ISABELLA’S POV
My face was on fire now. I wanted to disappear. To rewind time.
"I’ve been working for you for two months. You’ve watched me make coffee runs and curse under my breath and trip over my heels. You—You never said a damn thing!"
"Was I just—some joke to you?" I asked, barely holding my voice together.
"I don’t know why you hired me, Adrien. But if this is your idea of entertainment, I’m done." My heart beating wildly, I turned away from him,
"Why are you acting all surprised?"
His voice cut out at me, low and sharp..
I stared blankly at him, barely registering the road flashing by outside the windshield. "What do you mean?"
His hands tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles going pale. He didn’t look at me—not fully—but I caught the way his jaw tensed and a flash of fire in his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.
"You showed up at that club out of nowhere," he started, his tone too calm to be safe. "Then you stumbled into my car drunk and crying about your ex. And you kissed me."
I blinked at him, heart racing. "Adrien—"
He spat the word like it tasted foul.
"You kissed me, Isabella."
I opened my mouth but couldn’t find the words.
He didn’t stop there, he just kept on going, like he’d been rehearsing this.
"And the next morning you disappeared before I got back. My butler said you practically ran out. That same night, I see you at a party—with flour and some icing almost all over your body— timed perfectly to bump into me in the elevator; I’m convinced you ran to the elevator to catch up to me. And then you made a scene inside so that I had to step in."
He took a breath, voice darkening.
"A month later, you just happen to be the most outstanding candidate for my personal assistant position. And yeah—you’re smart, Isabella. Freaking brilliant. So now I’m asking myself: were you just smart, or were you calculating?"
He glanced at me for just a second before looking back at the road. "You set this up, didn’t you? You gold digger."
I went completely still. My ears started ringing. Surely I misheard him. Surely he didn’t just say ... "gold digger." Those two words were a blow to my gut and sucked all the air out of my lungs.
My face was hot with embarrassment and indignation but now it felt pale and numb. It was one thing for him to be an arrogant jerk, but for him to believe something so viciously false about me was a whole different story.
All this time, I’d been anguishing over my embarrassment, my humiliating secret, my fear that he actually remember it. Meanwhile, I realized that he’d been there, judging, constructing his own narrative the whole time.
"What?" I whispered, the sound thin and reedy. It wasn’t a question, more like a broken gasp.
"Are—are you serious?" I choked out, the words barely audible over the hum of the engine I felt my calm slip away. My eyes started to water, and I blinked fast, trying to hold back the tears, especially in front of him.
"I planned this?" I repeated, a hysterical edge creeping into my voice. "You think I planned to drunkenly kiss a complete stranger after running into him at a seedy club? I didn’t even know who you were that night!" I snapped.
"I didn’t care. I was drunk and heartbroken and—God!" I laughed, but it came out more like a choke. "I cried in your car like an idiot. I kissed you like a fool. And you—you think that was part of some grand scheme?"
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t dare blink. I didn’t want him to see them fall.
"You think I planned to trip over my own feet at a party and end up covered in Champaign or whatever she threw on me just to ’bump into you’?"
"Is that how little you think of me?"
He didn’t respond right away, and his silence seemed to weigh down on me like a thick fog.
"Do you know how ridiculous you sound?" I whispered. "How insulting that is?"
My chest rose and fell too fast now. Everything was tightening. My lungs, my throat, my fists.
"And the job?" I pressed on, my voice rising despite my efforts to control it. "You think I spent weeks, months, pouring my heart and soul into applications and interviews, competing against dozens of other qualified people, planning for this specific position? Adrien, I needed a job! A good job! Not because you’re rich, but because I have damn bills to pay and ambitions that don’t involve latching onto some wealthy man!"
The sheer ridiculousness of his accusation and the pain of beingso terribly misunderstood by someone I... someone I had started to feel...
"You are the most annoying, arrogant, self-centered man I have ever met," I whispered, my voice trembling. " You really think the world revolves around you? That anything and everything that happens is somehow a grand conspiracy against you?"
The tears I’d been holding back finally spilled over, hot and silent, tracking down my cheeks. I didn’t bother wiping them away. Let him see. Let him see the real reaction, not some calculated performance.
"I wasn’t having fun watching you," I said, my voice tight with emotion. "I was mortified! I wanted to crawl into a hole every time I did something stupid in front of you, every time I messed up, because... because I respected you! I looked up to you!"
I laughed, a broken, humorless laugh. "And you? You thought it was a setup? You thought I was the joke?"
That realization hurt worse than being called a gold digger. He hadn’t seen my sincere efforts, my nervousness, the awkwardness trying to navigate a new and intimidating world; he’d twisted everything into a constructed act just for him.
"You know what, Adrien?" I said, my voice hardening, pushing past the hurt to find a sliver of defiance. "Maybe I should have been calculating. Maybe I should have seen you for exactly what you are: a man so paranoid about people wanting your money that you can’t see anything else. You’re so busy looking for the scam, you can’t recognize genuine feeling when it’s right in front of you."
I couldn’t breathe.
The car felt too small. The air too thick. My lungs refused to work.
"Let me out," I whispered.
He didn’t react.
"I can’t—" I gasped. "I can’t do this. I need to get out. I need to get out!"
He blinked, startled.
"I said—let me out!" I yelled, panting. "Stop the car! Now!"
The panic welled up in me like an engulfing wave, suffocating me.
"Stop the damn car, Adrien," I yelled again, a little louder.
The air turned thick, suffocating, heavy with everything he’d said—everything he didn’t take back.
My hand flew to the door handle. If he didn’t stop, I was going to jump.