All Chapters of THE BILLIONAIRE'S PRIVATE NURSE : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Daphne didn’t say a word.Not when the door swung open.Not when she took in the space between us. The distance wasn’t enough.Not even when her eyes flicked down to my hand—still resting on the desk, just inches from his.She only smiled.Tight. Poised. Diamond-cut cruelty behind perfect lipstick.Isaac didn’t flinch.He turned to her like she was no more than a detail. A shadow on the wall.“Gabriella,” he said calmly, “you’re excused.”It wasn’t a dismissal.It was a warning. A shield. A way out before things got bloody.I didn’t speak. Didn’t move.For a breath, I just stood there—watching Daphne watch me like a piece she hadn’t quite figured out how to remove from the board.I nodded once and turned.Her perfume hit me in the hallway—sweet, cloying, expensive. She didn’t follow.But her silence did.It followed me all the way to the front steps.The hospital smelled the same.Bleach. Burnt coffee. Cheap soap and something metallic beneath.I hadn’t meant to come here, but my legs

The blood wouldn’t come off.I’d washed my hands three times. Scalding water. Industrial soap. Scrubbed until the skin on my knuckles went raw and red.But it was still there.Under my nails.In the folds of my wrist.On my scrubs—thick in some places, smeared in others. James’s blood. Warm, metallic, and real.He’d be okay. That’s what the nurse had said—something about the bullet going clean through the muscle, not hitting bone or artery. He was stable. Talking. Even cracking dry jokes in the trauma bay like nothing had happened.But I wasn’t okay.Not even close.I stood in the corner of the nurses’ station, trembling, arms folded tight across my chest. My breath kept catching in my throat like it didn’t know whether to sob or choke. There were voices around me—colleagues murmuring, someone offering a chair, a cup of water, I think—but I couldn’t really hear any of it.I had called the Langton estate twenty minutes ago. Told the security team there was an incident. That there was a

I hadn’t slept.Not a second.Not since she looked me in the eye and said, “If I find out Daphne did this, I’m terminating my contract.”I knew Gabriella meant it.And I hated that a part of me tightened at the thought of her leaving. Like it wasn’t just my house she’d be walking away from—but something deeper I hadn’t meant to offer her.I poured a drink I didn’t touch and sat in my office with the lights off, watching the estate through surveillance feeds. Every hallway. Every exterior angle. Guest wing. Kitchen. Back gate. All accounted for.Until forty minutes passed.The camera by the northeast perimeter blinked.Then again.Not enough to register on motion sensors. But enough to catch my eye.I narrowed the feed and zoomed in.There.A figure—hooded, crouched just past the tree line. Not moving. Not pacing. Waiting.Wrong move.I was already up, grabbing the pistol from my safe and strapping it to my back. Pulled my jacket on and pressed the security line on my phone.“Zone Four

“I believe he belongs to you,”“I’ve never seen him before,” she said calmly.But I had.Twice.Once in the background of a surveillance photo taken near my daughter’s school.And once, three years ago, tucked into the backseat of Daphne’s car, wearing the same smug face beneath a different name.I didn’t argue.Didn’t yell.Didn’t need to.Because I wasn’t looking for her confession—I already had her answer.She sent him.She knew Gabriella had become something. Something she didn’t like. Something she didn’t control.So she reacted the way women like her always do when they feel power slipping from their hands.She tried to scare her.Tried to break her.I dragged the boy out of her presence, jaw tight, eyes forward.She followed me with that same venomous smile.“I’ve never interfered in your private affairs,” she said lightly. “But if your nurse becomes more than a nurse—”I stopped. Turned slowly.“You’ll what?”She paused. Not because she was scared. Daphne never flinched. But I

I stood there for a long time after she closed the door.Heard the soft click of the lock.Heard my own breath—too loud, too shallow—as it scraped against the silence of the hallway.She kissed me back.God help me, she kissed me back.And still—she ran.Not because she didn’t feel it, but because she did. Too much.I could still taste her. Something sweet, something sharp, something broken.I dragged a hand down my face and leaned against the wall like it could hold me together. But it didn’t.Nothing had prepared me for that kiss.Not the softness.Not the way she melted under my touch, like she didn’t even realize she was doing it.And not the fear in her eyes when she pulled away.She was scared of herself.Scared of me.Scared of the way this—we—might change everything.And she was right.It already had.I pushed off the wall, pacing once across the hall, then again.Gabriella wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met. She didn’t bend to charm or power. She didn’t care about the money, the