---- Chapter 17 Giovanni POV: The media firestorm was immediate and brutal. Sofia Marchetti was painted as a manipulative homewrecker, her name and face plastered across every tabloid. She was fired, evicted, and socially exiled overnight. | heard she left the state, a disgraced and broken woman. | watched her public destruction from a distance, feeling a cold, detached sense of justice, but it brought me no peace. Her downfall didn't bring Bella back. My focus was absolute. | hired the best private investigators in the world, elite teams of former intelligence agents. "Find Isabella Rossi," | told them, handing them a blank check. "She is the only thing that matters." Weeks turned into a month. The investigators burned through my money, chasing dead ends across the globe. My business empire, neglected and leaderless, began to crumble. Shareholders grew nervous. My board of directors started having secret meetings. | didn't care. Then, a breakthrough. One of the teams traced a single, discreet financial transaction. A large sum, withdrawn from an account in Portugal under the name Isabella Rossi, used to purchase a small, private art gallery. ---- Portugal. | was on my jet within the hour, a wild, desperate hope surging in my chest for the first time in months. | had her. The address led me to a charming, sun-drenched village on the Algarve coast. The gallery was a small, whitewashed building with a bright blue door. Her name wasn't on it. | went into the cafe across the street and showed a picture of Isabella to the old woman behind the counter. "Have you seen this woman?" She looked at the photo, then at me. Her eyes were sharp, intelligent. "No," she said, her voice firm. "l have never seen her before." She was lying. | could see it in her eyes. Bella had gotten to her first. She had built a new life here, a new network of loyalty. A wall | couldn't penetrate. | stayed for a week, a ghost haunting the cobblestone streets, hoping for a glimpse of her. It never came. | returned home, defeated. The last of my hope bled out of me, leaving me hollow. My company, the one my grandfather had built from nothing, was imploding. An emergency board meeting was called. | was unceremoniously voted out as CEO. My name was stripped from the building. | was disgraced. ---- | had lost everything. My wife, my reputation, my empire. All| could do was wait. | sat in my empty mansion, day after day, my phone in my hand, praying it would ring. Praying for a call that would never come. The silence was my prison. My punishment. A hell of my own making. And | knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that | deserved it.