Page 27 of The Founder's Power

The numbers on the quarterly sheet were worse than expected. Vincent is moving in faster now, bold enough to go public with the damage. I saw my name in an article tonight. “Kincaid Empire in Decline?”

They’re not wrong.

The calls aren’t returned. The hands that once reached for mine in boardrooms are suddenly clasped tightly in Vincent Grey’s.

Through it all, there’s only one thought I can’t shut out—she’s gone, and not because of Vincent. Not because of betrayal.

Because of me.

She asked for truth, andI gave her silence.

She asked for vulnerability, and I gave her strategy.

When she stood in front of me, willing to love me even at my weakest… I was too afraid to reach back even though I thought I was ready this time. I thought I had everything under control. I told her I loved her, but words were never enough.

I stop at a bench across from the sculpture garden where she once dragged me on a cold morning to “look at frozen art with warm coffee.” I hated it, but I never felt more alive than watching her explain shadow and texture like the stone was telling her secrets.

That was one of the first times I knew I was in love with her, and now she’s the one thing I can’t negotiate back.

The empire I bled for is slipping away, but she’s already gone.

I would give it all—every cent, every title, every last boardroom—just to hold her again and say what I never had the courage to: “You were always the most important deal I never closed.”

I sit back against the bench and look up at the sky. The stars are buried in city light, but I try to find them anyway. Fuck me, but I think that’s what I’ve been doing this whole time, reaching for something real in a world I only knew how to control.

But control didn’t save me, and power didn’t keep her.

The only truth I have left is that I want her.

Not the empire. Not the win.

Her.

And I’ll do whatever it takes to say it and prove it before I lose the only thing that’s ever really mattered.

If I haven’t already lost her for good.

* * *

The next day,I find her at the old greenhouse gallery tucked behind Waverly Park. She used to volunteer here before her career exploded. I remember her saying once that this was her place to breathe, to just be.

I never deserved to know that detail. But she gave it to me anyway.

The place hasn’t changed. Ivy curls around rusted trellises, and the glass panels above filter the afternoon light into fractured gold and shadow. It smells like earth and lavender and something faintly citrusy. There are tiny brushstrokes of beauty everywhere—potted succulents with name tags, chipped statues wearing scarves someone’s left behind, and little hand-painted signs that read “grow gently” and “stay curious.”

She’s bent over a table of herbs, her fingers brushing soil from her palms, a smear of green paint on her wrist. She’s always beautiful, but especially while making something bloom.

She looks soft and precious… and painfully out of reach.

Her hair’s tied back in a loose, messy knot with strands falling into her eyes. She’s wearing a worn denim apron splattered with color. Her cheeks are flushed, and there’s a smudge of terracotta on her collarbone.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more radiant, and I’ve never hated myself more. She gave me this—her warmth, her honesty, her wild magic—and I buried it beneath boardroom silence and ego.

I step forward slowly. “Isabelle.”

She looks up, and it takes everything in me not to fall to my knees. Her eyes grow wide, and she flinches.

I take a breath like it might hurt. It actually does. My chest is all tight, and my heart is pounding.

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