Chapter 6
959 Words
Isabella’s POV
My father’s house did not feel like home.
It felt like history.
The Moretti estate stood behind iron gates and long gravel drives, hidden from the road by ancient trees and deliberate privacy. It had always looked less like a home and more like something built to survive wars.
As a child, I had loved it.
As a teenager, I had hated it.
As a woman returning broken, I did not know what to feel.
The car rolled to a stop beneath the stone entrance. Staff were already waiting.
Of course they were.
My father planned emotion the way other men planned meetings.
The front doors opened before I reached them. Warm light spilled across marble floors, polished wood, sweeping staircases. Everything smelled faintly of cedar and expensive flowers.
Nothing had changed.
And yet everything had.
“Your room is ready,” my father said as we stepped inside.
“I’m not eighteen anymore.”
“No,” he replied calmly. “You are wiser now.”
I almost smiled despite myself.
A woman in navy approached carrying tea on a silver tray.
“Miss Isabella.”
My throat tightened.
“Maria.”
She had worked here since I was little. She looked older now, softer around the eyes, but the warmth in her face was the same.
She set the tray down and hugged me before I could stop her.
“We missed you.”
I nearly cried again.
“Thank you.”
My father discreetly looked away, pretending interest in a painting.
He had always respected tears by ignoring them.
I followed Maria upstairs to my old room.
She opened the door and I stopped.
Nothing had been turned into storage. Nothing stripped or redesigned.
The shelves still held old books. The bay window still had the reading cushion I used to hide on. Even the pale blue walls remained untouched.
“You kept it the same,” I whispered.
Maria smiled sadly. “Some people never stopped hoping.”
When she left, silence settled around me.
I placed my suitcase on the bed and sat beside it.
Then I finally allowed myself to think about the baby.
I took the pregnancy test from my handbag and stared at it again.
Positive.
A child conceived in a marriage that had died before I knew it.
My hand drifted to my stomach.
Tiny. Invisible. Real.
The tears came quietly this time.
A knock sounded.
“Come in.”
My father entered carrying a folder.
Even now.
Even here.
Business in hand.
“You can say no,” I said, wiping my face.
“I know.” He placed the folder on the desk untouched. “That is why I brought it.”
I waited.
“Doctor appointments. Specialists. Discreet therapists. Security arrangements. Temporary financial transfers in your sole name. And the names of three divorce lawyers who enjoy difficult men.”
I let out a startled laugh.
“Papa.”
He looked at me carefully.
“Did he hurt you physically?”
“No.”
“Good.”
The single word held terrible meaning.
I swallowed. “You really would have destroyed him.”
“I still might.”
I believed him.
He sat opposite me in the armchair near the window. For a long moment neither of us spoke.
Then he said quietly, “Why did you hide your name from him?”
Because I wanted someone to choose me.
Because I was tired of introductions changing the room.
Because men had always looked at Moretti before they looked at Isabella.
“I wanted to know if love could exist without money attached to it.”
My father’s expression did not mock me.
It saddened him.
“And now?”
“Now I know love without respect is worthless.”
He nodded once.
Then his eyes dropped briefly to the tissue-wrapped object in my hand.
“What is that?”
I froze.
He was too observant to lie to.
I slowly unwrapped it and placed the test on the bedside table between us.
My father stared at it.
For the first time in my life, Matteo Moretti looked shaken.
“How far?”
“I only found out yesterday.”
His jaw tightened so hard a muscle moved in his cheek.
“Does he know?”
“No.”
“Will he?”
I thought of Ryan’s bored face in the kitchen. His annoyance. His cruelty.
“I don’t know.”
My father rose and walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back.
When he spoke, his voice was quieter than I had ever heard it.
“You do not have to decide anything today.”
I nodded.
Then asked the question that had lived in me for years.
“Why did you hate him so much before you met him?”
My father turned slowly.
“I did not hate him.”
“You told me he wanted my name.”
“Yes.”
“How did you know?”
He held my gaze.
“Because I was once a young man who wanted power more than love.”
The honesty stunned me.
He continued.
“I recognised ambition in him. Ambition is not evil, Bella. But in men without gratitude, it becomes hunger. Hunger eats everything.”
I looked down at the test again.
My marriage.
My child’s future.
My own foolish heart.
Everything hunger had touched.
A knock interrupted us.
One of the household staff stepped in carefully.
“Sir, there’s a gentleman at the gate insisting he needs to see Miss Isabella.”
My father’s face became stone.
“Name?”
“Ryan Cole.”
My pulse jumped.
My father adjusted his cuffs.
“Perfect timing,” he said softly.
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