Page 64 of Billionaire’s Ruin

The words came out rough, strained, like sandpaper in my throat—worse than any morning-after voice I’d ever had.

Nurse Angela didn’t look at me while she checked my body from top to bottom, adjusting the chain, checking my pulse, and pressing her cold fingers along my arms and legs. Her touch was clinical, detached, but her silence—her refusal to meet my eyes—was loud enough to scream.

Was she afraid of me?

Or guilty?

Was she the one who’d helped my mother escape this room—the room I’d designed specifically to contain her? Was she as deranged as my mother? Did Angela know what I would do to her once I got free?

I warned her. I told her exactly what would happen if she betrayed me.

I should’ve listened to my instincts.

Her resume never quite checked out. The hospital references were fake, the phone numbers disconnected. My sources told me she’d been fired for wrong conduct, they said. Nothing specific. Just the kind of vague dismissal that hides something rotten underneath.

But that’s exactly why I hired her.

Someone desperate enough to obey without question. Someone who wouldn’t flinch when I said the words keep my mother sedated.

Someone who’d do anything I asked.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Standing right beside her now was Lucy—my bride-to-be. Handpicked by the woman who raised me. Her perfect porcelain puppet, silent and lovely, just like she’d always wanted me to have.

“Kai, stop fighting Nurse Angela. You need your rest.” The witch’s tone was calm, measured—the kind of careful gentleness she used when she was about to twist the knife.

“Let me out,” I said, my throat dry. “I can go to the toilet on my own.”

“No, Kai. You’re not strong enough yet.”

Nurse Angela slid a bedpan from beneath the bed, metal scraping faintly against the floor. She reached for my waistband, and the moment her fingers brushed the fabric, something inside me snapped.

Deja vu hit hard—fragmented flashes of this same motion, this same humiliation. How many times had she done this while I was unconscious?

“Fuck off!” I spat, the word cutting sharp and wet against the sterile air. My saliva hit her cheek.

“Oh, sweetheart,” the bitch’s tone turned soft, almost amused. Her expression didn’t change—not even a flicker of surprise. “Would you calm down?”

Her indifference made my skin crawl.

“What is happening to me?” I demanded.

“You?” Her lips tightened into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Nothing, darling. I’m keeping you safe. Just like you’ve been looking after me.”

Her words slithered through my head like poison.

“What happened to Dad?”

“Him?” She gave a slight tilt, watching me through narrowed eyes. “Nothing right now… but not for long.”

I yanked at the restraints, the leather biting into my wrists. I wanted to grab her, shake her, force the truth out of her smug little smile. But the straps held. My muscles trembled with effort, my strength crawling back too slowly.

“What are you doing to him?” I demanded again, each word trembling between fury and desperation.

“Something I should’ve done a long time ago.” She sighed, eyes flicking away. She wasn’t going to tell me—not yet.

I forced myself to inhale deeply, steadying my voice. Angela gave up on the bedpan, muttering under her breath. She wrapped the cuff of a blood pressure monitor around my arm.