THE UNMASKED HEIRESS: Isabella Hartman is back

Isabella's Pov

"Ethan, I feel like I'm the only one that's trying to make this work?" I asked, my voice shaking on the other end of the phone even though I was struggling to keep it even. The San Francisco skyline sparkled outside my apartment's window.

"Isabella, you're being dramatic," Ethan's voice was calm, clipped, like it was all the time when he was trying to write me off. "I'm busy. You know how things are at the company. Stop making this about you."

I clutched the phone, my knuckles white. It was two weeks before our wedding, and I was falling apart. Ethan Blackvale, the sole heir to the Blackvale tech empire, the man who'd once saved my life. He'd saved my life by catching a bullet, or at least, that's what I thought, and I'd evened the score by going down for him. Six months in a minimum-security prison, a sealed record and an NDA to shield his billion-dollar history. I'd done it for love. For us. But something had changed since I'd been back. The man who'd promised me forever now regarded me as liability.

It began quietly - missed dinners, curt responses. Then there was the series of public humiliations. When he finally got his way at a Blackvale gala last week, and demanded a makeup artist to "polish" me, he slathered my face down with thick foundation and contour until I barely recognized my reflection in the mirror. "Can't have anyone whispering about my fiancée being an ex-convict," he said, his steel gray eyes staring at me as if I were some problem to be managed. I'd dozed there, swallowing my rage, as the artist painted over my identity.

Worse, I'd seen him at that same gala, his hand skimming Lilian's lower back, as she laughed rather too loudly at something he'd said. Lilian Sinclair, my stepsister, had always been the thorn in my life, glamorous and deadly jealous. She loved the attention, and Ethan was providing an abundance of it. Their murmurs, the moment her cold blue eyes swiveled to look at me with a smirk-it wasn't flirting simply. It was a performance, and I was the viewer.

I wasn't naive. I'd survived a secret data cleaning cartel, a fake identity to cover my criminal origins as an Ashcroft heiress. I was a trained digital forensics tactician. If Ethan believed he could play me, he was going to find out how mistaken he was.

That was why I'd put the surveillance camera in our penthouse suite. It was a minimalist, unobtrusive device, nestled in the corner of the living room, and recording every angle of the area we were expected to refer to as home. He had been spending more nights there alone, citing "late meetings." And I wanted evidence, not suspicions. My eyes, never left my computer screen the night of the feed.

The footage played, and my heart dropped. Lying on the bed we would soon be sleeping in, was Ethan. His wide shoulders, hair I never forgot how to thread my fingers through, he moved with a rhythm that turned my stomach. Underneath him lay Lilian, her sexy red dress abandoned on the floor, her laughter flooding the background. My stepsister wasn't even the least bit sorry about sleeping with the man I was supposed to marry.

I sucked in a breath, but I didn't cry. I'd known for some time that tears were a luxury I couldn't afford. Rather, a cold determination formed in my chest. It was not simply a betrayal; it was a declaration of war. The man who at one time had sworn to protect me, was now using my own family to control me. Lilian was the weapon, with her artful manipulations. I'd been to prison for him, to save his empire, and this was what I got in return.

As if he could hear my thoughts, my phone buzzed, Ethan's name flashing across the screen. I watched as it played, still rolling, her moans accompanying my shattering heart.

I picked up and spoke in a low hiss. "What do you want, Ethan?" The laptop screen was still alight with his face and that of Lilian, their betrayal captured in the surveillance feed. My heart thudded, but I maintained a steady tone - a skill perfected in years of walking through shadows and secrets.

"Isabella, you've got to get a handle on your family issues," Ethan said, in a condescending tone. "I'm not going to have your shit affecting my empire when we're married. Your father was a convict and now you're an ex-convict. Fix it, or we're done."

The words hit like a slap. My father, Victor Hartman, was a crook all right, but his sins, and Ethan's, at least, I'd paid for. I had been the fall guy for a corporate leak, in order to save his beloved Blackvale empire, signed an N.D.A. and spent a retributory six months in prison. All because I had faith in him, in us. And this motherfucker had the nerve to lecture me about my family issues while he was up under my stepsister? The hypocrisy set off something feral inside of me.

