All Chapters of WHISPERS OF BETRAYAL: THE COLD CEO: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Isabella The question hung in the air longer than any silence had a right to. "If your father didn't pay for this, then who did? And why would you look me in the eye and lie to me about it?" I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. My mind was running in twelve different directions at once, and none of them led anywhere safe. Nonna set the phone down slowly on the blanket, her eyes never leaving my face. She had that look, the one she used to give me as a child whenever I tried to convince her I hadn't eaten the last slice of tiramisu when there was chocolate literally smeared on my chin. I used to think I was clever. I was never clever. She always knew. "Isa," she said again, softer this time, which was somehow worse than if she had shouted. "Talk to me." I sat down on the edge of the bed because my legs had stopped being reliable. The machine beside her beeped steadily, indifferent to the fact that my entire life was currently falling apart in a hospital room that smelled

IsabellaNonna had been home eleven days when Leonardo showed up at her door with flowers and a bottle of wine, looking like a man who had never once in his life bought either for someone else.I nearly dropped the plate I was drying when I opened the door and found him standing there in a crisp linen shirt, no tie, no armor of a suit jacket, holding a bouquet of white peonies like he'd rehearsed the gesture in a mirror and still wasn't sure he'd gotten it right."You could have called," I said, keeping my voice low so it wouldn't carry into the kitchen."I did call. You didn't answer." He held the flowers out slightly, an offering rather than a gift. "It's Sunday. I thought a visit was appropriate.""Appropriate for what?""For a man courting his fiancée's grandmother's approval." He said it flatly, like a line from a script he found faintly ridiculous, and stepped past me into the house before I could decide whether t

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

 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

 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