After My Husband's Mistress Wrecked Our Daughter's Car

I sat in my office, staring at the latest post from Amanda's account. The view counter ticked upward relentlessly—750,000... 751,000... each number another nail in Isabella's reputation. My phone rang, interrupting my dark thoughts.

"Mom?" Isabella's voice was barely a whisper.

"What's wrong?" I gripped the phone tighter, already standing, ready to move mountains if needed.

"Can you come get me? Please?"

I was in the car before she finished speaking.

When I arrived at Juilliard, Isabella was waiting outside, her dance bag clutched to her chest like armor. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry—the kind of emptiness that comes after tears have been exhausted.

"What happened?" I asked as she slid into the passenger seat.

She stared straight ahead. "Everyone saw it."

I didn't need to ask what "it" was. Amanda's latest creation—a doctored video montage implying Isabella had traded sexual favors for roles—had gone viral overnight. One million views and counting.

"Katrina Chen," Isabella continued, her voice hollow. "The senior dancer I've admired since I was fourteen. She cornered me in the locker room and told everyone I bought my way into the program." She finally looked at me. "She said talent like mine doesn't just appear overnight without connections."

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. "That's ridiculous. Your audition—"

"Doesn't matter," Isabella cut me off. "The whispers started the moment I walked in. By lunch, no one would sit with me. During rehearsal, someone 'accidentally' knocked me into the mirror."

I pulled over, unable to drive through the rage building inside me. "We'll fix this."

"How?" Her voice cracked. "The video has a million views, Mom. A million people think I—" She couldn't finish.

I reached for her hand. "We'll fight back. With the truth."

She pulled away. "There's more."

The dread in her voice made my stomach drop.

"Dean Sharma called me into her office. Someone sent the administration a video of me supposedly violating the student code of conduct." Isabella's hands trembled. "It was completely fabricated, Mom. My face edited onto someone else's body at some party I never attended. But it looked real."

"What did Sharma say?"

"That they're launching an investigation. My scholarship is on probationary status until they determine if the video is authentic." A single tear escaped. "They're talking about expulsion, Mom. Before I've even started."

The pieces clicked together in my mind. "Amanda."

Isabella nodded. "The envelope had her perfume on it. The same scent that was all over Dad when he came home last night."

I pulled back into traffic, my decision made. "We're going home to pack your things. You'll stay at the penthouse downtown until this is resolved."

"Running away won't fix this."

"It's not running away," I said, my voice steel. "It's regrouping. Strategic withdrawal before the counterattack."

Back at the house, Isabella headed upstairs while I made calls. First to my head of legal, then to our PR team, and finally to Leo Vance—the best private investigator money could buy.

As I hung up, my phone chimed with a notification. Another post from @TheRichestChildhoodSweetheart had just gone live. With trembling fingers, I opened it.

The video showed Isabella's face superimposed onto dancers in a gentleman's club. The caption read: "How Juilliard's newest 'talent' really earned her spot. Tag someone who should know the truth about Isabella Sterling! #ExposedDancer #FakeTalent"

The comments section was a cesspool of cruelty, with classmates, professors, and thousands of strangers piling on. One comment from a Juilliard account read: "This explains everything about her audition. Disgusting."

I heard a crash from upstairs, then Isabella's scream. I took the stairs two at a time, bursting into her room to find her phone shattered against the wall and my daughter curled on the floor, finally breaking.

"They're sending me messages," she sobbed. "Horrible messages. People I don't even know."

I gathered her in my arms, feeling her body shake with each breath. "Listen to me," I whispered fiercely. "This ends now."

As I held my daughter, something cold and calculating unfurled within me. The gratitude that had shackled me to Marcus for twenty years crystallized into something else entirely—a mother's rage, precise and deadly.

Amanda Walsh had just made the biggest mistake of her life. She hadn't just attacked my daughter's car or reputation.

She'd awakened the CEO.