Chapter Twenty-Eight
Thursday dawned gray and restless, but Isabela was on the phone before the sun cleared the skyline. The line rang longer than usual, and she imagined Marcus glaring at the caller ID, already fed up with her constant disruptions. When he finally answered, his voice was gravelly and unimpressed.
“Isabela. This better be good.”
Clutching the phone she said, “I need you to trust me. I’ve got something, something big. But I need a little more time before I present to the SPOG team.”
There was a long pause. As she paced, she could practically hear the gears grinding behind his silence.
When Marcus finally spoke, her boss’s voice bordered on incredulous. “You realize how thin the ice is beneath us, right? You’re asking me to bank this case, and our reputation, on a hope and a promise.”
“I know. This isn't a gamble,” she said, voice low and urgent. “I spoke to Andrea Torres last night. She’s a credible witness. But I need to speak with the Torres family again, in person. If it pans out, it changes everything.”
“Isabela,” Marcus ground out.
“I know I haven’t done much to earn your trust lately, but I beg you to trust me on this.”
After a long silence, he finally relented. “Fine. I’ll place a call to Luke Barrett. If I can get the Torres’ to agree to a sit-down Friday afternoon, you have until then. One chance. Don’t blow it.”
The line clicked. Isabela let out a breath that felt like it had been stuck in her lungs for a week. One more day. That was all she needed.
****
After spending the remainer of the morning trying to push this meeting until tomorrow, Isabela couldn’t escape Chris and the SPOG representatives.
No amount of pleading or rescheduling had worked.
So, she marched into the firm’s largest conference room, the same one where she'd regularly met with Chris’s team.
They arrived precisely on time. Chris walked into the room looking incredible.
The tailored suit hugged his frame in all the right places, emphasizing his broad shoulders and narrow waist. His dark blonde hair was freshly buzzed short, with not a hint of stubble on his jaw.
She’d liked the stubble. It made him look real, touchable.
This version looked like a man ready for the courtroom.
Unlike the last meeting, the moment he stepped inside his eyes found hers and he smiled. The room blurred. Heat spread through her chest, and for a split second, she forgot to breathe. The look on his face was steady, and unguarded. She turned away before he could see the guilt in her expression.
Don and the SPOG attorneys sat, while Marcus was patched in over the screen again. Pleasantries were exchanged. Coffee was poured. Then came the demands.
“We need the updated strategy, Ms. Cruz,” said one of the attorneys crisply. “No more delays.”
She cleared her throat, feeling the tightness creeping in. “As I tried to explain over the phone, if I could have one more day, just until tomorrow, I have a potential breakthrough that could shift the narrative.”
Don, usually genial, gave her a look of firm finality. “Ms. Cruz, time is up.”
Chris shifted in his seat. “Wait, what breakthrough?” His brow furrowed in confusion.
Before she could explain, Marcus spoke up. “Isabela, ah...” The man never tumbled over his words, which instantly put her on alert. “Let’s proceed as previously planned.”
“But Marcus,” panic began building behind her ribs. “If we just wait...”
“And if something goes wrong? If your ‘breakthrough’ falls through, we’re left empty-handed.” Marcus’s voice was unyielding, but something like remorse lined his features. “Please present what you have.”
Isabela swallowed hard. With numb fingers, she opened the file folder that contained her original brief. The words blurred on the page, and for one frantic heartbeat she almost closed it again. But the silence pressed in, and she forced herself to begin.
Her voice was steady, but it scraped her throat raw.
She spoke of trauma. Of hesitation. Of the night that still haunted Chris.
The mother and child who never walked out of that kitchen alive.
She spoke of his self-blame, the diagnosis, the wreckage that followed.
She painted him not as a reckless cop, but a man scarred by doing the right thing too late and then reacting too soon.
Each sentence felt like peeling back a layer of his skin, exposing the parts of him he had trusted her to hold, not brandish. She kept her eyes glued to the page because she couldn’t bear to look up, couldn’t face the man sitting just a few feet away as she weaponized his wounds.
When she finished, silence swallowed the room.
Then Don Skulski clapped, cheerful as a game-show host. “Now that’s the narrative we needed! Brilliant, Ms. Cruz.”
The other attorneys joined in. The congratulatory applause seemed to echo in her ears like a cruel ovation at the end of a tragedy. Every note of praise was another twist of the knife. Their voices were muffled by the roaring in her head. None of them knew what it had cost her.
At last, she dared to look at Chris. As their eyes met and held, his jaw ticked once, the smallest muscle betraying the storm beneath his calm.
His hands, resting on the table, had curled into fists so tight his knuckles shone white.
Those blue eyes were as sharp as glass. There was no anger in his expression.
It was something worse than fury. It was confusion, betrayal, and a quiet devastation that stole the air from her lungs.
It was like watching ice spread over a lake, sealing shut everything warm that had existed between them. She didn’t feel triumphant. She felt hollow. Then Chris turned away from her stare and stood.
As the attorneys began filing out, already tossing around restaurant names and cocktail orders, she threaded her way through the crowd with purpose.
Every step toward Chris was a stone in her stomach.
He hadn’t moved. He stood at the far end of the conference table, the picture of composure.
His back was straight, arms loose at his sides, face unreadable.
He followed her progress with the vacant look of someone watching a door close. Not the way he looked at her earlier, when he walked in and sought her out like he couldn’t help it. That intimacy had been replaced by something else.
“Chris, please try to understand...” she began, voice low, tentative, and desperate.
“Macklin, you ready?” Don’s booming voice shattered the moment. He stood at the door, jovial and smug. “Celebration meal awaits.”
Chris didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn. His eyes never left hers. “Yep,” he said, his jaw flexing. “Right behind you.”
“Chris,” she said again, taking a step closer. Her hand hovered in the air between them like she might reach out and beg his forgiveness.
He moved first. He extended his hand in a businesslike and formal offering. The kind of handshake you give a stranger at the end of a transaction.
She hesitated just for a second, then placed her hand in his. Her palm burned from the chill of his grip, as though the cold had branded her. No trace of the man who had held her like she was the only thing keeping him afloat just days ago.
“It was nice working with you,” his voice was calm. “Thank you for your assistance, Ms. Cruz.”
The formality landed like a slap. She opened her mouth to speak, to plead, to explain, to say I didn’t want to do this, I only wanted to save you, but he had already let go. Already turning, then walking away, his broad back receding with every step until the door swung shut behind him.
There was no pause, no backward glance. Nothing. Isabela stood in the now-empty room, surrounded by praise and the echoes of her own silence, tasting the bitter sting of victory. She had done her job and in doing it, she’d broken something she might never get back.