All Chapters of The CEO’s Fake Bride: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The reflection in the smoked glass of the fiftieth floor on Avenida Faria Lima showed not just a man, but a monument to efficiency. Caio Moretti adjusted the knot of his Italian silk tie with the precision of a surgeon. For him, São Paulo was not a city; it was a chessboard where the pieces were made of asphalt, steel, and ambition. The limited-edition watch on his wrist kept time with the metropolis below—a human anthill that he, from the heights of his empire, believed he controlled with a simple snap of his fingers or a nine-figure bank transfer. He saw himself as the architect of other people’s destinies, a man who had learned early that the world was divided between those who gave orders and those who received them for lack of financial breath.The morning had begun with performance reports that would make any investor weep with gratitude. The Moretti Group was in its most aggressive phase, spreading its tentacles across sectors ranging from logistics to data intelligence. The mi

The private lounge of the Jockey Club of São Paulo exuded a timeless luxury: the smell of English leather, the aroma of aged tobacco, and the clink of ice in crystal glasses that cost more than the annual salary of a mid-level intern. Caio Moretti entered the room with the expression of someone carrying the weight of a crown of golden thorns. He needed that environment. He needed to be among his own, in the Iron Circle, the elite group that understood the language of conquest and the taste of hegemony.Seated around a massive oak table, his three closest friends were already waiting for him. Each of them represented a different facet of masculine power in that asphalt jungle. There was André, the heir to an agribusiness lineage who treated the country like his personal farm; Rodrigo, the financial market shark who viewed life in volatility charts; and Gustavo, the heir to a hospital network who masked his coldness with calculated philanthropy."Look who's here, the man of the hour," s

The air conditioning in the Grupo Moretti penthouse seemed incapable of cooling the electricity that Helena Duarte radiated as she crossed the corridor of translucent marble. She hadn’t booked an appointment, hadn’t requested a meeting, and she completely ignored the stuttering protest of Caio’s secretary. To Helena, that building was the Olympus of arrogance, a monument erected on the belief that one man’s will could bend everyone else’s reality. When she pushed open the double jacaranda doors of the presidential suite, the dull thud against the strike plates shattered the funeral-like silence of the office.Caio stood with his back to the door, gazing at the ordered chaos of São Paulo through the glass wall. He didn’t turn immediately. The sound of her heels against the granite floor was a code he had already deciphered. He let the silence stretch for five deliberate seconds, savoring the fury emanating from the woman behind him before slowly pivoting on his heels.“You usually inva

Caio Moretti’s office, plunged into the dimness of the early São Paulo morning, was the perfect setting for the ghosts he tried to bury beneath stacks of financial reports. He swiveled his chair toward the window, gazing at the wet asphalt below, but his mind was not in the present. The scent of the whiskey in his glass—a expensive, smoky single malt—suddenly transported him to an oak-paneled library nearly thirty years earlier. The smell of old paper and the muffled sound of an argument in the hallway were the memories that formed the foundation of his empire.Back then, Caio was just a ten-year-old boy who believed the world was a safe place because his father, the original patriarch of the Moretti family, was a mountain of certainty. He watched his father with silent adoration, seeing him move pieces on the market like a Greek god. But what Caio discovered, in the worst possible way, was that even gods can be destroyed by what they cannot control: other people’s emotions.The memor

The restaurant chosen by Caio for what he called a "post-event alignment dinner" was one of those havens of absolute exclusivity in Jardim Europa, where the lighting was designed to make every diamond sparkle and every conversation seem like a state secret. Helena accepted the invitation not out of condescension, but for strategy; she needed to understand what the next move in the siege would be and knew that Caio, under the effect of a good wine and his own vanity, often revealed more than he intended. However, as she crossed the room and saw the table strategically positioned in a semi-enclosed alcove behind velvet curtains, she realized that the battlefield that night wouldn't be the financial market, but the ego.Caio stood up with an animalistic elegance. He had swapped the event's tuxedo for a casually cut suit, no tie, with the top buttons of his shirt open in a way that suggested calculated relaxation. The smile he wore was different from the predatory grin of boardroom meetin