I laughed, a loud bitter sound that sliced through the phone. "You want to talk about family, Ethan? then you fucking Lilian in our bed? Yeah, I saw it. You can go to hell. You obviously like her better."

Silence. At last, I had caught him off guard. I could almost feel his cold gray eyes squinting, planning his next attack. "Isabella, what do you mean?" he stammered, but the shock in his voice was empty, the ugly performance of a bad actor.

"Don't play dumb," I snapped. "I'm done being your pawn." I was no longer the vulnerable girl he thought he could control. I'd left my past behind once before, shed my old self as Isabella Hartman to become Bella Sinclair, for him. I'd loved him, I'd believed in him, but instead of regarding my sacrifice as strength, he'd treated me like I was weak. No more.

Before he had a chance to reply, I hung up and the silence in my apartment was deafening. I watched the San Francisco skyline sparkle outside, a reminder of the world I'd battled to take back. Ethan was convinced he could break me, turn me into a submissive wife to enhance his own standing.

I wasn't just Bella Sinclair, the former inmate fiancée he could humiliate. I was Isabella Hartman, the trillion-dollar heiress to the Ashcroft throne, the tech dynasty that made Blackvale look like a footnote. I'd taken on a disguise so I could be with him, so I could keep myself from being mistaken for his enemy. But I had been blinded by love, and betrayal had opened my eyes. I was done hiding.

My hands shook when I reached for my phone again, opening up to a number I hadn't dialed in years. After the first ring, a second, a familiar voice came on, calm, expecting this call. "Isabella?"

"It is time," I said, my voice now stronger, more resolute thanks to the fire Ethan didn't even know he'd sparked. "I'm ready to be who I truly am." I hesitated, as I checked the video feed one final time. Lilian's sneer still burned in my mind. "I'm reclaiming every last thing that he thought I'd lost."

Isabella's Pov

I gazed at myself in the mirror and ran my fingers through my hair, my fine dark chestnut hair cascading in gentle waves over my shoulders, my eyes clear and appraising for the first time in months. My navy suit was custom fit to my body, and its simple yet sophisticated look was a silent protest against the thick make-up that Ethan used to insist that I wear to cover up my old life. Today, I wasn't hiding. Today I was Isabella Hartman, not Bella Sinclair.

My phone was vibrating, but I ignored it, staring at the television screen that was bombarding the headlines on every major network. My phone kept vibrating like crazy on the glass coffee table. "Isabella Hartman, Long-Lost Heiress of the Ashcroft Empire, Comes Home to Claim Her Birthright!" The words scrolled across the screen, bold, below a photo of me from my press conference last night. San Francisco was stunned - everyone assumed I'd died. When my father, Victor Hartman, died and my mother gone, I had disappeared, ceasing to exist in order to get out from under my family's felonious baggage. But I hadn't been hiding; I'd been healing, recrafting, biding my time to come back.

The world had no idea. They didn't know about the secret data-cleansing syndicate I'd been a part of, or the digital forensics training I'd acquired, or about the six months I'd spent behind bars to save Ethan Blackvale, the man I'd loved. The man who had slept with my stepsister, Lilian, in our own bed. The memory of that surveillance footage still burned, but it kept me going, too. I was done being his pawn.

The screen of my phone buzzed again, this time with Ethan's name flashing. I just let it ring, relishing the little act of defiance. When I did speak, his voice came out thundering. "Isabella, what the fuck are you doing? You believe you can just claim to be the Ashcroft heiress and belittle me? You're making a mistake."

I laughed, a cold sharp sound that reverberated in the silence of the room. "Humiliate you? Ethan, you're shameless." Each word was sharpened by his betrayal and razored with my contempt. "I went to jail for you. I fell for you on your corporate leak, signed your NDA and spent six months behind bars to save your precious Blackvale empire. And how do you repay me? By fucking Lilian in our bed and treating me like shit."

