Page 103 of Billionaire’s Ruin

The spark in his gaze dimmed, shadow pooling there before he forced it away. Like he couldn’t afford to hold the grief any longer.

“But things are different now,” he said, conviction tightening his tone. “This time, I didn’t let anyone stop me.”

“I never blamed you,” I murmured.

It was the truth—simple, clear, painful. Through all the nights I woke screaming, through the years when the memory was a foggy, twisted ache—I never once blamed him. He was the real target. I was the collateral damage.

Wrong place.

Wrong time.

Wrong family.

My voice cracked. “Who did it?”

His breath left him slowly, bitterness curling around it. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “It does. Tell me.”

His gaze dropped, shoulders stiffening with tension. The silence stretched—long enough that my heart hammered with impatience.

“My uncle,” he finally said. “He thought killing me and my father would push him next in line for the throne.” A bleak, humorless chuckle escaped him. “But he was wrong.”

I leaned closer, the gentle lamp glow catching the tremor in his fingers. “I thought it was Auntie Five.”

He gave a slow, deliberate shake of his head. “She was just a pawn. Controlled by him.”

The name churned through the room like smoke. Auntie Five… the woman I’d suspected. The woman whose shadow still tightened around my throat in nightmares.

A sharp jolt of adrenaline shot through me. “What happened to your uncle?”

Our gaze locked. His eyes were darker now, deeper—carrying stories I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

“My grandad found out,” he said, each word dropping heavier than the last. “Killed his accomplice. Then framed him.”

He leaned back slowly, the chair creaking in protest. For a moment, neither of us breathed. The air was thick, heavy with ghosts, with memories and the kind of truth that could break a man twice.

Silence lingered between us—dense, unspoken, familiar.

Two boys once trapped in a hut.

Outside, the faint hum of the city bled through the walls—distant engines, sirens, the muted rhythm of life continuing as if ours hadn’t just been cracked open and rearranged. The contrast made my skin crawl.

“But my mother…”

The words scraped out of my throat before I could stop them, rough and uncertain. “So where does she fit in all this?”

His expression shifted—just slightly, but I caught it. A flicker of something dark behind his expression. Regret, maybe. Or warning.

He inhaled deeply before answering.

“She wasn’t in the planning of it. If that’s what you’re asking.”

His words were steady, but there was a hitch there, a hesitation he couldn’t quite hide. “She overheard my aunt’s conversation somehow, and insisted that we be together that day. But I had no idea why.”

My stomach tightened, a slow, sick curl.

Just a little scare, she’d told me.