Page 73 of Billionaire’s Ruin

Out there. The phrase alone made my stomach twist.

“Your brother knew you’d call, and… it was probably better for me to answer.”

“Smart,” I muttered. Lincoln knew I hated his big-brother tone. Lately though—maybe because of Chloe and her laid-back magic—he’d softened. Lectures had become rare. Almost nonexistent. He had even let Liam and me survive a situation recently without giving us the usual ten-minute sermon.

“Kai was taken.”

Plain. Direct. No cushioning. Chloe knew me too well.

“Dammit.” The words tore out of me. My heart clenched hard enough to hurt. Kai—taken again. What had he done, in this life, to deserve this cycle?

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

I had to be.

Even if I didn’t know what I could realistically do in Shanghai, I couldn’t sit comfortably in Malaysia while he was in danger. Kai was my brother’s best friend, practically another brother to all of us—and I was the one closest to him. At the very least, I could be here for moral support. Emotional backup.

Watching your friend—your fellow billionaire friend—get taken… that had to be a special kind of hell for Lincoln.

“Where are you now?” Chloe asked, her tone casual but thinly veiled concern. She knew me well enough to understand how badly I needed space right now.

“Shanghai.”

There was a pause.

“No. Really? Last time I spoke to Liam, he said you weren’t in China.”

“Where did he say I was?” The question left my mouth too sharply—accusatory, like I was interrogating a suspect.

“He just said somewhere in Asia. But Liam wouldn’t tell us exactly where.”

That was exactly like Liam.

Protective in the most irritating, selective-truth kind of way.

Half honesty. Half secrecy.

Annoyance prickled—of course they knew I’d left the country, but I was also relieved they didn’t know where I’d really been.

Anyway, someone would eventually find out my hideout once they heard about my new venture—a hospital in Malaysia. That secret had an expiration date.

“How did you get to Shanghai so fast?” Chloe pressed.

A simple question on the surface. But Chloe wasn’t simple. She was probing, peeling back the layers. She wanted to know how close I had been all along—how near I was to China, how easily I’d managed to slip past everyone.

“Someone sold me their ticket.”

“You flew commercial?”

Her tone was feather-light, but the intent was sharp. If I’d taken a private jet, she could easily find the manifest, the charter company, its pilot, its flight route… and the person helping me hide from the people who loved me.

“Yes,” the word came out clipped, mechanical.

“Honey, do you believe in fate?”

“No.”