Adrian coming all the way to this island was a direct result of her subtle hints and manipulation.
She wanted him to confront Serena.
Hoping Serena still carried a torch for him.
The ideal scenario was catching Serena and Adrian alone on the island in a compromising position.
Then, she would have the ultimate leverage over Serena.
And perhaps...
She could show Nicholas that she, Isabella, was the only one fiercely loyal and devoted to him.
If Nicholas grew disgusted with Serena.
He would definitely notice her worth!
If she could marry into the Blackwood family, she would never have to play the submissive pet to the Doyle family ever again!
But nothing had gone according to plan.
This woman... Serena... was absolutely terrifying.
To be so ruthlessly cold to the fiancé she had supposedly loved for four years.
Would she be next?
Just thinking about Serena's vicious methods.
Isabella couldn't stop shaking.
She thought of Arthur Doyle's words. She thought of the arrangements he had made...
That was her only way out now.
Clenching her fists, Isabella stared at Serena's retreating figure, a flash of desperate
malice crossing her eyes.
If she was going down.
She was dragging Serena to hell with her!
...
After dinner.
Apex Research Hub, A-Block Lab 1.
The atmosphere was suffocatingly tense.
Bianca Doyle sat in front of the monitors, frantically pulling at her hair.
She glared at the strings of code on the screen, her face growing darker by the second.
"This is wrong, why is it wrong again?!"
She hammered the keyboard a few times, and the screen instantly flooded with error messages.
"Why won't it run?! Why?!"
"This is supposed to be our family's internal research data! I should be able to do this with my eyes closed! Why isn't it working?!"
The male teammate, who was desperately trying to make progress on his end, cautiously leaned over and checked her screen. Captain we haven't figured out the core algorithm yet. If you just run the data like that, it's guaranteed to crash..." Cóntent
Bianca whipped her head around, her eyes bloodshot, glaring daggers at him.
The teammate shrank back, terrified into silence.
Isabella stood at another workstation, trying every method she knew to push the experiment forward.
But after a few meager steps, she hit another wall.
She furrowed her brows, staring at the formulas on the screen, her mind entirely blank.
The core algorithm was the key to the entire project.
Every single piece of data had to be routed through it to function.
Initially, because the tournament's was nearly identical to the
Doyle family's private research they thought this would be an oper book, test.
IMS
But once they actually started the practical application, they realized the family's
data was completely useless.
"It's all those two losers' fault!"
Bianca's patience shattered
completely. She shoved her
keyboard away and violently hurled a
heavy lab notebook onto the floor of
they hadn't run off, would we be
stuck like this?"
"What a garbage experiment! What a garbage algorithm! Losers! They're all useless losers!"
Bianca had assumed the two teammates who cursed her out were just venting.
She figured they would eventually come crawling back with their tails between their legs to beg for forgiveness.
But to her shock, when they said they were quitting, they meant it.
They were entirely done playing servant to the spoiled heiress.
They boarded the military defense ship that very afternoon and left with the oversight division.
They didn't show a single ounce of hesitation or regret.
Now, The Dreamscape Initiative was down to just her, Isabella, and the one remaining male teammate.