Page 80 of Billionaire’s Promise

19

June

I woke up the next day with an idea.

If what my brother said was true – that Kai really cared about me – he would have planted someone to watch over me. He was the kind of person who over prepared, who went overboard on most things, especially when it comes to safety. Him seeing Mack attack me that day, would trigger his protective side – amp up the security around me – if he truly cared.

After my brother was taken a few years ago, Kai had his security team extend their care, which covered my family as well. We had bodyguards following us everywhere we went that drove us crazy. It only took about a month for my parents to voice their opinions. Very angry opinions. They loudly demanded Lincoln call it off. The funny thing was, Lincoln didn’t even know anything about it.

It struck me that I hadn’t been approached by Mack since that or heard anything about him. Did Kai have something to do with that? It was odd that the police hadn’t contacted me. Was Mack still in jail? Did someone bail him out? The day the police took him away, they mentioned something about keeping in touch, collecting statements and pressing charges. So far, I've heard nothing.

Curiosity urged me to find out what was going on with Mack, but something more important was on my mind. If Mack managed to get out of jail, then there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

Right now, I couldn’t really tell if I was being watched.

I hadn’t been paying any attention to my surroundings lately. I wouldn’t know if I was being watched by one person, or a whole team of them.

I scanned the footage from my Ring doorbell, the only surveillance I had in the house. There was nothing really suspicious going on outside my house. I did notice that I had new neighbors move in across from my apartment. But that was a week ago. They couldn’t be Kai’s team. Could they? Kai would have to be really organized to have someone move in before he arrived. I don’t think that he planned for this to happen. For us to happen. Besides, if my neighbors had something to do with Kai, why didn’t Clare greet or say something to them when they saw each other two days ago on one of the videos? Of course, it was possible that Clare was pretending not to know them.

Despite the fact that I hadn’t had any news about Kai, learning how he felt about me made me feel slightly better. At least I knew that he wasn’t toying with my heart.

An erratic laugh escaped me. Then another one. I felt ridiculous for thinking that I could approach sex like a man. That all I needed to get Kai out of my system was ten dates he’d bargained for at the auction. That I could just fuck him out of my mind.

Then sense prevailed. Calling Kai shouldn’t make me feel pathetic, like a sore loser who chased up a follow up after a one-night stand. Yet, there was this unknown force that stopped me from doing it.

Truth or denial?

There was so much I wanted to know. Was he safe? Why did he leave? Where did he go? Why didn’t he leave me any messages?

But I wasn’t sure how I would respond if the truth wasn’t what I wanted to hear. What if he was in danger? What if the sex wasn’t up to his standard and he decided that he wanted someone else? Perhaps he was in trouble with the Mafia.

No, I shouldn’t speculate any more, I would only drive myself crazy.

Finally, I picked up the phone to call. It went straight to voicemail.

Typical. I was worried about what he might say to me, and he wasn’t even available to talk.

I tried multiple times after that, leaving five to ten minutes in between calls. All went straight to voicemail.

I thought about trying Lucy or Jenny, who could possibly be traveling with him. But I didn’t really get a chance to ask for Lucy or Jenny’s numbers. Though it was rather unprofessional, I found Jenny’s number through the hospital database which I had access to at home.

It got my hopes up when someone picked up at the other end, but it wasn’t Jenny. She had made up a fake number and I should have guessed that. At least I tried.

That meant I was left with one option: testing out my idea.

I called in sick and had Siti arrange for one of the doctors on my team to cover for me. She panicked when I told her I wasn’t going to come in at all. And panicked more when I told her that I wasn’t actually sick and wanted her to lie about it. The thing was, I had never had an unplanned day off my whole career as a doctor. My team had gotten so used to me always being there, but I think it’s time they learn to deal with the situation when I wasn’t there – suddenly.

The controlling and workaholic part of me wanted to know how Siti and my team were going to handle my absence, but I shook off worry. It was exactly that bad habit of mine that had led me to my current stress and unexplained high blood pressure. The enlightenment hit me like the cold air on a winter morning as you leave the bed. For years now, I denied my lifestyle had anything to do with my high BP, and a high resting heart rate. And suddenly, I was no longer in denial and staring right at the fact face to face.

Still in yesterday’s clothes and with messy bed hair, I headed to the parking lot. I was too tired and upset to change out of my clothes when I returned from my failed stalking mission. After my call with Lincoln, who’d promised to try to find Kai, I’d spent the night binging multiple Netflix documentaries, munching on a large double cheese pizza and wallowing for the rest of the evening before passing out in bed.

The elevator trip down to the parking lot had given me a vague impression of how awful I must have looked. My neighbors were either staring or too afraid to look at me.

As soon as I got inside my Tesla, I checked myself in the rearview mirror and saw the hot mess that was me. Really, I couldn’t blame my obviously very concerned neighbors for staring.

The gray smear of makeup that decorated my face suggested that I had been crying. Had I been crying? Probably. I honestly couldn’t remember. I’d been very upset, that was all I knew for sure.

From now on, I was never going to trust any beauty influencers or sales assistants when they told me their makeup was waterproof. Not that I was planning to cry all the time. People don’t buy waterproof makeup because they cry all the time, but just in case. For that one unexpected day when there was something really – or not – worth crying about.