All Chapters of A NIGHT WITH THE HANDSOME BILLIONAIRE : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Ruth woke to pain before she woke to light.It lived in her wrists, her shoulders, her throat—deep, aching reminders that refused to fade with morning. The ceiling above her was unfamiliar, pale and indifferent, as though it had watched everything and chosen silence.She didn’t move at first.When she finally lifted her hands, the bruises bloomed dark against her skin. Finger-shaped. Tight. Angry.Ruth swallowed hard.She remembered everything.The party had swallowed her whole.She had stood alone at the edge of the crowd, music pounding too loudly, laughter slicing through her chest. Everywhere she looked, people belonged—laughing in pairs, leaning close, glittering with confidence.Chloe had been there too.Not with her.Never with her.Ruth had seen her sister across the room, radiant in silk, surrounded by attention she wore like a crown. Chloe’s gaze had flicked toward Ruth once—just once—before sliding away, dismissive.As if Ruth didn’t exist.The familiar sting had settled in

The doorbell rang.Sharp. Insistent. Too loud for the small, fragile quiet Ruth had been clinging to. Her breath stalled halfway to her lungs. For a second, she didn’t move. She stood frozen in the middle of the living room, barefoot on cold tiles, the weight of the sound still vibrating in the air like an echo inside her chest. Her heart began to pound not fast, not frantic, but heavy, deliberate, as though it already knew something she didn’t want to face. Another ring… She closed her eyes. “Go away, she said”, though she hadn’t checked the door yet. She hadn’t told herself either. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender, the remnants of last night’s desperate attempt to clean herself, to scrub away hands that weren’t there anymore. Her wrists still ached…. Not sharply.. . Dully. Like a bruise that hadn’t decided whether it would fade or bloom darker. The doorbell rang again.Ruth swallowed and forced her legs to move. Each step toward the door fel

Ruth sat on the bathroom floor long after the test slipped from her fingers.It landed softly, face up.She didn’t look at it again.She didn’t need to… Her body had already answered. The nausea. The dizziness. The strange heaviness low in her abdomen. The way her emotions felt too close to the surface, like skin rubbed raw.Her hands trembled as she pressed them flat against the cold tile.Breathe… …. She said to herself She tried… .Air went in. Didn’t seem to do much once it got there.Her mind spiraled instead, memories colliding, fear stacking on fear. The hallway…. The dragging….. The begging that still tasted metallic in the back of her throat. The bruises her ex had noticed too quickly.And now this….quiet, devastating consequence growing silently inside her.“No,” …..she whispered again, but the word sounded smaller now. Tired. Like it had already been used up.Her phone buzzed outside the bathroom.Once….Twice….She ignored it.If she didn’t touch it, the world couldn

The world came back in fragments.Sound first, the low hum of voices, the scrape of a chair leg, the hiss of an espresso machine somewhere too close. Then light, filtered and wrong, pressing against Ruth’s eyelids like she’d been underwater too long.She opened her eyes.The café ceiling stared back at her, blurred at the edges. Leonard’s arm was around her shoulders, solid and warm, his hand firm against her upper back as if he were anchoring her to the chair she hadn’t remembered sitting in.Her stomach lurched.She pulled away sharply.“I’m fine,” she said, though the word tasted false.Leonard didn’t argue. That, more than anything, made her chest tighten. He simply watched her too carefully like someone cataloging symptoms instead of listening to words.Across the table, Chloe was already standing.She looked pleased.Not openly. Chloe was too polished for that. But there was a lightness to her posture now, a subtle ease that hadn’t been there when she’d walked in. As if something

Ruth pressed her back against the wall, knees drawn to her chest, hands trembling as they hovered over her stomach. The apartment was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of silence that waited, that listened, that remembered. Every faint tick of the clock, every hum of the refrigerator, even the distant rumble of the street sounded like a warning.She hadn’t realized how long she’d been sitting there, rocking slightly, her forehead pressed to her knees. Her fingers traced patterns on the floor, searching for control in the grooves of the tiles. But control was gone,Someone had been here. Gone through her things. Taken what she had refused to even acknowledge.Her pulse spiked,her stomach twisted, Her chest burned.The test.Gone.Her throat ached. She wanted to scream, to shatter the apartment with her voice, but no sound came. She pressed her hands over her mouth instead, teeth biting down on her own fingers until the pain made her focus.“They’re using you. They’re using you to get to hi