The Billionaire's Pretend Wife (Isabella) novel Chapter 49

Isabelle shut the refrigerator door and turned to Jacob, a confused look on her face. Lifting her hand, she gave a look at the ring on her finger, and then looked at Jacob’s stoic face. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

She understood that the ring looked a bit different after she had it cleaned and polished, but did it look so different that he wouldn't be able to recognise it? She was about to tell him about the maintenance service when he reached for her hand.

Jacob took her hand in his and took off the ring from her finger. Turning the band of the ring, he showed her the inside of the metallic surface. “The ring I gave you had my mother’s initials,” he told her, pinning her with a glare. “This one has none.”

Isabelle frowned and took a look. It was true, there was no engraving on the inside of the ring.

“The ring I gave you has been in my mother’s family for ages,” he told her. “It’s an antique, and this one is obviously a counterfeit. I could tell with just a single look.”

Isabelle worried her bottom lip with her teeth as her heart sank. If what he was saying was true, then it meant that the pawnshop owner had exchanged her real ring with a fake one. Had she known that the ring Jacob gave her had an engraving, she would have checked it before leaving the shop. But, other than expressing her desire for the ring, the owner had sounded sincere when offering to carry out the maintenance service.

Isabelle felt like slapping herself for her naiveness. Of course the owner had sounded nice and concerned when offering to clean the ring. It was the only way to get rid of Isabelle's fear about giving her the ring. During the time Isabelle thought she was servicing the ring, she must have been busy looking for the fake replacement.

While Isabelle made sense of things in her mind, Jacob took her silence to mean guilt. If she had nothing to say for herself, that meant that she really hadn't expected him to notice that she had exchanged the ring. And now that he had, she was struck speechless. Maybe it had been a good thing that he hadn't pointed out the ring's history when he had given it to her. She probably would have faked the initials to deceive him further.

“Did you think that if you sold the real one and replaced it with a fake, I wouldn’t realise?” Jacob demanded, his eyes glaring at her. His jaw ticked as he grind his teeth together, angered. Now, he felt stupid for giving her the ring in the first place.

She wasn't even his real wife, but he had given her the ring that had belonged to his late mother. The only woman who should wear that ring was one he loved and wanted to spend his life with. Definitely not someone who saw the ring and started thinking about how much money it could get her.

If it were not for him feeling jealous about other men hitting on her...

“Of course not,” Isabelle replied, feeling wronged that he would think she would do that. “Are you accusing me of exchanging your mother's valuables for money?"

Had the ring been hers from the beginning, Isabelle wouldn't have thought twice about exchanging it for money to pay off Ruth's bill. But even knowing how much it was worth, she had refrained from doing so because she had known it would be wrong to sell it after he gave it to her as a gift. It hurt that he didn't bother asking her explanation before accusing her of exchanging it for money. Did he think she was that kind of person?