Page 67 of Billionaire’s Heartbreak

Old. Cramped. Worn down. Nothing matched, nothing gleamed, and nobody seemed interested in fixing what had been broken for years.

I hated it. But I stayed.

The moment I sat down, I knew I’d made a mistake. My back faced the street. The entrance was out of my sight. Dave was sitting instead of standing guard. Every instinct I had was telling me to leave.

But June had wanted egg tarts.

I glanced across the table at her. She looked peaceful. Maybe that was why I hadn't stopped her.

But the moment her eyes changed, I knew something was wrong. Her body barely moved, but her eyes shifted toward the window, then the door, then somewhere behind me. Quick. Controlled. She looked back at her food as though nothing had happened.

I knew that look. She was trying not to react.

My body went still. I didn't ask what she'd seen because I already knew she wouldn't tell me.

Instead, I reached for the faded laminated menu and picked it up casually, glancing at the drinks. “Used to drink this,” I murmured, tapping a picture of soya milk.

Dave looked over. I didn't need to explain. We spoke quietly, almost lazily, as though we were discussing breakfast, while beneath the table I mapped the room: the entrance, windows, narrow corridor at the back, distance to the street, and the people outside. I fed Dave what I noticed without letting my voice change. He shifted slightly.

To anyone watching, nothing had happened.

But we both knew something had changed.

I looked at June again. Her pupils had widened slightly. Her breathing remained steady, her hands still. She even took another bite of her egg tart, but the calm wasn't real. It had cracks in it, and I could see every one.

The strange thing was, I wasn't angry that she'd noticed something before I did. If anything, I was relieved. She was paying attention. What angered me was that she still felt she had to do it alone—that she could sit across from me and still believe she couldn't tell me what she was seeing.

I wanted to ask her. I wanted to reach across the table and tell her that whatever she'd noticed, I had it under control. But I knew better. The last thing she needed was another man telling her what she could and couldn't do.

So I waited and watched.

Then the air changed when a man stepped inside.

June's skin prickled. A faint line of goosebumps rose along her arm, and my attention shifted toward the entrance.

He didn't hesitate or look around like someone entering a strange shop. He walked in as though he already knew the place. That was what caught my attention.

It was the confidence. He wasn't nervous or hurried. He already knew who he'd come for.

I didn't turn fully. Instead, I caught his reflection in the glass display: dark clothes, sunglasses, too deliberate, too calm. I kept my shoulders relaxed and my expression neutral, but every muscle in my body had already tightened.

June hadn't moved, but the tiny change in her posture told me everything. She knew him, or at the very least, knew something about him.

Suddenly, the egg tart didn't matter anymore. Neither did the shop or the mistake I'd made by sitting with my back to the street. I had only one job now: keep June alive.

Whatever happened next, I wasn't going to let her face it alone.

My instincts screamed at me to move—to flip the table, break the angle, take him down before he got any closer. But on what grounds? A feeling? A look? That wasn't enough. Not yet. My team was gone. There was no perimeter, no backup in sight. Just Dave.

The man continued toward us and stopped close enough that I felt his presence before I looked up. He didn’t seem particularly interested in me.

I turned slowly until our eyes met. Up close, he looked even less threatening than he should have, and somehow that made him more dangerous. Neither of us moved. The first person to react gave the other control, and I wasn't willing to give him mine.

Outside, cars honked, engines idled, and tyres scraped against the wet pavement, filling the silence in uneven waves. It wasn't normal traffic. The road was blocked and slowed because of them. Through the glass, I could see people gathering along the pavement. Not a crowd, not random. They were spread out, leaving enough space between them to look harmless at first glance.

It was merely a distraction.

A way to create pressure without making a scene.