MY EX-LOVER IS NOW A BILLIONAIRE CEO

PROLOGUE

Isabel’s POV

“Run, Isabel! Run!” I heard my mother scream, except that her voice didn’t carry the emotions of a celebrating person. It carried the opposite.

“Mum?” My breath caught as the smoke curled into the hallway.

“Don’t let them find you, Isabel!” she cried painfully, before a shattering sound filled my ears.

Without thinking, my legs moved in the direction of the backdoor. Ever since my father decided to take a step of bravery nobody in our neighbourhood dared to take by reporting some drug dealers, he always had eyes at the back of his head. Always.

He had shown me the small hidden door when I was ten, and he’d say, “Never be afraid to stay here, princess. Your mother and I put every ounce of our love into this place.” Back then, I didn’t understand. I thought he meant comfort. I never imagined it would be for survival. But tonight… everything made sense.

I carefully squeezed myself into the small room. There were no windows whatsoever, just cold walls, darkness, and a hole through which I peered to see what was happening.

“Mum?” I instinctively stepped back with a gasp. My hands flew to my mouth, and my eyes widened from the terror of what I had just witnessed. A pair of thick brown boots stepped beside her.

“I have waited a decade for this, Monroe,” I heard a masculine voice I’d never heard before, while my mother struggled to crawl in her own blood. “Ten good years, to revisit your loving and astonishingly brave husband for the loss of my men, my money, everything I’ve ever built!” He hissed.

He kept saying things that only proved my father’s fears right, but that wasn’t my concern now. My concern was my mum.

I froze. My father… he lay a few feet away, unmoving. Not calling out. Not defending her. My stomach twisted. I pressed my hands to my mouth, trying to stifle the scream clawing up my throat.

“Mum,” I whispered, holding my breath. “Where’s Dad?”

“Run,” she muttered again.

“Run?” The strange man chuckled. I couldn’t see him because the hole I was speaking through was just a few inches above the floor. I watched blood drop very close to where he stood, and it took everything in me not to scream. “Do you know how long I’ve planned this revenge? It doesn’t matter how many times you say the word, ‘run.’ I will find her,” he leaned low enough for his face to fall into the strip of light the hole allowed. “And just like I almost lost my precious jewel because of you,” he held out a photograph of a girl around my age. “I’ll make sure that yours never live long enough to tell the story.”

The sound of his whispers sent cold shivers down my spine, but that wasn’t all. He raised the knife from which the blood was dripping.

His knife gleamed. Blood dripped from its tip. Before my mind fully understood what he was about to do, he drove it downward.

I shut my eyes, a broken whimper escaping my lips. The world tilted, darkening. I stopped fighting the dizziness. I let the numbness take me. I had seen enough for a lifetime.

When I opened my eyes again, Rebecca was beside me.

“Oh, dear,” I watched her wipe her tears before sitting next to me. Her voice sounded distant, like it was coming from underwater. I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My body felt heavy, my mind floating somewhere far away as I tried to understand where I was.

Police officers shuffled in and out. And on the floor, covered in black cloth… were two bodies.

“Mum… Dad…” My voice cracked, my heart twisting painfully. “They’re not coming back, are they?”

I tried to stand, but my knees buckled.

“They’re gone, honey,” Rebecca sobbed. “They’re gone, and they’re never coming back.”

And I finally screamed. Everything I had held inside- the terror, the disbelief, the breaking of my entire world tore out of my chest. Rebecca held me, crying with me, but nothing could soothe the image branded into my mind.

“Listen to me, Isabel,” she shook my cheek hard enough to avert my gaze to her face. “You have to leave this town immediately,” she said hurriedly.

Rebecca only rubbed my back, crying as she tried to soothe me. She was the only one who shared a bond deep enough to understand what any of this meant for me. We were the only ones who could console each other at this point,

“Run,” she repeated. “You have to go very far away from here, or they’ll find you and do to you what they did to your parents,” she shook me to let her words sink in.

“I can’t,” I whispered. “Running means accepting that I have nothing left in this place. It means I’m a coward, Rebecca… It means…” I trailed off, thinking of any possible reason why I should stay, when I had just watched my family get brutally taken from me. “Nathaniel,” I gasped, but she only shook her head in what I refuse to call disappointment. “I still have Nathaniel. I have you. I’m even carrying his child.”

My voice broke. “I was going to give him the ultrasound as his birthday gift.”

“Oh, Isabel,” she pulled me towards her so I could rest my head on her shoulder. “I can’t protect you, Isabel. Nobody here can, and even now you're pregnant, Isabel,” her voice broke into a painful sob. “That's all the more reason you should run very far away from here.”

I remained silent, pondering everything. I stayed still for only God knows how long. It was long enough for the strangers to slowly vanish one by one after Rebecca made sure the police had arrived, taken statements, and processed the scene. I watched the pity in their eyes as they left.

I couldn’t help but chuckle darkly at the awful turn of events. Regardless of everything, she was right, and while she didn’t mention it, the least thing I wanted was for her family to pay for a mess they knew nothing about.

“I can’t let your grandma come here, so I’ll be the one to take you to her,” she explained quietly. “We also can’t move about now because everybody is going to be watching, and we don’t want anyone leaving clues in case the murderers return. You’ll have to stay in the secret room where you were last night.”

Hearing the words rush out of her mouth sent all the awful memories back. Not that they ever left, but this time, his face was the most outstanding detail I had imprinted in my mind.

“Rebecca?” I called out with one request.

“Yes, honey.”

“Could you please protect all of this from Nathaniel? I don’t want what happened here, or the outcome of it , to add to everything he has to go through in an attempt to put his life together, so he can get married to me. I also don’t want him to have to worry—”

“I won’t,” she whispered before I could finish. “I also promise to keep you all safe for as long as I’m able to.”

With that, she helped me into the hidden room and set my bags down beside the door. She leaned close and whispered, “It’s okay, honey. They’ve taken care of everything. Now we just need to get you out of here.”

I bid goodbye to all my memories here, mourned the fact that as much as I wanted to run into the comfort of Nathaniel’s arms, I couldn’t bear being responsible if my contact with him turned tragic.

“Are you ready?” Rebecca asked carefully after she fastened her seatbelt.

With one last glance at everything I was leaving behind, I nodded, and we both made for my new life somewhere… very far away.