Filthy Chapter 1

Isabelle Croft had always been the queen of our campus, an ice princess enthroned, and I was the only one she ever let into her frozen kingdom.

But then the new transfer, Caleb Ryder, arrived. He started engineering "chance" encounters, a constant, smirking presence in her orbit. Everyone whispered that the new flame could never outshine the lifelong friend, that Caleb’s little stunts were a waste of time. A story as old as time.

They were wrong.

It all shattered the night a man with a grudge against the Croft empire slipped past campus security and took Caleb hostage. In that moment, Isabelle’s composure finally broke. She didn't hesitate. She threw herself in front of Caleb, taking the knife that was meant for him.

Even as she lay bleeding, her life fading, she just caressed Caleb’s face.

“As long as you’re okay…” she whispered.

I stood on the edge of the crowd, the world’s biggest fool, a punchline for a joke I never knew I was a part of.

Later, in the sterile silence of the hospital room, Isabelle was a mess of tubes and monitors. She struggled to speak, her voice a dry rasp, but her words were for me.

“I don’t want to owe him anything,” she said. “Leave him alone.”

A hollow laugh escaped my lips.

This twisted little drama of love and hate belonged to them now. I had no part to play. The moment that man chose Caleb as the perfect leverage against her, my own irrelevance became blindingly clear.

Fine. I’m out.

* * *

I had just finalized the last of my paperwork to study abroad when Isabelle walked in.

Her eyes fell on the passport and the crisp visa documents on the table, and a flicker of confusion crossed her face.

“I thought we were doing this together.”

It took me a beat to realize she was talking about the European trip we’d planned for the summer. A lifetime ago.

This was not a tourist visa.

I gathered the documents, my movements slow and deliberate, and shook my head.

A practiced, placating smile touched her lips. “I didn’t forget, Leo,” she cooed. “It’s just… Caleb’s cast isn’t even off yet.”

Caleb Ryder. When Isabelle had shoved him out of the way of the knife, he’d stumbled and fractured his tibia.

“We’ll go as soon as he’s fully healed, okay? I promise.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore, Isabelle. My plans have nothing to do with you.”

The smile vanished. “Leo, I know you’re angry. But I told you, I just didn’t want to be indebted to him.” Her voice took on a sharper edge. “Besides, you waited months to do this, long after I was out of the hospital. You were obviously waiting for me. Don’t pretend this isn’t about us.”

A dull ache pulsed in my chest. She thought I’d been waiting for her. The truth was, I’d submitted my applications the same night she’d taken that knife for him. The bureaucracy was slow, but she saw the delay as proof of her power over me, another reason to take my devotion for granted.

I suppose I’d enabled it. For years, my love for her had been unconditional, a quiet, steady force she’d learned to treat as a natural resource.

“I just didn’t want him to get hurt because of me,” she continued, her tone shifting from placating to the cool, detached logic she was known for. “It wasn’t about humiliating you.”

“But you’re still sulking,” she said, the warmth gone completely. “You’ve been giving me the silent treatment for months. It makes things awkward for me and Caleb. I have to endure all the gossip and stares just to have a conversation with you.” She paused, her gaze unwavering. “I think you need a little reminder.”

Her hand went to her phone. She stared right at me as she dialed, her voice perfectly calm. “Mr. Davison? I need you to terminate Leo’s father. Effective immediately.”

My jaw went slack. My blood ran cold.

She put the call on speaker. The hesitant voice of her father’s Senior VP came through the phone. “Ms. Croft, with all due respect, his father has been with us for nearly a decade. He’s a senior manager… and besides, I thought he and your son, Leo…”

Isabelle cut him off, her voice like ice. “I said now, Mr. Davison. Right now.”

Less than three minutes later, a text from my dad lit up my screen.

Son, did you do something to upset Isabelle?

A second later, the message was deleted.

My fists clenched. My entire body hummed with a rage I couldn’t voice. Our family’s company went under ten years ago. Isabelle’s father had given my dad a position, a lifeline that kept us afloat. But before all that, before the bankruptcy, it was my father’s mentorship that had helped build the Croft empire in the first place.

This wasn’t just business. This was a deliberate, cruel severing of ties, a middle finger to decades of shared history.

I forced the words through my teeth. “Isabelle, have you even considered what our parents will think about this?”

She was unmoved. “Why should I care? It’s not like you’ll starve. You can always come live with me. I’ll take care of you.”

The condescension in her voice made my stomach turn. She knew. She knew how much I’d always hated the rumors that painted me as her follower, her glorified assistant.

Ignoring my fury, she reached out, her fingers gently smoothing the crease between my brows.

“Don’t be angry,” she murmured, her voice softening into a familiar, intimate whisper. “It makes you look ugly.”

It was so casual, so disarmingly familiar, like a scene from a life before Caleb Ryder ever existed. A life where there were no cracks in our foundation, where she’d sketch out our future with a seriousness that belied a secret, childlike innocence—a side of her no one else ever saw.

But someone else saw it now.

I pulled my head back. Her hand froze in mid-air.

A slow, chilling smile spread across her face, as if she’d just discovered a fascinating new game. “Leo,” she said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush, “do you have any idea how much… when you’re angry like this…”

She leaned closer.

“You look just like Caleb.”