JAMES'S POV
The word unsuitable leaves his mouth and James watches the entire world break in slow motion.
Isabella's face changes first. Her smile dies. Her eyes go wide like she's been physically hit. Like the man she loves just reached into her chest and pulled out her heart. James wants to take the word back. Wants to say he didn't mean it. Wants to rewind the last thirty seconds and choose differently.
But he doesn't. He can't. His father is standing offstage watching. The cameras are rolling. Three hundred journalists are writing down every word. The lie is already out there. The damage is already done.
Isabella looks at him like she's trying to understand who he is. Like the James Mitchell she loves just disappeared and a stranger put on his face. Her mouth opens like she's going to say something but nothing comes out. She just stares at him with an expression that will haunt him for the rest of his life.
Then she turns and walks away.
James watches her go and doesn't move to stop her. Doesn't call after her. Doesn't do anything except stand at the podium like a statue while the cameras flash and the reporters shout questions and the world keeps spinning even though his has just stopped.
Sophia appears at his side before Isabella even reaches the edge of the stage.
She's wearing black and red like she dressed for a victory. Her hand comes down on his arm and she's smiling like she just won a game. Like Isabella was the competition and now the competition is gone. Sophia leans in like they're a couple that's just been reunited and James feels bile rise in his throat.
"That was bold," Sophia whispers. Her breath smells like champagne and lies. "Your father is very pleased."
James doesn't respond. He's still watching the space where Isabella was standing. Where his entire future just walked away from him.
He finishes the press conference on autopilot. He talks about Sophia. He talks about rekindling old relationships. He says things that sound right and feel completely wrong. The journalists write it all down. Cameras capture every word. And somewhere in this city, Isabella is watching it happen on every screen.
After the cameras stop rolling, his father finds him backstage. Thomas Mitchell is beaming like he just closed the biggest deal of his life.
"Well done," his father says and pats him on the back. "That's exactly what needed to happen. Clean. Public. Undeniable."
"She didn't deserve that," James says quietly.
"Of course she didn't," his father says like it's obvious. "That's why it had to be done this way. If you'd ended it privately, she might have thought there was a chance. She might have clung to false hope. This way, she knows it's over. This way, she can move on."
His father says it like he's being kind. Like destroying Isabella on live television is a gift he's giving her.
"Get some rest," Thomas continues. "Tomorrow we announce your reunion with Sophia and everything returns to normal. You're going to be fine, James. Better than fine. You're going to build an empire that makes you forget you ever met that girl."
His father walks away and James stands alone in the backstage area surrounded by production people who are pretending not to have witnessed the destruction of a human being.
Nathan finds him twenty minutes later.
His best friend takes one look at his face and doesn't say anything. Nathan just pulls James into a private room and closes the door. They sit in silence for a long time. Nathan doesn't ask questions. He doesn't offer advice. He just sits there and James can feel him trying to figure out how to help someone who's just helped destroy the only person who ever mattered.
"I had to do it," James says finally. "My father said if I didn't end it publicly, he would destroy her. He said he'd leak things about her past. He said he'd make sure she never worked in fashion again. He said he'd make her toxic to every designer in New York."
"So you destroyed her yourself instead," Nathan says. It's not a question.
"I was trying to protect her," James says but the words taste like poison.
"You were trying to protect yourself," Nathan says and it's not cruel, just true. "You were afraid that choosing her would cost you too much. You were afraid of losing your inheritance. You were afraid of your father. So you chose the thing that would hurt less than choosing her."
"That's not true," James says but his voice is breaking.
"Then why didn't you fight for her?" Nathan asks quietly. "Why didn't you stand up to your father and say that you love her and you're going to marry her no matter what? Why did you let him win?"
James doesn't answer because there is no answer that doesn't make him a coward.
That night, James goes back to his penthouse. The apartment is empty. Isabella's things are still there. Her design sketches on the kitchen table. Her jacket on the back of the couch. Her hairbrush in the bathroom. The evidence of her existence everywhere and yet she's completely gone.
He sits on the couch and calls her.
She doesn't answer.
He calls again. She declines the call. He tries texting. She doesn't respond. He sits there with his phone in his hand feeling like he's drowning in air.
Hours pass. Days pass. James goes to meetings and signs contracts and builds his empire bigger and bigger because that's what Mitchell men do. They don't feel. They don't break. They build.
He starts dating Sophia because his father expects it. She moves into the penthouse. She redecorates. She removes all of Isabella's things and replaces them with her own expensive, cold, empty replacements. James watches it happen and feels nothing.
The company grows. James becomes a legend. The man who never fails. The man who always wins. The man who built a billion-dollar empire from nothing. Except he didn't build it from nothing. He built it on top of the corpse of his own heart.
Years pass and James gets numb to the numbness. He stops thinking about Isabella. He stops expecting her to call. He stops believing that she might come back. He becomes the man his father wanted him to be. Cold. Controlled. Alone.
But he never stops thinking about her.
He never stops scrolling through his phone looking for her name. He never stops checking the news hoping to hear about her success. He never stops hoping that she found someone who chose her the way he couldn't.
Then one morning, Nathan walks into his office with a news alert pulled up on his phone.
"Isabella Summers just launched a fashion collection," Nathan says. "It's getting massive coverage. Every magazine is talking about it."
James takes the phone and stares at the pictures. Isabella is older now. Harder somehow. More beautiful. More powerful. She's built an empire from nothing. She's become everything she said she would be.
And she's coming back to New York.
"She's been at a fashion expo in Paris for three years," Nathan says. "But she's coming back. There's a charity gala in three weeks and her collection is going to debut there."
"Which charity gala?" James asks even though he already knows the answer.
"The one your company is sponsoring," Nathan says quietly. "She's going to be there. James, she's coming back."
James feels something in his chest crack open. Three years of numbness breaks apart in one second. Three years of pretending he's fine shatters. Three years of building an empire to forget about her falls away.
Isabella is coming back.
And James realizes in that moment that nothing he's built means anything. The money. The power. The empire. None of it matters because none of it has her.
He calls his father immediately.
"Isabella Summers is coming back," he says without preamble. "Her collection is debuting at the gala my company is sponsoring."
There's a long silence on the other end.
"Then you'll avoid her," his father says coldly. "You'll be polite and professional and you'll stay away from her. She's not our concern anymore."
But she's already his concern. She's always been his concern.
"What if I don't want to avoid her?" James asks and his father goes silent because James has never asked a question like that before.
"Then you'll make the same mistake twice," his father says. "And I won't be there to clean it up."
The line goes dead.
James sits at his desk and stares at the news alert. At Isabella's face. At the woman she's become without him. And he realizes that his father was right about one thing.
He is going to make the same mistake twice.
Because the moment Isabella Summers walks back into his world, he's going to lose everything all over again.
And this time, he might not survive it.