He sputtered, dropping his usual composure. "You don't know what you're talking about, Isabella. This isn't about us. It's about the company, the legacy -"

"Shut up," I interrupted, walking over to the window. The town lay sprawled below, a chessboard on which I was poised to dominate. "You believed you could control me, you thought you could have your broken little fiancée at your beck and call to prop up your empire. You expected me to remain Bella Sinclair, the ex-con you could control. But I'm finished playing your game."

"Isabella, you're throwing it all away," he growled. "You can't just-"

"I have already," I said, my voice cold. "You're not gonna tell me what to do anymore. I'm not your puppet, Ethan. I'm Isabella Hartman, and I'm reclaiming what's mine."

I hung up the phone with my heartbeat racing yet steady. My birthright, the Ashcroft empire was the trillion dollar titan that made Blackvale, its biggest competitor, look like a pipsqueak. I had loved him enough to bury my past, to become Bella Sinclair. But love was a mistake, and it had set me free.

I didn't mind that I now proudly wore the fact that I embraced the only daughter, to the Blackvale's most hated entity and rival, the Ashcroft empire.

I threw my phone onto the couch, Ethan's angry voice replaying in my head. Let him stew. I had more important battles to fight. Pulling on a tiny emerald dress that was the same color as my eyes, I slipped on my heels and grabbed my bag as I headed to the headquarters of the Ashcroft empire, a high-rise glass fortress in the center of San Francisco. The drive was a haze, the pulse of the city a distant throb below the rush of heat through my veins. Today, I wasn't only reclaiming my name - I was reclaiming my power.

The Ashcroft building rose up and its shiny skin reflected the day's first rays like a beacon. I entered the executive suite, where an air of excitement hung about. I was mobbed by staff, their faces a mixture of reverence and shock. "Miss Hartman, welcome back!" a senior exec declared, shaking my hand hard but looking a little as if I'd risen from the dead. To them, I had. No stranger to death, Isabella Hartman disappeared after the death of my father and the disappearance of my mother, and was later assumed to be dead, by a world that didn't realize I'd shed my name to be Bella Sinclair. For Ethan. For love. What a fool I'd been.

Younger staffs applauded, their cheers for real, but I saw the side long glances of others - executives who had clawed past me in my absence, their envy palpable. They had never imagined the Ashcroft heiress would come back, much less to take the throne of a trillion-dollar empire. I smiled tightly; my expensive dress was an armor against their whispers. Let them envy me.

I signed papers in the board room to make official my return as CEO. The pen was heavy in my hand, every stroke my personal declaration of war against what was and against Ethan's Blackvale empire.

My phone dinged with an alert as I handed the general counsel the signed documents. Then another. There was a low hum in the room as staff checked their devices, and their gazes darted to me. I grimaced and took my phone out.

Dozens of Google Alerts cluttered my inbox, headlines blaring:"Ethan Blackvale Caught in Scandalous Affair with Fiancée's Stepsister!" My heart raced as I clicked a link. The footage of my surveillance, Ethan and Lillian's sex footage had been leaked. It was everywhere, splashed across social media, news websites and gossip blogs.

I froze, my breath catching. I hadn't leaked it. I'd locked away that footage, a private wound I wasn't ready to weaponize. But someone had. The video had been replaying in my mind: Ethan's precison, Lilian's smirk. Now the world saw it too. San Francisco's elite, Blackvale's investors, they were all witnessing Ethan's betrayal go viral. A side of me felt like laughing at how humiliated he was, but another part of me was troubled. Who had done this? And why?

Ethans pov-

My father's hand across my face cracked in the Blackvale boardroom, a rebuke as stinging as it was painful. "You careless fool!" Benjamin Blackvale roared, his voice slammed the murmurs of the board members sitting around the expensive polished mahogany table into silence. "You've ruined the reputation of our empire with your foolishness!"

