Page 31 of Vows of Silence

I didn’t know what it meant by Silas protecting me—or if he was even protecting me at all, or simply lining up his next move. I took the victory in the way I chose to interpret it and did exactly what Frank had advised.

I kept my guard up.

“Isabelle.”

I looked up to see my mum standing in my doorway.

“Isabelle, where is your phone? I’ve been trying to contact you for the past hour.”

“It broke the other night, Mum. You know that.”

It hadn’t.

“We have enough money to buy a new one. Why haven’t you taken care of it?”

“Frank couldn’t find time in his schedule, and I’m not allowed to leave without him.”

The lies were spilling from my lips much easier these days.

“Frank works for us, not the other way around. If you want to go out, he finds time in his schedule. Youarehis schedule. This is ridiculous!” she hissed, throwing her hands in the air and storming back out of the door.

“Good talk, Mum. Glad we cleared that up.”

I ran my hands over my face, sighing heavily.

Why were things so impossibly complicated?

I was sitting on my bed, my back against the headboard, my legs curled underneath me, staring away into absolute nothingness.

This is where I could always be found lately. In my room, doing absolutely fuck all.

My life had shrunk to these four walls. Without a phone, I couldn’t contact my friends. With a phone, Silas and Luca could contact me.

I couldn’t leave the house without armed guards anyway, and my friends were already uncomfortable with Frank’s presence. Add on Frank and his best buddy Mr Rifle—something that he constantly had slung over his shoulder—plus the four or five other guards that accompanied him… Yeah, my friends were at their limit.

They were young women, ready to get into mischief, not have ex-army machines reporting them to mummy and daddy.

Plus, now that my engagement party was only days away, my friends no longer saw me as fun-loving, rich as sin Isabelle Carbone.

Instead, I was Isabelle Carbone, fiancé to Adrien Vescari. The woman who had tamed one of the richest men in the world. The woman about to inherit a fortune, to become Mrs Vescari.

Already the offers were piling in. Models wanted to get to know me. Fashionistas wanted me to wear their clothes. Makeup lines wanted me to collaborate with them, the papers wanted an exclusive interview, Hello! Magazine had offered an eye-watering amount to be the photographer for our wedding.

Funnily enough, the attention had increased my mother’s love for me. I thought she might burst with happiness when I told her that I trusted her implicitly, telling her to handle everything. She could control who interviewed me, what I wore, and when it all took place.

I really didn’t care.

This was all surface level bullshit. Because with every passing minute, my thoughts lingered on what I had seen that night.

There were transfer papers. Property management. When I thought back, I’m sure I remembered the names of some drug lords in there—and Googling had only confirmed my suspicions.

I’d done enough internet research over the past few days.

I’d learned more about the Falcones and the seedy, dark history surrounding them. Human trafficking, drugs, guns, sex workers, gambling, off-shore accounts, hell, even ties to the Russian mob and terrorists were all search results with valid evidence.

I’d done my homework on my husband to be, even creating a spreadsheet that cross-referenced every time his name appeared alongside the Falcones.

Of course, a lot of this was about the recent conflict of interest in Paris and the fire that had burned down Adrien’s hotel.