POV: Isabella
Why?
The word didn’t echo. It burrowed. It tunneled deep into the soil of her exhaustion and took root, a poisonous, blooming question that leached all peace from the night.
Isabella lay in the dark of her small apartment, the city’s distant glow a poor imitation of stars. She replayed the scene in his office on a merciless loop: the devastation on his face as she’d accused him of making it worse, the way his voice had broken after everything, and the raw, unvarnished need in her own whispered why.
For months, she’d constructed answers. He was a control freak. He saw a useful tool. He was offended by the insult to his judgment. They were neat, professional boxes, and she’d forced every confusing interaction into them.
But the man who had stood before her tonight, strippe
