CHAPTER 248: THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK: PART TWO

The page loaded with a glossy banner photo of Adrien—suit sharp, jawline cut from marble, the kind of image that screamed power. Right beside him, smaller but still luminous, was Clara in a black dress. The caption beneath nearly stole the air from my lungs:

"The Real Walton Heiress: Betrayal, Love, and the Girl Who Stole Him."

My stomach lurched.

The first lines blurred in front of my eyes. My heart beat so loud I could barely hear Elise’s worried murmur beside me. I scrolled.

Isabella Miller, former baker turned assistant, has been revealed as the secret woman on CEO Adrien Walton’s arm. But who really is she? And what has she done to capture the attention of one of the most powerful and richest man in the city?

Adrien Walton, CEO of many companies and business and head of Walton Empire, has been romantically linked since childhood to Clara Langford, his longtime companion and rumored fiancée──until fate and circumstance separated them when she traveled abroad. In her absence, insiders claim Walton signed a contracted relationship with a temporary stand-in: one Isabella Miller. Which is why he had been hiding the face of his girlfriend from the world.

I gasped, a strangled sound that finally broke through the haze. My eyes darted from the screen to Elise, then back again, my mind reeling. Contracted relationship? Temporary stand-in?

They showed a clip of the contract Adrien and I signed months ago, before we started dating. How.. who was able to find a copy of it? I tore mine. How...

I swallowed, forcing my eyes down even though every line felt like a punch.

"According to insiders, Isabella Miller saw her opportunity in Walton’s absence of Clara. She played the role well, basking in attention, until her obsession drove her to cross the line.’"

My hand trembled on the screen.

It didn’t stop.

"She slept her way up to the top," one anonymous colleague alleged, claiming Isabella maneuvered herself into Walton’s office as his personal assistant only to worm her way into his bed. "She pushed Clara out of the picture completely, forcing Walton to sever ties and ban Clara from the public eye."

Even in the workplace, Isabella reportedly calls the shots. "He only does what she tells him to," another insider confessed. "It’s like Mr Walton has become her puppet." She squander his money on numerous things.

Tears pricked my eyes, hot and furious. A puppet? Squandering his money? This was an outrageous fabrication, a twisted caricature of our life together. My breath hitched.

The article was laced with venom, every sentence a dagger.

And then—photos.

There I was—me, Elise, Clara. The spa robes, the cucumber slices, Elise laughing at something I’d said. Frozen proof twisted into something ugly.

"She parades herself as Walton’s equal—even inserting herself into outings with his mother. Some say she faked a health scare at a spa just to draw Walton into rushing to her rescue."

And now, new evidence has resurfaced.

A grainy but undeniable video shows Isabella in the rain, being held by an unidentified man before the two disappear together into a hotel. Though his face is blurred, sources allege he was her secret boyfriend — the one she abandoned once Adrien entered the scene."

My chest tightened. That night. The rain. The fight with Adrien. Levi. He’d only been trying to help me... and they turned it into this.

"The scandal deepens: eye-witnesses at the Johnson Gala claim Isabella vanished from Adrien’s side only to be seen slipping into a restricted corridor. Moments later, she was reportedly spotted leaving with not one, but two men.

My vision swam. Each word was a sharpened dagger, twisting deeper into my gut. My head pounded, a frantic drumbeat against the lies. Elise’s hand clamped onto my arm, her fingers digging in, but I barely registered the pressure.

"This... this isn’t true," I whispered, the words catching in my throat, sounding alien even to my own ears. How could anyone believe this? How could they print this?

"This is the face behind the mask. Isabella Miller: gold-digger, pretender, dictator. The girl who stole the CEO’S heart and turned it upside down for her own selfish gain."

Then my full name in bold.

My father’s veterinary clinic listed like a shameful detail.

Leo’s university.

Our address.

I clapped a hand to my mouth. The screen blurred, my tears making the letters bleed together.

They’d taken pieces of my life—crumbs of truth—and baked them into a poison pie, serving it to the entire world. And people... people were eating it.

The screen scrolled beneath my trembling thumb, each line of text slicing deeper than the last.

whore.

Trash.

gold-digger.

fake bitch.

homewrecker.

pathetic slut who spread her legs to climb the ladder.

The words blurred, a storm of venom from strangers who didn’t know me but swore they did.

"Kinda makes sense. Bet she was hanging around the right offices until she got noticed."

"From bakery girl to billionaire’s bed. Classic."

"Poor Clara. Imagine being replaced by that."

"Walton is blinded by pussy, simple as that."

"At least this confirms that Walton is not gay."

""Assistant" is just code for mistress. Don’t tell me otherwise."

"Wait, wasn’t she that waiter from downtown? Guess being a waiter wasn’t enough $$$ [a laughing emoji]"

"We attended the same college, she always acted like a saint that no one can touch."

"Burn in hell, Isabella Miller."

"And she is beautiful. Such a waste."

"She is a disgrace to womanhood."

I felt like I was drowning in a sea of hatred, each comment a weight that pressed down on me, making it harder to breathe. Elise’s concerned voice was a distant echo, a reminder that I wasn’t alone, but even her presence couldn’t shield me from the onslaught of vile words. The screen seemed to stretch on forever, a never-ending scroll of judgment and condemnation.

My thumb trembled as I scrolled, my mind numb from the sheer volume of vitriol. How could people be so cruel? The words blurred together, a toxic cocktail of wrongness and anger that threatened to consume me.

And then, like a lifeline, I saw a comment that made my heart ache. "I know Isabella from the bakery where she used to work. She’s a kind and hardworking person. Don’t believe everything you read." The words were a tiny island of sanity in a sea of madness, a reminder that not everyone had bought into the lies.

But even that small comfort was short-lived, as the next comment was a vicious attack on the person who had defended me. "Oh, so you’re friends with the gold-digger? How much is she paying you to spin this tale?" The hatred was relentless, a tidal wave that crashed over me, leaving me feeling broken and helpless.

More messages swarmed the screen, multiplying faster than I could read, a tidal wave of venom pouring from faceless accounts.

"Clearly she’s just a common slut. Men can’t resist the allure of a gold-digger."

"She needs to pay for emotional damage, we thought she was an heiress or some type of rich important beauty."

Each one landed like a slap, then another, then another, until I couldn’t even breathe through the flood of it. I couldn’t look away. My name. My family. My brother. Dad. All of it laid bare, gutted for amusement.