The news did not come from him. It came, as all poison did in their world, in screaming pixels on a screen. Isabella saw it on the phone of a junior designer in the lobby, the girl’s eyes darting to her with a mixture of pity and prurient curiosity before looking quickly away.
CEO’S LOVE PAYMENTS: HALE’S SECRET TRUST BAILED OUT LOVER’S FATHER.
The air in the grand lobby vanished. The marble floor seemed to tilt. The words were not an attack on her competence but on her soul. Criminal father. The old, buried shame, the one she had carried alone for years, the private fuel for every ounce of her drive, was now a public commodity. And Xavier—Xavier had known. Not only known, but had reached into that hidden, painful place and… trans… transacted.
The betrayal was not that he had done it. It
