his pleading voice.

---

Anger turned to exhaustion by the time I reached my mother's home. I needed her. I needed someone who still felt like home.

"Mom?" I called as I entered.

The answer was quiet. My steps slowed when I noticed the bare walls. Family portraits were gone. The shelves were empty. Boxes lined the corners of the room.

My heart thudded. "Mom?"

She appeared from the corridor, dressed in a new cream frock that I had never seen before. Her smile was soft but strange. "Isabella. You have come."

I stared at the barren living room. "What is happening? Why is the house like this?"

"Sure, honey. I was going to tell you. I just didn't know how," she hesitated, smoothing her dress.

There was a lump in my throat. "Tell me what?"

Her eyes met mine, calm but serious. "I'm getting married."

The words hit like ice water. I blinked. "Married? To who?"

"His name is Victor. We've been seeing each other for a while. He makes me happy, Isabella. He makes me feel alive again."

I staggered back a step. "And you didn't think to tell me? You were just going to pack up and leave without a word?"

"I wasn't hiding it to hurt you," she said gently. "I wanted to wait until the time was right."

"The right time?" My rather ragged voice cracked. "Mom, my life is collapsing. I just came from my lawyer's office. I told Adrian it is over. I walk in here hoping to breathe, and what do I find? My mother disappearing too."

She reached for me, but I pulled away.

"Sweetheart, I'm not leaving you. You'll always be my daughter. But I can't live my life in pause. I deserve love too."

Tears blurred my vision. "And what about me? What about the daughter whose marriage just exploded in front of the world? I needed you to be here, and you taking off with someone else?"

Her face softened with pain. "I'll always be here for you. But I won't sacrifice my happiness forever. One day, you will understand. And you can come live with me if you want."

Isabella's POV

"Eleanor... please, I need you to talk to her," he said.

It crushed my heart. He had said my mother's name.

"She won't even look at me," Adrian said, his voice cracking. "Please, Eleanor, she'll listen to you."

I was breathless; every nerve completely stretched with tension.

Then my mother entered the scene, as sharp and jagged as glass. "Adrian, can you hear yourself? You humiliated her, and us. And now, you ask me to fix it?"

"I just want her to know I still love her," he said.

"That isn't love that destroys one," she shot back. "I'll talk to her. But don't expect any miracles from me." And she hung up.

Now I could scarcely breathe. Adrian had sunk against the wall, head bent with the dead phone limply in his other hand. I did not wait for him to notice me. I grabbed a bag, stuffed some clothing in it, and walked out without looking back.

---

It's all too hazy, lights streaking before me. My palms throb holding tightly on to the steering. Each breath rips a hole deeper in my chest. It is more like a beacon across the sun at night with a comforting glow in the dark corner of my life where my mother's lights were calling.

Before I even knocked, she threw herself into the door and drew me into her open arms.

''Isabella!'' It hugged me and enveloped me in the scent of warm silk, almost smothered but let's say cocooned into what I had long been yearning for.

"Just for a while, up until after the wedding, I can't be with him," I whispered.

"You don't have to explain it," she tightened her hold on my hand.

And then I saw him.

Tall. Familiar. Wrong.

Victor.

He was the one mistake I had managed to bury-the sting of his lips on the slip of my guard still lingering. His stormy gray eyes widened in shock, seeming to communicate on my own.

"Oh, this is Victor," my mother announced with a glow completely unaware.

He revives quickly from his astonishment and comes toward me with that strange smile of his. "A pleasure, Isabella."

I twisted my lips slightly into something resembling a smile and I offered him my hand. "Nice to meet you." The lie burned.

Dinner was like walking right into a trap: no escaping it now. My mother poured the drinks with wine, chattered about the wedding arrangements now totally unaware of the brewing storm under the table.

"By the way, Isabella," she burst out of nowhere, her sparkling eyes boring into me, "What's your opinion on Victor?"

My fork halted. Heat crept up my neck. I managed a smile. "He seems...kind."

Victor features around the mountain cliff, raw knuckles atop the stem stark white. "Your mother is a remarkable woman, and I'm fortunate to be at her side". His eyes flicked to me, sharp with memory.

I scrapped my fork through china roughly. "I'm sure you are," I said.

The smile suddenly dropped from his face. "She deserves the best," he insisted, voice even but strained.

"Already flattering?" Mother teased, hand soft against his. "See, Isabella? He's fabulous."

"Oh yes," I returned brittlely. "Fabulous."

But his gaze kept tenderly pulling me back. Every time we made eye contact, memories of that night flashed behind my eyelids: his hands ripping me, voice raspy against my skin. The twisting agony of shame coiled my stomach into knots. I averted my eyes, stabbing at food I could not eat.

"Yes, such as: "So, Victor," I said a bit too harshly, "what is it that you do?"

"Investments. Lots of travels," he said smoothly and interestingly rehearsed, as his leg bounces under the table like a ticking clock.

As she says, "Very successful! More than that, he listens to me", Mother beams proudly, "He makes me laugh."

That's... good, I added, mine faltering.

A thick silence fell over us as we dined; the only sound was the clattering of cutlery in the distance, like bullets shells falling deep into the earth. Every time I raised my glass, my hand shook. His eyes seem to hold me captive; when I dare return his gaze, I expect that the storm within his will break me.

My mother reached across the table and grabbed Victor's hand, lacing her fingers with his. She gave him a soft look with a tender lit face and said, "I can't wait for you to walk me down the aisle, Victor."

Shattered in me were those words. My mother's lover; my mistake.

Victor looked down over her with such warmth, the splay of his fingers closed on hers. But when his eyes cut over to mine, all unspoken guilt seemed to scream louder than words.

