Lahat ng Kabanata ng Billion Dollar Man: Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

BenMy flight was scheduled for Sunday evening. I had my usual bags and the three boxes to send to New York and that was it. I stared at the things I needed to get over to New York, and I couldn’t believe that a life I had created here had so little to show for it.Maybe it was because I was so much more emotionally invested. I had only been here for a short while, after all. It wasn’t nearly enough to hoard material things.I should have been happy that I had nearly nothing to take care of before I left. Instead, I felt awful, and I didn’t know why.That was a lie. I was lying to myself. I knew exactly why I felt awful. I’d said goodbye to people I cared about, people I would have liked to have as a part of my life. Friends, family. Mila.I shook off the thought. Looking back and crying about it wasn’t going to do anyone any good. The only thing I could do about it was put my head down and do what needed to be done.As soon as I hit the ground in New York, everything was going to be

MilaAfter my shift on Monday, I went back to The Cottage. It had become my safe haven the last while. I liked spending time there because it reminded me of the days when I hadn’t had anything to worry about when my parents had still been there to fend for me and my biggest concern had been that Jerrod would tease me about things I was shy about.Life had been so much simpler then.That was in retrospect, of course. Back then, the small problems I missed had been the only problems I’d known so they had felt big. It was only now that I had bigger things to worry about that those problems seemed better.I guess that would always be that way.Still, I liked being at The Cottage. It was warm and cozy and smelled like the food of my childhood.Work had been going well. It was very busy with a lot of new patients who had needed medical attention. There had been so much to focus on. But it hadn’t been enough. Nothing would be enough. My heart was broken, and I needed more.I knew exactly wha

BenThe big board meeting had been yesterday, and I was relieved it was over. Even though I had known every protocol and every employee, it had been nerve-racking to step up there and talk to them all. It had been heartbreaking to take care of all the paperwork and to address the people who had loved Uncle Dean as much as I had.Most of them had come to the funeral, but the loss was still raw. I had been able to see it in everyone’s eyes, my own pain reflected on their faces. I realized I wasn’t the only one who had lost someone. Not even close.At least, everyone had welcomed me back. I didn’t want to be here, but it was good for the employees to have someone step in that they knew. We had worked together for the past seven years, after all. And they had made me feel like I was a part of their company. They had pledged their loyalty to me as their CEO, and in this difficult time, there was nothing better than feeling like they were all rooting for me.Today, I had a meeting with the

BenDavid Thomas arrived at my office in New York fifteen minutes earlier than we had agreed. Amy, my Personal Assistant, showed him into my office. He looked casual and out of place in my sleek, organized building. He wore jeans and a t-shirt with an old blazer over it and shoes that looked like they came from a thrift store.It was a part of his disguise, I had learned. David did everything he could to be non-descript. It was the best way to get all the information he needed as a Private Investigator.“Have you found anything yet?” I asked.“I have,” David said. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.David was helping me investigate the death of both business partners that had owned the company before me. My dad and his partner, Uncle Dean, had died seven years apart, but the plane crashes had been so eerily similar that a murder investigation had been opened. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the police, but I had wanted to get involved in some way. So I had hired David to

MilaBy the time I got off work on Friday, I was dead on my feet. I’d had a hell of a week. Sometimes it felt like the bad things that happened in threes to everyone else, piled up in infinite amounts for us at the ICU.I drove home on autopilot, barely remembering how I got there. Despite the comfortable shoes I wore because I was always on my feet, my feet were sore, and I sat on my bed and gave myself a foot massage. It hurt more to work the knots out of my feet than it was relaxing.I ran a bath instead of standing in the shower. I had to sit down. I couldn’t tolerate another minute on my feet without feeling like it was torture.When I lay back in the hot water, I closed my eyes. The bath was deep, and the water lapped up to my neck, everything else submerged. This was the break my body needed.But for my mind, there was no rest. The moment I closed my eyes, images flooded into my mind. The patients’ faces flashed before my eyes, and I groaned.Yesterday, there had been a four-ca