My Captive Heart

Prologue - 2001

Neverland Ranch

7/26/2001

The thin lined paper trembled in her hands. Teardrops began dotting the page, nearly ripping through the sheet as she didn't move and her tears piled on top of another.

Michella carefully approached her stepmother. "Issy?" she called softly, kneeling before the torn woman. She had just walked into her bedroom to see Isabella on her bed, a statue, with only the paper containing any type of movement. Michella pulled the paper away from Isabella's hold and stood up to read it to herself. As she went deeper into the letter, her heart swelled up in fury. She crumbled the paper in her hand and threw it across the room. "Issy..." She sat on her bed beside Isabella and laid her head on her arm. "I'm so sorry." Her first tear of the night fell from her left eye.

Isabella's lips parted but she didn't speak.

Michella didn't know what more to say. She was so angry at Michael for letting this happen. "He loves you." She began caressing Isabella's hair. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

Isabella had went to Michella's room to return a borrowed item when she saw the note in the middle of the bed. She couldn't ignore it. But she didn't expect for it to embody so much hurt. "I never thought I would feel this pain again."

Michella sat up and looked at her step mother. "Again?"

Isabella finally turned to look Michella in the eyes. She then smiled, thinking back to her first heartbreak. "There's no worse feeling than getting played."

Michella cascaded her focus to her hands. "Yeah."

Isabella then looked elsewhere. "When you think everything is fine. You're in love and you're happy. Then a bomb blows up in your face when you're smiling the hardest."

"Daddy cheated before?"

Isabella giggled and wiped her tears. "No."

"Oh." Michella was almost afraid to ask questions. She knew Isabella was in a fragile state.

"I'm talking about my first love."

"I thought daddy was your first love..."

Isabella smirked at her.

"Oh," Michella said laughing. "Prince?" she whispered.

Isabella nodded laughing. "Michael was my first real boyfriend. Which is a lot for a girl to take in. Even before Thriller, he was huge at the time. His first album Off the Wall was out and he was touring with his brothers a lot. But I saw him more on the television than I did in person."

"Really?" Michella was all ears. She had never heard stories about when Isabella and Michael first dated. Only the second time around. "So you guys weren't in love?" Michella knew about the relationship that Isabella had with the musician Prince, everyone in the world did at that point, but she was always told Michael was her first love.

"When Michael and I first dated, it was like puppy love. When I moved on to Prince, it was the real thing. There were a lot of first time experiences." Isabella never told her story of Prince. There was public evidence that they were indeed together but neither she nor he ever went into any details.

But it had always been something Michella was dying to know. "So, Prince broke your heart before? He cheated?"

Isabella sighed. Michael was the only person who knew the full extent of how much Prince hurt her. "Numerous times."

Michella swallowed the lump in her throat. "Well, I've heard a lot of different stories about him. Some good, most bad."

"He wasn't that bad of a guy. But he did some bad things. Hurtful. Michael told me I would never have to go through with this kind of deceit again, as long as I had him and he had me. And even after everything we've been through, I still believed him because he's always been 100% upfront with me. You know that, the world knows that." Isabella threw her head in her hands. "So the fact that this is really happening..."

Michella rubbed her back.

"I mean. I don't even know which is worse. Getting cheated on numerous times or having your husband get another woman pregnant. A woman who's supposed to be your friend." Isabella snickered towards herself. The latter was obvious worse. "I wish I never met either of them."

"We'll get through this," Michella preached. "I promise." She felt like she was losing Isabella again. She didn't want her to drown in tears. "Where did you meet daddy again?"

Isabella sat up, puffing out a wad of air. "Through Janelle."

"Oh." Janelle was a name Michella knew to never speak. It was such a touchy subject, she quickly threw out the next thing that came to mind. "So how did you meet Prince? If you don't mind me asking."

Isabella wiped her fresh tears. "Uh...I met him originally at this club Penny took me to. We became friends. Flirted a lot. But it wasn't until about a year that we actually started dating. I'll always remember...August of 1983. Prince was doing a show in Minneapolis and though we weren't speaking at the time I went to the show." Isabella smiled as the images gathered in her mind of the first time she laid eyes on him up on that stage. She then realized it was therapeutic for her to look back.

"Was this while you were with daddy?"

Isabella shook her head. "No. We broke up before Thriller came out so about '82. This was a year later but I was still very vulnerable and hoping I would be able to get back with him sooner than later. But nothing was really going in my favor around that time."

"Did you and Prince talk after the concert? Did he know you were there?"

"Yes. I said hi to him before the show. Then when it was over I called him and asked him to come to my hotel room. Because I missed him."

"Wow. Did he come over?" Michella knew it wasn't the time to be asking so many questions but she couldn't help it. She was actually a fan of Prince and was always wondering about Isabella's relationship with him.

"About an hour later." Isabella stood up sighing. "And I wish I hadn't opened that door and I wish I hadn't gotten back with Michael a few years after that." She made her way to the door. "I'm gonna go lay down."

The memories were no longer therapeutic but only filling her with regret.