Chapter 2 The Ashcroft Heiress

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?