Page 88 of Billionaire’s Ruin

His entire frame tightened beneath my touch.

And then I caught it.

The rough edges of a bandage under my fingertips.

The faint tackiness of dried blood near his temple.

A flinch he couldn’t hide when my thumb skimmed too close.

“Kai,” I breathed, pulling back just enough to see him.

My heart dropped.

Red seeped through the white gauze at his temple—fresh, bright. A deep bruise had begun to bloom along his jaw, a dark shadow ruining the sharp lines I used to trace with my fingers in the early hours of the morning.

“You’re hurt.” My voice broke, painfully soft. “Kai… you’re hurt.”

He tried to smile—tried to give me that maddening, reassuring, everything’s fine curve of his lips.

But it faltered halfway.

A grimace shadowed his features before he dropped his gaze away, like he couldn’t stand to let me see all of it.

As if the truth beneath it all was far more brutal than the visible wounds.

And suddenly, I felt it too—the ache in my ribs, the sting along my cheekbone, the throbbing behind my eyes.

Like my body had decided to mirror the agony etched into him, to carry it with him, for him, because he was standing there battered and bruised and trying too hard to pretend he was fine.

It rippled through me. A hot, sharp wave tore through me, blurring the lines between his pain and my own. Until I wasn’t even sure where his hurt ended and mine began.

I clung to him harder, nails curling into the fabric of his shirt, desperate to anchor him to me, gripping him like he might vanish.

Then—

The entry exploded open.

A violent rush of sound and motion crashed into the room. Figures stormed in—shadows blurring into faces I couldn’t recognize, shouting words that felt too far away to understand. Hands seized Kai, dragging him backward, tearing him out of my arms.

“No! Stop!”

The scream tore from my throat raw, feral.

I lunged after him, my fingers caught the edge of his sleeve for a split second before he was dragged out of reach.

Dannie appeared in the chaos, suddenly there, as if conjured from the air—his expression panicked, wide-eyed and frantic as they darted between me and Kai. His mouth moved fast—urgent, desperate—but the sound was distorted, muffled, like we were trapped at the bottom of a swimming pool.

I couldn’t make out a single syllable.

I lunged toward him too—both of them—but the room was dissolving into static and smoke, the floor tilting, air snagging in my throat.

Then, in perfect, terrible unison, both Kai and Dannie both moved, hands sliding behind their backs.

Two metallic clicks snapped through the air like bones breaking.

They turned toward me.

Their gaze—empty. Vacant. Hollow.