Page 5 of Billionaire’s Heartbreak

Heat surged through me—violent and sudden—rushing from my core to the base of my skull. My face burned so fiercely I thought I might combust.

“Enough.” I stepped in front of Laura, throwing up my arms in a sharp stop gesture, so close I nearly caught her on the nose.

The movement startled her. “Sorry?” she said coolly.

“Stop hitting him,” I said. “Now.”

Her lips curled. “What if I won’t?”

“It’s not up to you.” Each word steadied me.

“Excuse me?”

“If you respect me as your sister-in-law,” I continued, my voice trembling despite my effort to keep it firm, “you’ll do as I say.”

“June—”

“You mean Ah-sou?” The title left my mouth slowly, deliberately. Then I added, quieter but sharper, “I don’t want to pull rank. But remember who you are. And remember who I am to you. It will always be Ah-sou. Your brother’s only wife.”

Silence slammed down between us.

Laura’s jaw tightened. “Fine,” she ground out. “But you’re breaking tradition. Our people need rules. Without them, we’re no better than street thugs.”

“She can break whatever she damn well wants.” The voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It carried anyway—steady, familiar, final. Every head turned.

“Dannie.”

2

Kai

I felt my impatience rising, thick and sour in my throat. The stale air inside the car made me want to throw up. The leather seats had been baking beneath the Hong Kong heat for too long, releasing that faint, expensive smell of leather and car perfume that normally wouldn’t have bothered me.

Today, it felt suffocating.

The air-conditioning hummed steadily overhead, but barely seemed to reach the back seat. My black suit jacket felt too tight across my shoulders, and the crisp white collar of my shirt dug into my neck. Even my black silk tie seemed determined to choke me.

I’d said it more than once—bringing Huan Huan here wasn’t a good idea. But Lucy had insisted.

It was the little girl’s first official public outing. Good exposure. Good optics. And Hong Kong media did what they did best—digging through people’s privacy, airing dirty laundry like it belonged to them. Lucy and I both knew that.

We could actually use it. Let them think they’d stolen a glimpse. Let them believe they’d managed to capture our daughter’s face when no one else had.

Tomorrow, there would be headlines—something polished, something warm.

Happy family.

The thought almost made me laugh. The image we were selling was so perfectly constructed that even I sometimes forgot how much of it was an act.

“Can you stop her from crying?” I muttered.

“I’m sorry, Kai, but we can’t just give her whatever she wants,” Lucy sighed.

I cut her off. “Yes, that thing you’ve been trying for weeks? It clearly isn’t working. Didn’t take a genius to figure that out.”

“I—” She stopped herself and fell silent. “That was mean.”

I exhaled, rubbing a hand over my face. “Sorry.”