Now in his life

Chapter Five

Fabiola's POV

I froze.

Was he awake? He had just spoken, but I couldn't tell if he was sleep-talking. I held my breath as I watched Alessandro slowly sit up.

I slid back on the bed and wrapped my arms around myself, giving him every inch of distance the mattress allowed, and when he turned and stared at me, I looked away so fast that my neck almost cracked.

"Erm… is this your bedroom?" I muttered.

"Isn't it obvious?"

I glanced at a framed photograph of himself on the wall beside the bed and swallowed.

My heart was pounding, and I clutched the sheets tighter to my chest while a hundred questions ran through my head. What do I say now? What do I do? Did we… did I…?

Our eyes met again, and I looked away again. The duvet around my body felt as though it were stitched out of pure embarrassment, and Alessandro chuckled low in his throat, which only made it worse.

"Your clothes are gone," he drawled. My face turned bright red.

"Yes, I noticed." I whispered. Damn he didn't need to tell me. I know. I took a deep breath. "Alessandro—"

"You don't remember, do you?" he said in this scratchy voice. I shut my eyes immediately.

Oh God. I couldn't answer.

Alessandro let the silence stretch for a few awful seconds, watching me squirm, before he sat back against the headboard with a sigh that sounded almost bored.

"You blacked out on the balcony with a glass in your hand, and you were sick all over the gown on the way up." he looked me dead in the eye. "Rosa undressed you and put your things in the wash, and I carried you here because you refused to let anyone else come near you." His mouth curved, and for a moment there was something almost like humor in it.

"You also held on to my arm like it was a life raft. That's why I'm without a shirt." I glanced down his chest and wanted to melt into the mattress. I couldn't tell whether I was more relieved or more humiliated.

"So...so you just—"

"I slept on the other side. You snore, by the way."

"I do not!" my cheeks reddened the more.

He didn't answer that. He simply stood, pulled a shirt from the chair, and walked out of the room. as soon as he left I remembered my phone. There was a text from Mum on the screen.

* She slept well. Stop worrying.*

I read it three times, and my shoulders finally dropped. who knows what exactly happened yesterday? I need to know. there's only one person that would tell me.

*****************************

"Come on, Fabiola, spill it all!" Isabella caught my arm the moment I stepped into the club that afternoon.

I laughed and cleared my throat, because it was exactly what I needed after the morning I'd had.

So I told her everything, from the contract to the money to the way I had woken up in his bed, and I had thought carefully about it in the car on the way over. I knew there were questions on everyone's lips, but I only felt I owed one person an explanation.

When I finished, Isabella gave me a strange look before she smoothed it over with a smile. "That was nice," she said, and I raised an eyebrow.

I wasn't one to brag about where I was now. Being debt-free and watching Sienna respond to her treatment with the money Alessandro had given me was enough for me, but Isabella's reaction was the last one I had expected. I had wanted to ask her what happened yesterday but her reaction was sending me weird signals.

"No wonder you looked so beautiful in that gown. It could only be money," she said, taking a sip of her drink. I squinted.

"Isa… we're cool, right?"

"Perfectly," she laughed. "I'm obviously happy for you. I know you'll think you are better than me now."

She pointed at me and smiled, and suddenly I felt as though I had handed my secrets to the devil.

A few minutes later, the rest of my old colleagues drifted over to say hello and express their surprise.

They joked that none of them had ever imagined the most eligible bachelor in the city, a billionaire with a face like that, could be my boyfriend, and that I had the real power now that Mariano had been fired.

I laughed along with them, but all I could really see was the face Isabella was making behind their shoulders, and at some point I thought I heard her snort. I knew I had made a mistake in telling her everything.

"Fabiola!"

I turned toward the voice, and my smile had just begun to form when Ella, the youngest and funniest girl in the club, stepped aside.

My smile died. Alessandro was standing behind her, and his face was like thunder, and not the quiet kind that comes before the rain.

My heart began to race. What had I done this time?

