CHAPTER 4 — THE KISS MARCUS HID
The police searched Richard’s penthouse before noon.
They found no keycard.
No medication.
No written instructions connecting him to Isabella.
His attorneys immediately described the accusations as a misunderstanding fueled by family panic.
Marcus was questioned for six hours.
When he returned to Khloe’s room, he looked ten years older.
“There is something else,” he said.
Khloe stared at the neonatal camera displaying their daughter asleep inside the NICU.
“What else could there possibly be?”
“I kissed Isabella.”
The room became painfully quiet.
“When?”
“Two months ago. In Boston.”
“The hotel terrace.”
“Yes.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No.”
“Did you want to?”
Marcus hesitated.
That hesitation gave Khloe her answer.
“I was angry,” he said. “You and I had been fighting about my father. Isabella was there. She told me everything I wanted to hear.”
“So you rewarded her.”
“It lasted a few seconds.”
“And then you continued meeting her.”
“I told myself I was keeping her under control.”
Khloe laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You were feeding her obsession.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then.”
Marcus lowered his head.
Khloe removed her wedding ring and placed it on the table beside her bed.
“I want a legal separation.”
His face tightened.
“Khloe—”
“I almost lost our daughter. I cannot recover while wondering which part of my marriage was real.”
“All of it was real.”
“Not enough of it.”
Marcus did not beg.
Perhaps he knew he no longer had the right.
He left the room and went directly to the police.
He provided the location of every meeting with Isabella, every transfer made through the foundation, and every conversation involving his father.
One payment immediately stood out.
Eight million dollars had been transferred from a private Thorne family account to a shell company registered in Isabella’s name.
Richard claimed it was payment for international consulting.
No consulting records existed.
Meanwhile, Adrian reviewed the legal documents Richard had been so desperate to keep Khloe from seeing.
The trustees had been scheduled to meet with her inside the hospital suite at midnight.
They carried an agreement signed by Khloe’s late father twenty years earlier.
Thorne Holdings had once been days away from collapse.
Khloe’s father saved it.
In exchange, he received fifty-one percent of the company’s voting shares.
Those shares would transfer permanently to Khloe’s child upon a live birth.
Adrian read the final clause twice.
Then he looked toward the NICU.
Despite the attack, Khloe’s daughter had survived.
At the exact moment she took her first breath, Richard Thorne lost control of his empire.
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But when Adrian rushed to the NICU to tell Khloe, every alarm in the neonatal wing began screaming.
Someone had just opened the baby’s incubator.
