Page 1 of Billionaire’s Promise

PROLOGUE

13 Years Ago

June

“I love you. In case I die.”

Something we heard someone say while we were at school. We thought it was silly. No one was going to die, not for a very, very long time at least.

But we were wrong.

I was wrong.

Now I regret not saying those ‘silly’ words to my best friend.

* * *

“Happy 18th Birthday!” Liam and Lincoln burst into my bedroom at midnight and repeated the same words again and again and again. Even though the night light in my room was dim, I could tell that my two brothers had some kind of party hats on.

“Get up! Get up! Get up!” Lincoln had a thing about repeating things three times since he started college. Perhaps his thick skull thought that no one could understand him. He shook my bed like a silly child, trying to get me up.

But I remained unmotivated.

I had never spent a birthday without Chloe in my life. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true, perhaps once or twice in my life, but that must have been before I could remember things. As we didn’t officially meet until we were three.

Oh, in case it wasn’t clear, Chloe Abshire was my best friend. She wasn’t just any ordinary best friend, though. She was the best kind.

The kind who would fight for you, literally, even though an injury could cost her the ballet career she dreamed of. The kind who would burst out into swear words and stand up for you even though she would get in trouble with the principal and her parents. The kind who never forgot about your birthday. The kind who was your favorite everything.

But all that meant nothing now.

It’d been six months since Chloe’s death.

Lincoln insisted that she was just missing. But the idiot was just saying that to make me feel better. It wasn’t what the locals said about her. Or the coroner. I even went to her funeral. Hers and her parents.

Tears fell down my cheeks again.

Mom had demanded that I stop this nonsense soon.

She said it like I actually enjoyed having tears flood my face. I couldn’t help it.

On the night of her death, she’d been here. In this very bedroom, sitting on this very bed, watching the latest episode of Pretty Little Liars. I haven’t watched any episodes that came out after that. It hurt too much knowing that Chloe would never find out what happened to the girls, to her favorite character Emily Fields, played by her favorite actress Shay Mitchell.

“Yiyi, I drove all the way back for you.” Lincoln sank next to me and planted a kiss on my forehead. Yiyi, my family only called me by my nickname – a shortened form of Horyi – when they wanted to remind me that I was the youngest in the family. An immature little child.

Liam had now turned the main light on, and the brightness hurt my already swollen eyes.

“I’m not in the mood for a stupid birthday,” I snapped.

When will my brothers ever take me seriously? Why would they go behind my back and organize something that I had said multiple times I didn’t want? Brothers, huh? They never listen.

I tucked my head further inside the blanket, wishing the boys would leave me alone.

“I know you miss her.” Lincoln’s soft whisper triggered something deep inside me. Though tears had been hard to hold back, I hadn’t done this since her funeral – cried out loud.

Ugly. Cry. Out. Loud.

“Shhh, shhh, shhh…”