Page 65 of Billionaire’s Ruin

A good nurse would’ve seen without needing to measure: my pulse was racing, my blood pressure sky-high. I was on the edge.

“I know what you did,” I said quietly.

Angela froze. Her composure slipped for half a second.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, her tone casual, too casual.

“My kidnapping.” I dragged out the words, testing them, watching how they landed. “Why did you lie to me?”

“Hmm…” she angled her face, studying me like she was inspecting a child’s drawing, unsure whether to praise or scold.

Mom had always been ruled by emotion. The smallest thing could send her spiraling—laughter to tears, rage to adoration, all within the same minute. She’d once cried for days because my father came home late from work, convinced he’d abandoned us.

I’d thought she was being dramatic.

I was wrong.

Now, watching her, I couldn’t tell what she was feeling. Her gaze flickered between me and the machines beeping beside the bed. There was calculation between them—something dangerous she was trying to bury.

“They didn’t come for me, did they?” My voice cracked slightly. “They wanted Xiao Wu. Not me.”

The air in the room changed. Lucy and Angela stopped moving altogether. Her expression went blank—only to return sharper, colder.

And in that tiny pause, I knew I’d struck something real.

“Yes…” She rubbed her palm nervously on her thigh, smoothing the wrinkles on her beige dress. Her eyes darted toward the window, avoiding mine.

“And you knew all along, didn’t you?” My voice trembled—not from fear, but from disbelief. “That’s why you wanted Xiao Wu on that trip. You wanted me there when it happened.”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. For a moment, she didn’t speak. Then quietly, she asked, “How… how did you figure it out?”

“When I saw Dannie in Hong Kong, I knew we’d met before.” The memory flickered like a broken film reel behind my eyes—his face, the sound of chains, the smell of damp concrete. “But my brain wouldn’t let me place him. Wouldn’t let me remember. But now I do. The dots connected. And, it all made sense.”

Her composure cracked. “I thought there was no harm,” she whispered, voice trembling.

“No harm?” My voice rose. “Do you remember the bruises, the cuts? The nightmares?”

Tears welled up in her eyes, but she shook her head. “You’re alive, aren’t you? It gave you a life lesson, didn’t it?”

I laughed—a hollow, bitter sound that didn’t even feel like it came from me. “A life lesson? You had me kidnapped to teach me a fucking life lesson?”

Her tears spilled then, but she kept her voice small, pleading. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“Then what, Mother?”

“I just…” she pressed her fingers to her lips, smearing her lipstick slightly. “I just wanted to scare your father. Make him realize how much he cared about you. About us. About the family. I thought if something happened to you, he’d stop seeing that bitch.”

Of course. Of course it always came back to him.

Everything she did—every lie, every manipulative act—was always about my father. She said it was for me, for us, but it was all about her obsession. She couldn’t bear the idea that a woman like her could lose a man to a nobody.

“You are unbelievable,” I muttered, disgusted.

Still, I needed more. I wanted the details—how she’d done it, who helped her. I suspected Auntie Five was involved somehow, but there was no time to drag it out. I had to think about escaping.

“What’s your plan now?” I asked quietly. “Kill me?”

She gasped, hand to her chest. “No, no, no! I would never harm my baby.”