THE RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE

Chapter 2

The cab dropped me two blocks from home. I didn't have enough left for the full fare, not after tipping the driver for putting up with my silence the whole ride.

I walked the rest in my heels, arms wrapped around myself, the cold doing nothing to numb what I actually felt.

Eli was on the couch when I let myself in, laptop balanced on his knees, blue light carving shadows under his eyes.

"Hey." He glanced up. "How was the fancy dinner?"

"Fine." I hung my coat, kept my back to him a beat too long.

"Just fine?" A pause. Then, sharper: "Serena." He set the laptop aside. "You've been crying."

"I'm tired. It's cold—my eyes water in the cold." I made myself smile. It felt like it might crack something.

He didn't buy it. I watched him decide not to push, and I let him, because Eli already carried enough. He didn't need to know I'd watched Daniel put a ring on Vanessa's finger in front of sixty strangers.

I sat beside him. The TV played something neither of us watched.

Then his phone buzzed. He picked it up, frowned—and I watched his face change in real time.

"Serena." Careful now. "Why is Daniel's engagement all over social media?"

My stomach dropped. "What?"

He turned the screen toward me. There it was—Daniel on one knee, Vanessa's hand pressed to her mouth like she hadn't seen it coming, the gold banner catching a dozen camera flashes. Some caption underneath about finally finding *the one*.

I didn't say anything. I didn't have to.

"That's your Daniel." Eli's voice had gone low, careful in a different way now. "And that's Vanessa."

"Eli—"

"He proposed to her. Tonight. While you were *there*?" He set the phone down harder than he meant to. "Did he—did you know? Before you walked in?"

"No." My throat tightened. "I found out with everyone else."

"I'm going to kill him." He said it flat, not a joke, and then caught himself, dragging a hand through his hair. "I should've seen this coming. I should've said something before you wasted three years on—"

"Don't." I grabbed his hand. "This isn't yours to carry."

"Everything in this family is mine to carry." Quiet. Worn down. "If I hadn't gotten sick—if the treatment hadn't cost what it cost—you wouldn't have been working two jobs, you wouldn't have needed him to—"

"Stop," I said it harder than I meant to. "Your survival is not a burden, Eli. Don't make me say that twice."

He looked at me a long moment. Nodded, though I could tell he didn't believe it. He never did.

"I'm going to bed," I said, standing before he could ask anything else, before the cracks showed. "I'm okay."

I wasn't.

---

My phone buzzed the second I closed the door.

*Vanessa Carter.*

I almost didn't open it. Some part of me already knew.

*I know tonight was hard for you. But you have to understand—Daniel needed someone who actually fits his world. Someone people look at and... get it. I'm sorry it had to happen this way. But you always knew you weren't built for that kind of life.*

I read it once. Then again, like the second time might hurt less. It didn't.

The first time Vanessa told me I was too big for the dress our mother bought me for a school dance, I was eleven. She hadn't even said it cruelly—that was the part that stuck. Just an observation, tossed off like weather.

*You're pretty, Serena. Just not in the way that matters.*

I remembered standing in front of the mirror after, pinching the skin at my waist, trying to work out what "the way that matters" was even supposed to look like. Somewhere along the way I'd decided it looked like her.

I set the phone face-down on the nightstand and pressed my palms into my eyes until the sting eased.

That's when the landline rang.

I almost let it go. I'm glad I didn't.

"Miss Vale." Polite, brisk—hospital voice. "I'm calling about your mother's account. There's an outstanding balance. We need it settled before we can continue the next round of treatment. By the end of the week."

"How much?" I already knew it would be more than I had.

She told me. I sat down hard.

"I understand this is difficult." Not unkind, just tired of saying it. "Without payment, we'll have to pause the treatment plan."

"Please." My voice cracked, finally, after a whole night of holding it together. "She can't stop now. I'll find it. I need—please."

"We'll follow up." Click.

I sat in the dark kitchen a long time, running through everything I owned that might still be worth something. The list was short. I'd already spent most of it on a watch sitting on a stone ledge outside a restaurant I'd never walk into again.

Eli's phone rang from the living room. I heard him pick up, wary. "Hello?"

Then his voice changed. "Who is this? What do you mean he owes—"

I was already on my feet.

He stood by the window, knuckles white around the phone. "I don't know where he is. I haven't talked to him in weeks—no, don't come here, don't—"

"Eli." I kept my voice low. "What's going on?"

He held up a hand. Listened. Went pale. "Okay. Okay. —give us time." He hung up and stood there staring at the phone like it had done something to him.

"Dad's creditor," he said finally. "He's gone again. Another spree. He owes more than we've ever seen him owe anyone."

My chest went tight. "Is he safe?"

"I don't know." He started pacing. "They said if he doesn't pay, they'll come looking for what he owes—from us."

"From *us*? We didn't gamble it."

"Try telling them that." He dropped onto the arm of the couch. "There's something else, though. Guy said part of it's already been paid. Someone covered a chunk before Dad took off."

"Who?"

"I don't know. Dad, maybe. Found some way to scrape it together." But he didn't sound like he believed that, and neither did I, because our father had never once paid off a debt without a gun to his head, figuratively or otherwise.

I thought about the folder Daniel had snatched off that table. My photograph. The handwriting. *Find her. She is the key to the agreement.*

I didn't tell Eli. I had no proof, just a feeling crawling up my spine that these things were touching each other somehow, even if I couldn't see how yet.

I lay awake long after he'd gone to bed, running numbers that never added up—my mother's treatment. Richard, vanished into whatever hole he'd dug this time. The last of my savings, already gone.

I'd already given this family everything I had.

I didn't know what was left to give.

---

The next morning I walked into Graves International the way I always did—early, exhausted, badge clipped crooked, coffee already cold.

My phone rang as I crossed the lobby. I almost didn't answer.

"Miss Vale." The same voice from last night. "I'm calling to confirm your mother's treatment has been placed on hold. We haven't received payment, and per policy—"

"I need more time." I stopped walking. "Please. I'm working on it."

"We'll follow up in twenty-four hours." Click.

I stood in the middle of the marble floor, phone still at my ear, the ground tilting slightly under me.

I made myself move. I had a job to do and no room left to fall apart in a building full of people who didn't know my name.

The elevator doors opened. I stepped in without looking, and then I looked.

Damian Graves stood inside, alone. Dark suit. Grey eyes already on me before the doors had fully cleared.

I hesitated half a step.

He didn't look at my dress. Didn't look at my body, at any of the places Daniel had trained me to expect a man's eyes to go.

He looked at my face. Just my face, steady, like he was reading something I hadn't meant to show him.

I stepped in. The doors slid shut. The space felt smaller than it should have.

Neither of us said anything as we started to rise.

Then, quietly, without looking away, Damian said the last thing I expected to hear from a man I barely knew.

"You need to stop pretending you're okay.”