Chapter 13
1385 Words
Ryan’s POV
Ryan stared at the PR proposal as if it had personally offended him.
Public Repositioning Strategy for Ryan Cole and Cole Enterprises.
Even the title made him want to throw it across the room.
He had spent years making sure no one questioned his authority. Now he was paying strangers to tell him how to look less guilty.
The consultant smiled carefully from across his desk.
“We don’t deny the separation,” she said. “We control the narrative.”
Ryan’s jaw tightened.
“And what narrative is that?”
She glanced at her notes. “Pressure. Miscommunication. Private marital challenges. A respectful request for privacy while both parties navigate a difficult time.”
Daniel, seated beside her, nodded slowly. “It’s safe.”
“It’s weak,” Ryan snapped.
“It’s believable,” Daniel replied.
Ryan pushed back from the desk and stood.
Believable.
That word followed him everywhere now. Investors didn’t believe him. The board didn’t believe him. Isabella didn’t believe him.
And worst of all, he was starting not to believe himself.
His phone sat face down on the desk. He had checked it twelve times in the past hour, though he knew there would be nothing from Isabella.
No missed call.
No message.
No anger, even.
That was the part he hated most.
If she screamed, he could fight. If she cried, he could comfort. If she accused, he could defend.
But silence gave him nowhere to stand.
The consultant cleared her throat. “Mr. Cole, there is also the matter of Chloe Bennett.”
Ryan went still.
“What about her?”
“She has been seen leaving your office twice in three days. If she speaks to the press first—”
“She won’t.”
Daniel looked at him. “You don’t know that.”
Ryan did know.
Or at least, he would have known last week. Last week, Chloe was easy. Predictable. She wanted attention, gifts, access, the shine of standing beside him.
Now she had been discarded publicly and privately.
A humiliated woman with ambition was not harmless.
“Handle her,” Ryan said.
The consultant paused. “Legally?”
“Financially. Quietly.”
Daniel sighed. “You can’t just buy every problem.”
Ryan looked at him coldly. “Watch me.”
But even as he said it, he knew the sentence had lost its power.
Because one problem had already been bought by someone richer.
Isabella Moretti.
His wife.
His hidden heiress.
The woman he had dismissed as ordinary while she sat quietly holding a name that could make bankers tremble.
The consultant spoke again. “The Moretti Gala complicates things.”
Ryan turned.
“How?”
“If you attend, it may look desperate.”
“I was invited.”
Daniel muttered, “You bought a table through a charity donor who owed you a favour.”
Ryan ignored him.
The consultant folded her hands. “If Isabella attends with Adrian Vale, the image will be damaging. She will look composed, supported, socially protected. You will look like the husband trying to reclaim access.”
The truth landed too close.
Ryan walked to the window.
Below, the city stretched beneath him like a kingdom slipping from his grip one contract at a time.
“And if I don’t attend?”
“Then her version of the story fills the room without challenge.”
Ryan closed his eyes briefly.
Either way, Isabella won.
When had she become this person? Or had she always been this person, and he had simply been too arrogant to notice?
A memory came without warning.
Isabella in this same office two years ago, sitting cross-legged on his sofa with a takeaway coffee and a stack of reports.
“You’re pitching too hard,” she had told him.
Ryan had laughed. “Investors like confidence.”
“They like confidence when it’s backed by substance. Right now, you sound like you’re selling smoke.”
He remembered being irritated. Then he had used her revised approach anyway.
That deal had saved their expansion.
His expansion.
No. Their expansion, whether he admitted it then or not.
The consultant’s voice pulled him back.
“My recommendation is simple. Attend, but do not confront her. Be calm. Respectful. Remorseful from a distance.”
Ryan laughed without humour.
“So stand in a room while my wife enters on another man’s arm and do nothing?”
“Yes,” she said.
Ryan looked at Daniel.
Daniel nodded. “Yes.”
For a moment, the silence was unbearable.
Then Ryan’s office door opened without permission.
Chloe walked in.
Of course she did.
She wore red today. Deliberate, loud, impossible to ignore. Her lipstick matched. Her eyes were bright with anger disguised as glamour.
The consultant froze.
Daniel closed his eyes like a man praying for patience.
Ryan’s voice turned flat. “Leave.”
Chloe smiled. “Nice to see you too.”
“This is a business meeting.”
“So was I, apparently. Until you decided I was inconvenient.”
The consultant stood. “Perhaps we should—”
“Sit,” Ryan said sharply, then looked at Chloe. “You have one minute.”
Her smile faltered.
“I want to go to the gala.”
Ryan stared at her.
Then he laughed.
It was the wrong reaction.
Her face hardened instantly.
“You’re taking me.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to hide me after parading me when it suited you.”
“I never paraded you.”
“No, you just slept with me, promised me she was nothing, and now suddenly your precious wife is rich and I’m a mistake?”
The words struck the room like shattered glass.
Ryan’s face burned.
Daniel stood. “Chloe, this isn’t the place.”
She turned on him. “Don’t speak to me like staff.”
“You’re behaving like scandal,” Daniel replied.
Ryan almost admired him.
Almost.
Chloe looked back at Ryan, eyes glittering. “Take me, or I talk.”
There it was.
The threat.
The consultant’s expression went carefully blank.
Ryan stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“What exactly do you think you can say?”
“That you told me Isabella bored you. That you said she clung to you like a charity case. That you said once the divorce was handled, I could move in properly.”
Ryan’s stomach twisted.
Because he had said some of it.
Not all.
Enough.
“And what do you want?” he asked.
“To not be thrown away like rubbish.”
For half a second, something almost human passed across her face.
Then it vanished beneath pride.
“I want to stand beside you at that gala.”
Ryan looked at her and saw the trap clearly.
If he took her, he looked cruel and shameless.
If he refused, she might burn him alive for attention.
He glanced at Daniel.
Daniel’s expression said one thing: do not.
Ryan turned back to Chloe.
“No.”
Her lips parted.
“I will compensate you privately for discretion,” he said coldly. “But you will not attend that gala with me.”
The hurt in her eyes became rage.
“You think she’ll take you back if you look sad enough?”
Ryan said nothing.
Chloe laughed, sharp and ugly.
“She won’t. Women like Isabella don’t forgive men like you once they realise they can do better.”
The words hit harder than he wanted.
Then Chloe leaned closer.
“And Adrian Vale will make very sure she realises.”
Ryan’s control cracked.
“Get out.”
This time, she did.
The door slammed behind her.
No one spoke for several seconds.
Then the consultant quietly closed her folder.
“We need a Chloe strategy.”
Ryan sank into his chair.
For once, he had no clever answer.
His phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
He almost ignored it, then answered.
A male voice spoke.
“Mr. Cole, this is Nicholas Hart from The City Ledger. We’re preparing a piece on your separation from Isabella Moretti. Would you care to comment on allegations of infidelity and financial dependency on the Moretti network?”
Ryan’s blood turned cold.
Across from him, Daniel’s face changed.
The story had begun.
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