*Isabella's POV*
She pulled out her phone, her fingers fumbling slightly on the screen. "This post," she said, her voice barely a whisper, as if she was afraid to say it any louder. She held the phone out to me, and I took it, my own hand trembling.
There it was. Cole's Instagram. Mr Vuitton, yep, that's his fucking handle. And there, splashed across his public feed for the entire world to see, was a picture of me and Damien... Kissing in his office.
A tidal wave of panic, cold and sharp, washed over me, drowning out every other sound. My blood turned to ice. I could barely hear Laura's frantic, apologetic voice trailing off, "I'm sorry, I didn't know... and..." I was livid. He took the most vulnerable, fucked-up moment and turned it into public goddamn property.
"Where is he?" I asked, my voice dangerously low, a complete contrast to the storm raging inside me.
"Isabella..." she began, her eyes wide with fear at the look on my face.
I cut her off, taking a step closer, my voice rising with a fury I couldn't contain. "Where the fuck is he, Laura?" I asked again, each word a bullet.
"I... I saw him in front of the building," she stammered, shrinking back.
I didn't say another word. I just turned and stormed out, leaving her standing there. I was on a warpath, and I was going to kill him.
I found him leaning against the cool marble of the building's entrance, scrolling through his phone with a bored, detached air, as if he hadn't just dropped a fucking bomb in my life. My rage blinded me to everything but one person.
"Hey, Mr Vuitton!" I snarled, storming up to him. My voice was tight, shaking with a fury so pure it felt like it might burn me from the inside out. "Care to explain your fucking post?"
He looked up from his phone with a slow, deliberate movement. A faint, almost imperceptible smirk played on his lips. "There's nothing to explain," he said, his voice infuriatingly calm. "I had some tea, and I spilled it."
"What the hell, Cole?" I snapped, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the chaos, but it was pointless. "I get that I wasn't honest with you about me and Damien. I get it, I'm the worst. But that picture of us like that... and posting it?"
My voice cracked on the last word. "Why would you do that? And more importantly, why now? Do you have any fucking idea how messed up today is?"
He let out a short, humourless laugh, a sound that was pure condescension. "What, did you find out about the product Phoenix released?" he asked, his eyes glinting with cruel evil intent. "I spent half the fucking morning showing you the Phoenix website, and you didn't even catch it."
My blood ran cold. "How would you know about the product?" I asked, my mind struggling to connect the dots, to make sense of his sudden, cruel shift.
"Of course I know, you stupid bitch," he said, the mask of casual indifference finally dropping, revealing something hard and ugly underneath. "I was the one who made it happen."
I felt confused and angry, a dizzying, sickening combination. It was as if the more I existed today, the more things got worse and worse, like I was falling into a bottomless hole with no end in sight. The ground seemed to drop out from under me.
"Explain, Cole. You're freaking me the fuck out," I said, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound strong. But he just stood there, like a fucking statue of smugness, a slow, creepy smirk spreading across his face.
"Wipe that fucking creepy smile off your face and start talking," I spat out, taking a step closer, my hands clenched into fists. I was done with his games.
"Okay," he said, his voice dropping, the smirk vanishing, replaced by something cold and hard. "So you got the nerve to come at me now, you fucking slut. Gold-digging whore." The words were like physical blows, sharp and disgusting. "Spreading your legs for a Lancaster boss wasn't enough, you wanted more. You finally succeeded to have the fucking CEO wrapped around your little finger, but was it enough for you? You went after the man I loved as well!" he snapped, his voice rising to a furious shout, his face contorted with a rage so pure it was terrifying.
"What the fuck... what are you talking about?" I asked, stumbling back a step. The accusation was so insane, so out of left field, it barely registered.
"Owen..." he said, his voice suddenly soft, broken. "I'm in love with Owen Phoenix."
"What? That doesn't make any fucking sense," I said, my head spinning. "You were with Laura until recently." I clung to the fact, a tiny island of what I thought was reality in this sea of madness.
"Laura," he said, rolling his eyes with a dismissive contempt that was more chilling than his anger. "Laura was just a destruction. Especially since, after everything I did for him, he still rejected me. Remember when you came into my fucking house at night to seek shelter?" he asked, and a cold dread washed over me as that memory surfaced.
"She was in my bed, but nothing happened. She was wasted and clung to me like a pathetic bitch, so I had to take her somewhere. We talked about her dumb piece of shit husband until she passed out. I became her you obsessions, so she kept coming back to me to talk and everything. She tried things, many things but I didn't, I wouldn't... Owen was on my mind." He said the name with an obsessive devotion that made my skin crawl. "We started sleeping together one night when I was tired of Owen's games," he said, the final confession landing like a death sentence.