King of Pride

Throughout the second half of December, all their peers leave the city for the holidays, leaving Isabella and Kai behind. They spend time in each other’s apartments and occasionally go on discreet dates in underpopulated places to avoid getting discovered. During a night in at Kai’s place, he asks Isabella to spend Christmas with him in the city, and she agrees.

For Isabella’s birthday on December 19, Kai insists that they do something. Isabella requests that they visit Coney Island, where they spend a few hours walking the boardwalk, visiting the aquarium, and ice skating.

When Christmas arrives, Kai and Isabella exchange gifts. Isabella gifts Kai a signed copy of a dinosaur erotica titled A Raptor Ripped My Bodice, calling back to an earlier joke she made about the secret Valhalla library missing that particular genre. Despite the many expensive gifts that Kai has received in his life, Isabella’s means the most due to its thoughtfulness. Her next gift outshines even the dinosaur erotica, as she hands him her unfinished manuscript to read. Kai gifts Isabella with a vintage 1960s typewriter. He believes that the fact that there is no delete option on a typewriter will keep her from deleting what she’s written—something she tends to do in moments of self-doubt. 

As they settle in to watch a Christmas movie, Kai receives a call from Christian Harper. He wishes Kai a Merry Christmas and mentions a gift he had hand delivered yesterday. Kai has yet to open it. Christian implies that it contains “everything [Kai] need[s] to secure [his] position as one of the youngest CEOs in the Fortune 500 come late January” (206). Kai assumes that it’s the material for blackmail and insists that he won’t use it.

By the week after New Year’s, Isabella has written over half of her erotic thriller. Though she still has a lot to write in less than a month, she has written 40,000 words in the span of three weeks. While spending time with Sloane, Isabella is shown recent news published in the online tabloid National Star. The news reveals pictures that prove that Isabella is in a relationship with Kai. At this moment, Isabella receives a call from Parker, her supervisor at the Valhalla Club. Parker orders her to report to the club for a discussion.

Isabella meets Parker and the managing committee—which includes Kai and Dante—at the Valhalla Club’s executive office half an hour later. In an attempt to spare Isabella from losing her job, Kai attempts to lie by claiming that he and Isabella are simply friends and share the same social circle. However, Isabella admits to breaking the rules and accepts the consequences, which leads to Parker firing her.

After the meeting at Valhalla, Kai receives a phone call from his angry mother. She accuses him of potentially destroying everything mere weeks before the CEO vote. She urges him to stop seeing Isabella and rectify any damage that the scandal might have done to his standing with the board members. When Kai refuses to break up with Isabella, his mother is appalled that he’s so willing to give up everything for a girl. Instead, he’s prepared to fix it by any other means necessary. 

Kai heads to Isabella’s house afterward. Isabella breaks down in his arms. She admits to feeling like a failure—not finishing her book in time and getting fired from her job. Kai assures her that there is no timeline for success and that as long as she is happy, her family shouldn’t care what she’s doing with her life. Kai suggests a weekend trip away from the city to recharge and regroup.

Kai flies Isabella to his family’s property in Turks and Caicos. They have an entire island, Jade Cay, to themselves. The space allows Isabella to focus on her manuscript, Kai to field calls, and both to brainstorm how to navigate their respective issues. At dinner one night, Kai presents Isabella with a list that he’s compiled of ways to combat writer’s block. She’s touched by the fact that he’s put in the time to research solutions. 

When Isabella asks Kai about work, he reveals that Colin Whidby has been removed as CEO of DigiStream and that Rohan Mishra has officially replaced him. Due to Rohan’s reluctance to strike a deal, Kai has been moved “back to square one” (228). Their conversation is interrupted by a call from Alessandra Davenport. She’s heard that Isabella and the Valhalla Club have parted ways and wants to hire Isabella as a business assistant who can help her get her flower-pressing business off the ground. Isabella seizes the opportunity, even though she worries that she’s underqualified for the role.

Isabella and Kai spend the rest of their weekend engaged in a pleasant mixture of work and play. By the time they return to NYC, Isabella has written 25,000 more words. During her first meetings with Alessandra at the penthouse that she shares with her husband, Dominic, Isabella notices the distance in the couple’s marriage and Alessandra’s melancholy.

Kai meets with Rohan in attempts to reach an agreement about the DigiStream acquisition. Tobias has gutted the Black Bear company that he recently acquired, which has made Rohan even more resistant to signing with Young Corporation, as he doesn’t want the same to happen to his company. The recent scandal with Kai dating Isabella has also thrown the CEO vote results into further question, and Rohan refuses to agree to a deal until the results are decided. 

After the meeting, Kai goes out for a drink at his hotel bar. His phone is alerted about new articles released by the National Star that detail Isabella’s family life and her background, which she prefers to keep secret. The articles reveal that she is a millionaire heiress as the only daughter of Perlah Ramos—the founder and CEO of the Hiraya boutique hotel chain. Isabella’s four older brothers are successful in their own rights as the chief operating officer of Hiraya, a tenured professor at Berkeley, an award-winning engineer, and a celebrated artist. However, the article bashes Isabella for being untalented and unsuccessful in comparison to the rest of her family. While reading the articles, Kai is approached by a man who happens to be Isabella’s brother Gabriel. 

Gabriel aims to protect his sister from making bad decisions and does not approve of the relationship since those she’s had with people of Kai’s “type” have ended poorly for Isabella before. Gabriel casually drops the name of a previous boyfriend, Easton, which Kai hasn’t heard before. Gabriel ends their conversation by warning Kai to stay away from Isabella.

For the next two days, Isabella avoids all calls, whether from friends, family, or the media. She focuses purely on her work with Alessandra while the National Star continues to publish hit pieces that spread lies about her. Isabella meets with Kai, who asks her why she never shared the details about her family. Isabella admits that she never wanted her actions to reflect poorly on her family and didn’t want to rely on her family’s name or money to make her way. She has preferred to live without people treating her differently. 

Kai explains his day, from what happened with Rohan to Gabriel ambushing him at the hotel bar. Kai asks Isabella who Easton is, and she explains that he is her ex-boyfriend. Two years ago, she met Easton at a bar and began seeing him. Eventually, she discovered that he had a wife and two children at home, but only because his wife hired a private investigator to track them down and showed up drunk and angry with a firearm. In the ensuing scuffle between Easton and his wife, the wife ended up shot, and though she survived, she lost her ability to walk. Isabella blames herself.