Page 80 of Billionaire’s Ruin

“Shall we show Dr. Bennet our plan?” she said lightly, rescuing everyone from my growing emotional meltdown.

“Yes,” I latched onto the change of subject. “And please—call me June.”

I followed her into the dining area… and stopped dead.

The elegant, pristine dining room I remembered had been transformed into a war room.

The table drowned under a chaotic spread of documents—scattered papers, printed photos, open laptops, wrinkled timelines, maps with pins in them, scribbled notes stacked on top of each other. A whiteboard stood near the wall covered in frantic handwriting, arrows looping between names and locations. Empty coffee cups and snack wrappers crowded the edges, the debris of sleepless nights.

I had never seen Kai’s apartment look like this.

Not even close.

Lincoln pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, the exhaustion in his body finally visible now that I wasn’t hugging him. There were dark shadows under his eyes—weeks of worry carved into his face. Dave and Andy wore the same tired look, proof that whatever they were doing, they hadn’t rested much.

They’d been working themselves to the bone.

To find him.

A painful squeeze tightened my chest.

How long had Lincoln stayed here?

Sinking into the seat beside him, I forced a breath into my lungs as Andy launched into the explanation. Her voice was steady, but underneath it was a tremor—a quiet fatigue that told me everything I needed to know. They traced every movement, every call, every rumor.

And the truth was worse than anything I’d imagined.

Kai was being kept at the Li residence.

The home he hated.

The home he’d run from.

The home he despised so much he bought this penthouse just to avoid ever being there.

And the one holding him there?

His own mother.

A cold jolt dropped through my stomach.

Andy kept talking, walking us through their deductions, but the words blurred together until one phrase sliced through the haze.

“—after the accident⁠—”

The words jolted me upright. “What… What?”

The words came out sharper than I intended, slicing through the room. The entire team froze.

Because they knew exactly which accident I meant.

“Accident?” The word detonated in my chest like a gunshot—sharp, disorienting, leaving a ringing behind that drowned out everything else.

Did Liam ever mention an accident?

What kind of accident?

Did he know? And if he did—why didn’t he tell me?