I gritted my teeth, the sting of the slap roasting from my cheek as I stood straight in my custom made navy suit. The board turned its head in shame; their embarrassment was obvious, but I felt their judgment carve through me. The viral footage of me and Lilian Sinclair - Isabella's stepsister - had blown up everywhere, my betrayal fast tracked to global notoriety. Blackvale Enterprises, my billion dollar tech empire, was currently a laughing stock and my father's wrath was just the beginning.

"I don't know how it leaked," I said, my voice low, controlled, though a kind of rage simmered under it. "Somebody's trying to shake me down, Father. I'm being set up." Lies had a bitter taste to me but I had long since perfected the art of deceit. And trust was a coin in the Blackvale family, and had learned to spend it wisely. The fact was, I had no clue who'd put that surveillance clip online, but my brain had already honed in on the most obvious suspect: Isabella Hartman.

She'd seen the footage. I remembered the venom in her voice when she had faced me, when had she thrown my affair with Lilian into my face. Isabella, the one I'd groomed into my ideal, defenseless future wife, had dared to revert back to being the Ashcroft heiress, my family's most hated enemy. The newsreels this morning - of her triumphant return as the trillion dollar queen of the Ashcroft empire - had almost given me a heart attack. She'd got into my head enough to make me and now she'd gone to the heart of my empire with that video. It had to be her.

My plans, after all, had not yet changed. I wanted and required Isabella's riches, her realm, to affirm my historical dream as the richest man who ever lived. It was marrying her that mattered, and no scandal would get in the way of that. I only had to deal with it in a cooler way and not emotionally. I pushed away from the table, ignoring my father's glare and got into my Jeep and exited to Isabella's penthouse in one of the more affluent neighborhoods of San Francisco.

She unlocked the door, her emerald eyes frigid, her chestnut hair tumbling in waves. The sleek black dress she wore was confidence, not the battered girl I'd been looking down on. "Ethan," she said, with contempt in her voice. "What do you want?"

"You fucking leaked the video," I accused as I entered without being invited in. I was twice her height, but she did not flinch. "You aimed to humiliate me, to spit Blackvale in the dirt."

Isabella laughed, a dry, reckless cackle that prickled my skin with cold. "You believe I would spend time doing that? I didn't leak your sex tape, Ethan. But I'm not crying about it." Her guiltless certainty was unnerving. I'd fed my ego on her vulnerability, the way she'd clung to me after being shot! But this Isabella - fierce, unyielding - scared me in a way I couldn't admit.

"I'm supposed to take your word for this?" I snapped, catching up with her. "You were the only one who got access to that footage."

She moved closer and didn't flinch, looking me in my eyes. "I'm done being your pawn." Her words hurt, but I didn't have a chance to reply as the door behind me swung open.

Lilian burst in, her platinum blonde hair shining brightly, her frosty blue eyes ablaze with rage. In silence she crossed the room, and gave Isabella a sounding slap on the cheek.

"You vindictive bitch!" Lilian spat, her icy blue eyes glowing. "You leaked that video to destroy me, to make sure my image was destroyed! You were sick with jealousy that Ethan wanted me!" Her platinum blond hair cascaded while she leaned forward, poison oozing from each syllable.

I was rooted to the spot, my thoughts in motion. Lilian's outburst was a liability, but I couldn't step in - not yet. Isabella placed her hand to her face, eyes narrowing, but her expression unruffled.

Before she could reply, the door was flung open once more, and in stormed Maggie, her auburn bob bouncing along with her rageful advance. Isabella's best friend, the disgraced journalist turned influencer, didn't waste a second. "You shameless slut! Shut up Lillian!" Maggie said as she got between her and Isabella. "You fucked your stepsister's fiancé and you're playing the victim? Get out!"

Lilian blushed red, her eyes flicking toward me, waiting. She wanted me to protect her, to ally myself with her in this awful stuff. But I remained silent, my jaw clenched. Lilian was a pawn, not an ally, and I wasn't going to jeopardize my plan for her hissy fit. Horror flashed in her eyes and with that, she stormed out and banged the door behind her.

