Filed to story: Dumped by Scumbag Adored by Billionaire
Isabella received the phone from him and began to go through the report even as Julie said to her, “She has quite a lot of properties that she inherited from her late husband, and her record’s sparkling clean,”
“You can’t have such an amount of wealth without dirtying your hands….” She scrolled further and came to a startling discovery,” She got married at the age of eighteen to an eighty-eight-year-old man? Sounds like a gold digger to me”
Julie sighed, “You can’t exactly call her a gold digger, she’s just trying to survive,”
Isabella arched her brow at him, “By reaping where you didn’t sow?”
“You said it yourself, Isabella. Life is a survival of the fittest. You were born with a silver spoon and would never understand the plight of the common?”
“And you were?” She hinted he wasn’t born a commoner either.
“I’m just saying you shouldn’t judge her, ” he said.
“I’m not judging her. You would have to be interested in one’s life to judge them?” she muttered, eyes glued on the screen as she scrolled further down.
“If you’re not interested in her, then why ask me to investigate her? She saved your mother, you should be thanking her, not suspecting her,” he told her.
“You’re right, I should thank you,” Isabella acquiesced yet added, “However, I just found out that we’ve met years back in my father’s office in a suspicious manner. If it wasn’t for the fact that her father seems to have no idea about her, I would have thought there was some sort of connection between them…..”
Isabella suddenly stopped,” or maybe there’s indeed a connection between us… “There was a calculative look in her eyes as her mind got busy once again.
“What is it?” Julie was concerned when he saw the speed at which Isabella used to skim over the pages she had already read.
“I need to go know more about her mother,” Isabella hasn’t given much thought to that aspect of the report and must have skipped it in a haste to know more about her – Deborah’s – personal life.
“Why?” Julie was curious. As much as he found Isabella annoying, the way her mind works awes him.
Isabella glanced up at him, “Because?moments ago, your annoying fiancée Anabelle made a comment I thought stood about Deborah and I looking similar,”
“And?”
“And I suddenly have this disturbing feeling in the pit of my stomach,”
Julie snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. Isabella was really a strange person, “How do you having a strange feeling in the pit of your stomach have to do with -“
“Her mother was once a model?” Isabella came to that paragraph?and groaned, rubbing her head, “You gotta be kidding me?”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Julie was a bit lost here and then peeped at the phone’s screen, reading the report from where Isabella stopped, “Deborah’s mother was once a model who worked at Sparks’s…..” He trailed off as he digested the information he just received.
“She’s a Sparks,” It dawned on Isabella, “That’s where she got the amber eyes – my father’s eyes. Deborah is a Sparks by blood,”
“Uncle Niles is a legend,” Julie didn’t even know whether he was being sarcastic or not.
“I need to speak to her. She must have a reason for showing up now. ,” Isabella said, coming out from the shadows.
“What if she doesn’t want to talk about it,” Julie said after her with no intention of stopping her. He would be a fool to stop a determined Isabella.
“She has no choice either,” Isabella replied to him and then added under breath, “Because I have a disturbing feeling she came bearing a grudge,”
Isabella walked with a stride and was busy searching for a trace of Deborah when she heard a collective shocked gasp from the crowd and she frowned.
Call it instincts but Isabella sensed something was wrong when she saw the way some women cupped their mouths and the few who saw her had sympathetic gazes while the men had disapproving looks in their eyes. What was going on?
Since all of them were facing forward, Isabella turned around and her gaze rested on the projection screen.
Unfortunately, the screen that had once been displaying she and Pedro’s moments together had changed, and instead, the slide show displayed a pregnancy scan report; screenshotted conversation of Pedro and Natasha where he asked her to abort the baby; photoshoots of Pedro and Natasha that night at the hotel room where she brought him to his room and in the morning when she left the room with only the sheets wrapped around her chest to cover her nudity since Pedro chased her out.
There had been an eerie silence for a moment, seeming as if time had frozen. To Isabella, it might have been a trip back in time because she suddenly saw herself as that ten-year-old girl once again whose grandparents came to announce the demise of her mother. At that announcement, it seemed as if the colors of the works vanished and the world seemed in black and white.
It was the same case with Isabella right now as she stared at the screen. The scan photos of the child in the womb were the last thing she saw before the time freeze collapsed and then she could hear sounds once again. There was a great murmuring and she saw some people taking pictures – those were paparazzi she suspected came with the disguise as friends.
Security details approached them to stop them from taking pictures but Isabella swiftly turned around and at the same time made a call, “This is your last chance, find me, Natasha,”
The third point of view:
“Thank you for coming,” Niles welcomed Sakuzi, however his gaze couldn’t help but scan the number of security guards he came with. If they weren’t family members, he would have thought Sakuzi was here for vengeance or something.
But Sakuzi smiled at him, “Don’t mind them, I’m just trying to ensure that no one gets kidnapped,”
“Kidnapped?” Niles’ body language changed at that comment.
“We didn’t have time to speak but just a few days ago, I had a snitch amongst my people and for some reason, I can’t help thinking that we have a new enemy in town. According to investigations, I wasn’t the target but we had a bit of loss on our side and if our target had escaped, you might have shared on the loss by now, ” He hinted at Reina since most of their enemies tend to go after their loved ones when they fail.
Sakuzi went on, “Investigation is still ongoing to find out who that snitch was working for. Although there might be no evidence to support what I said, there’s always a need to be careful especially on big events like this one,”
Niles was disturbed by that news, Sakuzi was a man who thought things thoroughly before making a move. If he thought something was wrong, something must be wrong.
“Thank you for your help. I’ll ask my men to keep an eye out as well,”
“It’s nothing,” Sakuzi shrugged, “That rascal might not be my biological daughter but she’s rubbed off on me already and I’ll do everything to protect her as I would my own. Moreover, Reina loves her as her child, which makes her one of us,”
“Fine,” Niles was still in the middle of thanking him when a collective gasp came from the crowd and he turned with a frown. What’s going on?
************
“You must be happy,” Emerald said from behind, nearly startling Pedro that barely had a breathing space from a group of well-wishers that had milked every detail of his history with Isabella. The fact alone that they dated for twelve years amazed people the more, it was hard to see such a lasting relationship now.
“Yes, I am. It’s even more unrealistic that we tie the knot tomorrow,” Pedro breathed.
“That’s the feeling, son,” Pedro agreed, “You’re even much better than I am. If I had a rehearsal dinner during my time with your mother, I’m sure I would have died from nervousness,” the both of them laughed at the joke.