One hard swallow, and I plastered on my mask of composure while everything inside me unraveled. The air turned oppressive, heavy. I wanted to yell or run, but here I was stuck, bound to my chair, smiling on a string like some pathetic puppet.

Mother excused herself to fetch her wedding notes, and then I started choking.

With shaking hands, I fled to my old bedroom, shutting the door behind me. The moment I fell on the bed, the tears began to pour down. All became frantic thoughts across a heart weighted with lead: Among all men why this one?

Isabella's POV

Many times have I signed my name at the bottom of the fading words of parchment, where it evidently mattered very little: Divorce signed and put away. Adrian and I were no longer husband and wife, merely two people signing on the opposite sides of a contract.

The dizzying lightness; the world must have changed since I was last on it, with the staccato clicks of my stiletto heels echoing off the marble floor to my ears like some enfeebled whispering, too loud, too sharp, cutting through the manic ring of thought. And so I passed through the glass doors and into the late afternoon sun, the last thing I remembered before going black was having my head in my hands.

Nothing in this world mattered when it came to the ambience of the town: the soft drone of taxi engines interspersed by the whiff of peanuts roasted by the vendor. I should have normally ignored it, but today it felt like poison. The smell clawed back down my throat; my stomach started twisting brutally, as if the show was going on without any input from me.

"Oh God!" I gasped, shutting my mouth.

I almost stumbled while hurling back inside and making my way to the bathrooms. Cold tiles, fluorescent light so harsh. I held on to the sink, gagging, gagging with nothing but bile; my arms felt heavy like lead and almost alien, rivulets of sweat running down my temples.

"what's wrong with me," I whispered to my reflection.

I shakily fumbled through my purse for my cellphone.

"Thomas."

He answered his face almost immediately. "Isabella?"

But I choked on my voice. "I feel sick... I feel dizzy;...the smell outside is making me want to throw up. There's definitely something wrong with me."

Another long pause, then he asked, "Where are you?"

"In the Plaza Building; I just came out of meeting my lawyer."

"Good. Don't drive. Take a cab here. I will wait for you." He hung up before I could have said another word.

The odor of disinfectant was there: a harsh sensation but clean and something to lean on, which I needed to get myself across the threshold. Thomas was standing there at the entrance in his white coat; a picturesque stranger alive with myriads of Greek.

"You look pale. Come to my office, we need to talk." He led me in.

I sank in the chair, squeezing my bag to my chest. "It all started outside. The smells-I just couldn't take it. I began feeling dizzy and almost faint. My hands felt so heavy. And I'm so tired-more than usual, but I thought it was just stress."

Thomas remained unimpressed. "Isabella... I have to put this to you: Did you ever think about the possibility that you're pregnant?"

Pregnant.

The word hung between us.

I burst out with laughter. A nervous kind of laugh that was more like a sob. "Pregnant? Thomas, I just signed those divorce papers. I'm falling apart. No way-this can't be! This can't be!"

He showed no reaction. "The signs say so. I mean, the only way to know for sure is a test. Should I do one?"

My heart hammered, my bag tightened in my grip, and a stream of memories blurred my mind. That one night with Victor-gray color of his eyes and the desperation dragging me into his embrace.

If it wasn't Adrian's...

"I do. Do it. I want to know."

The word poured out too fast. It would be a matter of time before a nurse stepped in with a kind smile and handed me a cup. "Your result is coming soon."

Those agonizing minutes seemed to drag on forever. I sat in the medical examination with my legs bouncing, staring at the wall, imagining the verdict inscribed over there. My heart was loud inside my head.

Finally, the door opened, Thomas walked in holding a piece of paper. Calm on the outside, but his eyes said something else.

I shot up. "Tell me."

He sighed, "Hypothetically, it says positive."

The room tilted; I fell back into the chair, hand pressed to my abdomen. "Positive..." My voice faltered. "That means... I'm pregnant."

"Yes."

"No. No. This can't be true." I would choke on my tears. "I just ended a marriage today. Thomas, how can it be now?"

Bending again, he searched into my eyes. "I know this is a lot to take in. But Isabella, you are having a child, like it or not. This is a real thing."

The heart-wrenching sob tore out of me. "And I don't even know whose-child it is."

Silence fell from him as I continued.

"Could be Adrian's..." that name tightened my chest. "Or Victor's. Oh my God, Thomas, what have I done?"

"You don't have to answer that today," he soothed. "But you do have to start thinking about what you are going to do next."

My head is hanging like a pretzel; I just don't know if I can do this. People will laugh at me-a divorced woman, pregnant right after signing papers... What self-respect will be left with me?"

"Let them think about what they want." A note of firmness had crept into his voice. "This is your life, Isabella, not theirs. What matters is what you want."

I was looking at him again; helplessness was plainly visible on my face. "I don't even know what I want anymore."

"You don't have to decide everything tonight," he replied more softly. "But don't run from this. Don't run from yourself."

I buried my face in my hands as tears pooled between my fingers. "Thomas, I'm scared. What if I ruin this kid's life before it even starts?"

His hand became warm and firm against my shoulder. "You can't. You are stronger than you know. You've survived betrayal and humiliation. You can survive this. The question is, do you want to?"

Slowly, I lowered my hands and looked at him, blurred vision. "I don't know... but maybe I have to."

Tension ran between us. For the first time since stepping out of my lawyer's office, I breathed- not freely, but just enough to get by.

By the time I exited the hospital, dusk had saturated the sky, orange and violet streaks bravely pierced through pollution and disappeared. It was the same smell out there-exhaust, food, too many lives jammed together-but now it did not exactly knock off the breath out of me.

In composed steps, I held one hand against my abdomen.

Pregnant. A word that changes everything.

Adrian's child? Victor's? Well, I would find out one day. But as the streetlights lit up, the real, tormenting question remained:

What do I do now?