---- Chapter 13 Giovanni POV: | was adrift. Days bled into one another, a meaningless cycle of waking, drinking, and staring at the empty walls of my mansion. The search for Isabella had become my only reason for living, a desperate, obsessive quest. Then, a call came from the state police. A lead. "Mr. Moretti," the detective's voice was grim. "We've located your wife's car." A surge of adrenaline, a mixture of hope and terror, shot through me. "Where?" "Abandoned near a cliffside lookout point on the coast. About three hours north of the city." | drove like a madman, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The scenic lookout was swarming with police cars, their flashing lights painting the trees in surreal strokes of red and blue. Her silver Mercedes was parked near the edge of the cliff, the driver's side door slightly ajar. It was a desolate, beautiful place. The kind of place she would have loved to photograph. The kind of place a person might go to end their life. ---- A wave of nausea and guilt so profound it brought me to my knees washed over me. | had done this. My betrayal, my lies, my arrogance-! had driven her to this. | had killed the one person | had ever truly loved. | watched, numb, as the police forensics team worked. They were methodical, detached. "We found a purse on the passenger seat," an officer told me. "Wallet's gone, but her driver's license is still inside." He handed me a small, Ziploc bag. Inside was a single earring, a simple pearl stud | had given her on our first anniversary. Then, something the officer said cut through my haze of grief. "No phone, no wallet, no luggage. Looks like a carjacking gone wrong. We're treating it as a possible abduction." The world shifted. The unbearable weight of guilt was replaced by a new, terrifying possibility. Abduction. Robbery. Not suicide. A sliver of hope, however grim, pierced through my despair. She was alive. Someone had taken her. They brought me her car's GPS unit and her phone, which they'd found smashed on the rocks below the cliff. My tech team got to work on it immediately. While they salvaged the data, | gained access to her cloud backup. | scrolled through her photos, her notes, her life. And then | found it. A hidden folder. It contained screenshots. Dozens of them ---- They were from Sofia. Cruel, taunting messages sent to a number | didn't recognize. Pictures of them together. A picture of the ultrasound. A video of her, wearing Bella's robe, bragging about becoming the new Mrs. Moretti. A relentless, systematic campaign of psychological torture. And | saw myself in the pictures, smiling, oblivious. | was a puppet, a stupid, grinning fool in Sofia's vicious little game. She hadn't just seduced me. She had used me as a weapon to destroy my wife. A violent, gut-wrenching sickness rose in my throat. | stumbled to the side of the road and threw up, my body convulsing with the sheer, toxic force of my own self-disgust.