The ride back to the house was worse. He sent the driver and his assistant out of the car and told me to get in, and it felt like a trap, as though he planned to take me somewhere remote and be done with me.

I couldn't refuse because I had no idea what he was capable of. He slammed the door and went around to the driver's side without a word.

His hands were clenched so tightly around the steering wheel that his knuckles had gone white. He stared straight ahead and refused to spare me even a glance.

"Ales… Alessandro, is everything all right?" I squeaked. There was no answer, only a long, icy pause, and his silence was louder than a gong. What was wrong now? Did he regret bringing me into his life?

I had seen that look on his face before he left the bedroom that morning. He had received a text and his expression had changed completely, and afterward I had been so restless that I opened my phone to distract myself, which was the worst possible decision.

My face and Alessandro's were plastered across page after page, and people were talking about us as though we were public property. Suddenly I felt naked, and the strangers online were vultures while I was the carcass.

At first I told myself it was only insults I could survive, until I scrolled down and found a photograph of me carrying a tray through the club, and from that moment people began calling me a hooker.

I knew I shouldn't read the comments, but I read every one, and each word was like a burn that I kept pressing on. They said I didn't deserve him, and they said all the things I already feared about myself, and every cruel line wore down a little more of my fragile self-esteem. A tear slid down my cheek, and I wiped it away quickly. I glanced at Alessandro and the realization hit me. No wonder.

When the elevator doors closed and we were finally alone, away from the maids and the bodyguards, I blurted out the first thing on my mind. "If you regret all this, don't you think I should leave?"

He turned and looked at me with those same old cold eyes and a face I couldn't read, and I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling very small.

The elevator dinged, and he walked out without saying a word.

That was the longest night of my life. Sleep stayed away, and I sat up in bed playing what-ifs in my head until the sun began to rise. By morning I had made my decision.

I would march straight to his room and find out where I stood, and if he wanted me gone, I would go, though I had no intention of paying back a single cent. I hadn't asked for any of this. He was the one who had proposed it.

I knocked softly, and no one answered. Just as I raised my hand to knock again, the door swung open, and a woman stood on the other side of it.

My eyes widened in horror and pain.

He had someone to warm his bed? I swallowed hard. It was none of my business, so why did it hurt?

"Hi," she said, smirking, and I blinked. I knew her. She was the woman in red from the club, the one Alessandro had left me to dance with, and only then did I notice that she wasn't wearing the red dress.

She was wearing an oversized white shirt, and it was his. My chest tightened. Behind her I could see Alessandro with his back to us and his phone pressed to his ear.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," I mumbled. "I'll come back later." I turned to go.

"Oh, I know you. The fake girlfriend." I stopped. "The ex who can't let go."

"Excuse me?" My cheeks burned.

"You heard me." She came out into the hall and leaned against the doorframe with her hands on her waist, and she looked at me the way a cat looked at a mouse. "Alessandro is too busy right now," she said sweetly. "He's busy making plans to take her."

I froze. "Who?"

She laughed, and it was cruel. "Don't play dumb. People talk, darling, even your friends. He knows your secret."

"What secret?"

She leaned in until her perfume filled my lungs and whispered, "Your daughter."

I stopped breathing. My eyes went wide.

"Alessandro knows, and he is going to take her away from you. He has the money and he has the power, and you don't stand a chance."

My throat closed as though someone had pulled a noose tight around my neck, and the blood roared in my ears. My Sienna. Take her away? No. He couldn't. She couldn't possibly know—

My phone buzzed in my hand.

I looked down, and the unknown number blurred and sharpened again. It was a photograph, taken from the doorway of a hospital room with the lights low, of a small girl asleep in a bed with a tube at her nose and her favorite stuffed rabbit tucked under her chin. It was Sienna. Beneath the picture was a line.

*We know where she is*

I couldn't feel my hands. The woman was still talking, but her voice sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well, and behind her Alessandro turned from his call and looked straight at me.