Isabella looked at me coldly. "Get out, Ethan. I'm done with you." Her voice was conclusive, a queen dismissing a pawn. Maggie was next to her with an ugly look, challenging me to object. I tried to press, to pressure her into admitting she'd leaked the video, but the steely gleam in her eyes told me I'd lost her. For now.

I stomped out in my shiny shoes without saying anything. Outside, San Francisco's craziness was almost an extension of my own. The video was a disaster, a nuke to Blackvale's stock and my reputation.

I couldn't let it stand. The moment I got back in the car, I called my PR team, my tone verging on abrasive. "Pull that video off the internet. Now. Once it's published, push the narrative that it's AI-generated, deepfake nonsense. Pay whoever you need to." I had friends in deep places - tech companies, media outlets, hell, even some hackers. By nightfall, the video would be scrubbed, the story relegated to claims of digital manipulation.

Isabella's pov-

The sting of Lilian's slap still burned my cheek as I hovered in my penthouse, the passionate defense Maggie had made for me still lingering in the air. The words had been a salve to my rage, her calling Lilian a slut but it was Ethan's silence that had hurt more. He never defended Lilian, never apologized, just stood there with his cold eyes intent on which way he was going to go. Bella Sinclair was gone. Isabella Hartman, Ashcroft's heiress, was left holding the bag.

Maggie stared at me, her eyes keen with worry. "You okay, Bella?" she said again, more gently this time. I said, yes - but my chest was hurt with the weight of betrayal. This was just one fight, and I was armed with my father's empire and a resolve of my own.

I collapsed onto the couch, the skyline of San Francisco sparkled, and reminded me of the power that I now have. The video of Ethan and Lilian had caused a commotion in Blackvale, but I hadn't leaked it. Someone else had, and why they were doing it remained a mystery I couldn't yet fathom.

As we drove to Maggie's, she scrolled through her phone while sitting next to me. "The internet's loving this," she said, smirking. "Ethan's team is in a meltdown, but the harm has been done."

"Let them run around," I replied without letting my voice wilt. "I do not care anymore about his empire." I was focused on Ashcroft now, trying to restore what my father had left to rot. The news around my return was making headlines, and the boardroom had received me back with ovations, and some envy. I didn't care. I was here to lead, not to cater.

I felt a vibration in my pocket, and saw my phone light up with an unknown number. I hesitated, then answered. "Isabella Hartman," I had said, my voice sharp.

"Miss Hartman," came the soft voice, one unfamiliar. "This is E. Black. I want to buy a billion dollars of stock in the Ashcroft Corporation. I would like to discuss the terms."

I sat there frozen, clutching the phone more tightly. A billion dollars? The sheer audacity of the offer stunned the tech world, a move that could shift the balance of power among Silicon Valley's largest companies. Ashcroft was a giant, but an individual's spending on that scale was not even imaginable.

"That's a big deal, Mr. Black," I said, trying to keep my voice even. "I'm curious," I said, "what motivates your interest?"

"I guess you could say I see a future for Ashcroft," he answered, his voice steady and filled with purpose. "I would rather negotiate in person. Would you by chance be available for a meeting at the next tech summit?"

My mind raced. The tech summit was but days ahead, a gathering of industry elites at which I would be representing Ashcroft for the first time as the estate's heiress. But who was this E. Black? The name nagged at me, too similar to Ethan Blackvale to be a coincidence. Was this some other one of Ethan's games, a bid to worm back into my world after the scandal? Or was it still another person altogether?

"I'll think about it," I replied, coldly. "Give me the documents and I'll take a look at it." I hung up, my heart racing. Maggie arched one eyebrow, knowing that something was wrong. "Who was that?" she asked.

"Some guy named E. Black," I said, looking at the phone. "They want to purchase a billion-dollar share in Ashcroft."

Maggie whistled. "That's bold. Do you think it's Ethan making the moves?"

I shook my head, with doubt curling in my stomach. I was surprised at how much this stranger was putting in. But also more baffled as there was such a similarity between the name E. Black and 'Ethan Blackvale'.