Page 99 of Billionaire’s Ruin

The room tilted.

The sounds collided.

And just when I fought hardest to surface… everything collapsed into shadow.

A thick, merciless void that swallowed everything whole.

I woke to brightness.

Sunlight.

It spilled across the space in long, golden streaks—soft, hesitant, almost shy like it wasn’t sure it was welcome here. For a few seconds, I didn’t move. Couldn’t. I simply watched, letting it warm the side of my face.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed it until now.

The glow, the way it painted warmth across my face, the way that simple warmth reminded me life still existed beyond these walls, the world still existed. People breathed. Laughed. Lived.

I’d taken morning warmth for granted my whole life. Waking to it was as natural as breathing. Now it felt like a miracle being handed back to me—fragile, unfamiliar, overwhelming.

Tears burned behind my eyes, sharp and sudden. The glow blurred into bands of white and amber. I didn’t know if I was crying because of the brightness… or because something inside me—something I’d thought had been beaten out of existence—had sparked back to life.

Hope.

It hurt.

Then memory slammed into me like a fist.

The shouting.

The crash.

The footsteps flooding the padded room.

Screams and groans tearing through the chaos.

Hands dragging me away.

Whoever had come in.

Someone had saved me.

Because now… I wasn’t there anymore.

For the first time in—God, how long had it been?—I wasn’t strapped to a bed. I wasn’t locked behind a reinforced door. I wasn’t choking on the stink of bleach or the recycled air pumped through the padded walls.

The air here smelled different.

Fresh.

Clean.

Like linen, warm sunlight, and something faintly citrus—the scent of a place where people actually lived, not where they were hidden away.

I blinked, taking in piece by piece.

Pale walls.

Warm wooden planks.