Isabeau turned her back on Alaric, turned her back on the billions, the social status, and the fabricated perfection of it all. She gathered the heavy, voluminous skirts of her ivory gown and descended the remaining marble steps.
She walked with absolute purpose toward the center of the terrace. As she approached, the two security guards, visibly intimidated by the sheer, unyielding intensity burning in her hazel eyes, slowly released the old man and took several nervous steps backward.
The old man lay on the ground, struggling to push himself upright with his trembling, dirt-caked right arm. He hurriedly tried pulling the torn remnants of his canvas coat back over his left shoulder, desperately attempting to hide the grotesque, melted scar from her sight, plainly ashamed of his own disfigurement.
“Please… don’t look… forgive me,” the old man rasped, voice a gravelly, broken whisper, head bowed in absolute submission to her wealth and beauty.
Isabeau didn’t stop moving. She dropped straight to her knees on the hard, unforgiving limestone.
The pristine, imported white silk of her custom gown cascaded across the floor, immediately soaking up dirt, dust, and the faint traces of blood where the old man had fallen. She didn’t care about the dress at all. She reached out with trembling, lace-gloved hands and gently, with the utmost reverence, stopped him from covering his own shoulder.
“Don’t hide it,” Isabeau whispered, voice breaking as tears finally spilled over her eyelashes, carving wet, shining tracks down her cheeks. “Please. Don’t hide it from me anymore.”
She hovered trembling fingertips millimeters above the massive, raised ridges of the burn scar, terrified of causing him any additional pain, yet needing desperately to feel the reality of it against her skin. The heat of an inferno twenty years gone seemed to radiate up from his very flesh.
The old man finally lifted his head. His milky, cloudy eyes met hers directly. For a moment he looked genuinely terrified, expecting the same disgust and revulsion he’d received from everyone else in that crowd. But looking into Isabeau’s tear-filled eyes, that fear slowly melted away, replaced instead by a profound, overwhelming recognition.
“It was you,” Isabeau sobbed, the heavy dam of twenty years of gaslighting and buried trauma finally bursting wide open. She leaned closer, completely ignoring the pungent smell of the streets clinging to him. “It wasn’t a nightmare. My parents lied to me. The doctors lied to me. But I remembered. I remembered the fire. I remembered the metal beam. You shielded me.”
The old man’s breath caught hard in his throat. A single, heavy tear escaped his weathered, bloodshot eyes, cutting a clean line through soot and grime on his cheek. He’d carried the agony of that night for two full decades, living in the shadows, crippled and unemployable because of his injuries, forced into a life of absolute destitution. He’d never once asked for a reward. He’d never sought her out for money.
“You survived,” the old man whispered, lips trembling into a fragile, awe-struck smile. He looked at her not the way a beggar looks at a billionaire, but the way a father looks at a child who’s miraculously returned from the dead. “You grew up so beautiful. So safe.”
“Why did you disappear?” Isabeau cried, hands gently grasping his uninjured right arm. “Why didn’t you stay? You saved my life! You gave up everything for me, and I never even knew your name!”
“I am nobody, little one,” he croaked, shaking his head slowly. “I had no papers. No family. If police had found me, they’d have locked me away somewhere. And you — you were a princess. You belonged to a world made of light. I belonged to the shadows instead. As long as you were still breathing when I left you there on that grass, my life’s work was complete.”
“This is utter insanity!” Alaric’s furious roar shattered the tender, heartbreaking moment apart.
The billionaire had marched down from the altar, face gone purple with rage, flanked by his chief of security. “Isabeau, get away from that diseased vagrant right now! He’s a con artist! He probably read about your childhood accident in the papers and mutilated himself just to extort us! Guards, drag him out of here and call the police!”
Isabeau didn’t even turn her head to acknowledge Alaric’s presence. Her focus remained entirely fixed on the broken angel kneeling before her.
“Why did you actually come here today?” Isabeau asked softly, voice carrying a desperate need to know. “How did you even find me?”
