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The Price Of The Surgery
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-08-27 14:11:50
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WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 20: The Wedding
Isabella"He's jealous," I said, holding both of Nonna Sophia's hands in mine, forcing my voice to stay steady even as the lie sat heavy on my tongue. "Marcelo has spent his whole life watching Leonardo build something he could never have. A company. A family that still loves him despite everything. Now a wife who chose him. Of course he wants to poison it. It's the only weapon he has left."She studied my face for a long moment, the way she used to when I came home from school with a story that didn't quite add up. I made myself hold her gaze."I love him, Nonna," I said, and strangely, that part didn't feel like a lie at all anymore. "The contract is just paper now. What's underneath it is real."Her shoulders finally softened, the worry easing out of the lines around her eyes, and she pulled me into a hug that smelled like lavender soap and warm bread. "Then don't let that bitter old man near your wedding," she murmured against my hair. "
WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 19: Marcus Confession
IsabellaSecurity had Julian out of the ballroom within ninety seconds, but I felt his eyes on the ring long after the doors closed behind him. Leonardo never let go of my hand, not once, not even when Marcelo crossed the room a moment later with a smile so tight it looked painful, offering congratulations that sounded like a threat wearing a nice suit. I smiled back and said thank you and didn't believe a word coming out of either of our mouths.LeonardoI didn't wait until morning.By the time we got home from the gala, I had already called the one man in Milan who owed me a favor big enough to open doors that should have stayed shut: a private investigator who used to work fraud cases for the finance ministry before he decided my money was better than his pension. I gave him one name. Marcus. I told him I wanted everything, every account, every phone record, every meeting from the last six months, and I wanted it before I had to look Luca
WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 18: The Engagement
IsabellaThe photo was everywhere by the time I woke up. Julian's hand around my wrist, my face caught mid flinch, captioned in three different languages with some version of the same lie: *Moretti bride caught with mystery man.*I sat on the edge of the bed with my phone shaking in my hands until Leonardo's assistant knocked on the door and told me not to check my phone again for the rest of the day. It turned out to be good advice, because by that evening the story had simply stopped existing. Not buried. Erased. Three outlets that ran it issued quiet corrections. A gossip page that refused to take it down found its advertising pulled within hours. Leonardo never mentioned it to me directly. He didn't need to. I understood exactly what kind of man could make an entire news cycle disappear before dinner, and it frightened me a little how easily he'd done it.Three days later, he told me to be ready by seven.I wore emerald green that night,
WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 17: Fiamma finding out
LeonardoThe photograph was already everywhere by the time Matthew slid his tablet across my desk.I recognized the street before I recognized the man. The ivy on the restaurant wall near the Duomo, the candles flickering behind old glass windows, the awning I had personally approved for a sponsorship shoot only weeks before, and in the middle of it, Isabella, her hand caught inside another man's grip, her face turned up toward his like she was listening to something that mattered. The caption underneath, already written by some gossip page with more speed than sense, called him her "mystery man." I knew exactly who he was before Matthew even said the name.Something cold moved through my chest, sharp enough that I had to set the tablet down before my hand betrayed how tight my grip had gotten. Not because I cared who touched her. This was a contract, nothing more, a signature on a page that kept my father's company out of Marcelo's hands. But that
WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 16: The Man I Used To Love
IsabellaThree days had passed since I told Leonardo about the parking garage, and he hadn't said a single word about it since.That was how I knew it mattered. Leonardo didn't sit on things that didn't matter. He'd gone quiet in that particular way of his, the one where his eyes tracked a room like he was cataloguing every exit, and Matthew had been in and out of his office so often that his assistant started keeping a fresh pot of coffee ready just for him. Luca's badge still didn't work on any door past the lobby. Nobody said Marcus's name out loud, but I caught it once, folded into a hushed conversation between Leonardo and Matthew that stopped the second they noticed me in the doorway.I told myself it wasn't my job to chase it any further than I already had. I had my own work piling up: press releases nobody wanted to sign off on, a company gala in three weeks that Fiamma had thrown herself into planning with far too much enthusiasm, and a stack of vendor contracts that needed a
WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO Chapter 15: The signature
IsabellaMy first morning in Leonardo's house began with a silence so complete it felt like a held breath.No creak of Nonna's old floorboards. No smell of coffee drifting up from the kitchen before I'd even opened my eyes. Just cold marble under my bare feet and a bedroom the size of my grandmother's entire ground floor, the sheets so crisp they still smelled faintly of starch instead of home.I sat up slowly, pulling the duvet around my shoulders, and looked at the empty side of the bed. He hadn't slept there. Of course he hadn't. There were seven bedrooms in this house and he'd chosen the one at the opposite end of the hallway, as if putting distance between us made the marriage certificate on Matthew's desk any less real.Fiamma's voice was still rattling around in my skull from the night before, warm and delighted and utterly unaware of what she'd actually heard. *Sorry, Fiamma, I'm swamped.* And underneath it, his voice, low, saying my name once before I'd ended the call too fast
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