THE HUSBAND SHE THREW AWAY

CHAPTER EIGHT: SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO SUPPORT YOUR CAREER

Eldridge called three days later, his crisp, professional voice cutting through the morning hum of Caelen’s quiet temporary hotel suite. He had the specific piece of information Caelen had been waiting for ever since the night of the autumn season gala.

"Her name is Isolda Calloway," Eldridge said, the rustle of agency personnel files audible through the receiver. "She operates on an independent contract basis and she is notoriously careful about who she signs with. I managed to find a mutual connection through one of the senior fashion photographers who shot the gala. She's agreed to meet with you for thirty minutes. Though, I should mention, Caelen—she made it very clear through her representative that she has zero interest in being managed by anyone new, especially an agency with Solstice's recent reputation."

"Set it up," Caelen said simply.

The meeting took place in a quiet, sun-dappled café tucked away on a leafy side street just two blocks from Solstice's corporate tower on Brickell. Isolda Calloway arrived precisely at ten o'clock, walking through the glass doors with an unhurried, grounded grace. She wore a tailored taupe silk blouse and plain trousers—simple, elegant, and completely devoid of the ostentatious branding Caelen had grown accustomed to seeing in Elowen's social circle.

She sat across from him in the corner booth with the particular, guarded stillness of a woman who had learned, through hard experience in a predatory industry, to keep her defenses fully raised around powerful men in Caelen's position. Her gaze was sharp, intelligent, and piercingly direct.

"So," she said, cutting straight to the point before Caelen had even settled into his seat. "You're the man who quietly bought out eighty-five percent of Solstice overnight."

Caelen met her gaze steadily, his rough hands resting flat on the wooden tabletop. "Something like that."

"And you wanted to meet me specifically because...?" She tilted her head, watching him closely, her fingers lightly tapping against the porcelain of her untouched coffee cup. "I'm not on Solstice's primary roster, Mr. Blacksew. I don't participate in Dunstan Cray's political games, and my current contract gives me full autonomy over my image."

Caelen considered several smooth, corporate answers—reasons about market positioning, roster expansion, or strategic brand re-alignment—before discarding them all. He settled on the absolute truth.

"Because I stood in the VIP suite at the gala three nights ago," Caelen said, his low, gravelly voice carrying an undeniable weight. "I watched you walk backstage into a room filled with people who were desperately trying to be looked at, and you weren't performing at all. You were just doing the work. I wanted to know why."

Something subtle flickered across Isolda’s features—a moment of unexpected surprise, perhaps, that he hadn't led with a bombastic pitch, a massive advance check, or empty promises of international stardom.

She studied him for a long, quiet moment, taking in the faint scar on his cheekbone, the broad shoulders that clearly belonged to physical labor rather than boardroom politics, and the complete lack of slick pretension in his posture. Cautiously at first, and then with growing freedom as the minutes ticked by, she began to speak.

She talked about her career, about the early years spent fighting off predatory agency executives who viewed her as young, disposable talent, and about the specific, bone-deep exhaustion of navigating an industry that treated a human being's face and body as a commodity to be leveraged rather than something to be respected.

Caelen found himself genuinely fascinated in a way that had nothing to do with corporate strategy or cold retaliation. He leaned into every answer she gave, asking quiet, incisive questions, listening with the total, undisguised focus of a man who genuinely cared about her perspective rather than simply waiting for his turn to speak.

"Who are you, really?" Isolda asked eventually, setting her cup down and looking at him with searching, brilliant eyes. "Because you didn't come here just to sign another model to your agency. If this were just about business, you would have sent an agent or a legal representative to hand me an agreement."

Caelen looked at her—really looked at her—and felt the quiet truth of his own intentions settle into his chest.

"Just someone who wants to support your career," Caelen said softly, and realized, as the words left his mouth, that he meant it far more than he had anticipated.

Watching her consider his answer, Caelen observed that Isolda was genuinely, breathtakingly striking in a way that owed nothing to high-fashion studio lighting, heavy makeup, or carefully engineered camera angles. Her beauty was rooted in something authentic, composed, and fierce—a presence that existed entirely on her own terms, whether or not a lens was pointed in her direction.

For a man who hadn't allowed himself to want anything beyond his next calculated move toward justice in weeks, the sudden, quiet pull of her presence caught him off guard. A soft, unfamiliar warmth spread low in his chest—a feeling he hadn't experienced in longer than he cared to admit to himself.

Isolda picked up her handbag and stood up smoothly from the booth, her lips curving into the first genuine, albeit small, smile she had offered all morning.

"I'll think about what you said, Caelen," she said softly.

"That's all I'm asking," Caelen replied, rising to his feet to bid her farewell.

As he watched her walk out of the café and merge into the bright, warm Miami sunlight, Caelen realized, with a profound mix of quiet surprise and overwhelming relief, that not every plan taking shape in his mind was built entirely out of revenge anymore.

Somewhere over the course of the past few days, without quite realizing when the shift had occurred, he had stopped merely calculating what he needed to dismantle. He had finally started imagining what he might actually build with the power he now held.