All Chapters of A BILLIONAIRE'S PROMISE: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

"Explain." My voice came out steadier than I felt. Steadier than I had any right to be, with my heart splintering in my chest and the weight of betrayal pressing down on my lungs like a stone. "Explain what I just read."Xander set the coffee cups down on the nearby table. His movements were slow, deliberate—the careful control of a man who knew he was standing at the edge of a precipice, who knew that the wrong word could send everything crashing down. The cups made a soft sound against the wood, and in the silence that followed, I could hear my own heartbeat, too fast, too loud, too present."The K-47 series is a medication line my company acquired three years ago." His voice was measured, clinical, the voice he used in boardrooms and negotiations. "It's been under review for the past six months. The board has been analyzing its profitability, its market viability, its—""I know what it is." I stepped away from the computer, putting distance between us, needing space to breathe, to

I made it to the elevator before the first tear fell.The doors slid shut behind me, sealing me off from his penthouse, his voice, his face. From the man who'd held me in his arms last night and told me he was afraid of losing me, and this morning had shown me exactly how little I actually mattered.Then another tear fell. And another. And another.By the time the elevator reached the lobby, I was crying so hard I could barely see. My vision blurred, the marble floors and gold fixtures swimming together in a haze of expensive nothing. My chest was heaving, my breath coming in ragged gasps that sounded like they belonged to someone else, someone who'd lost something they hadn't known they could lose.The doorman—the same one who'd watched me arrive last night in my thrift store dress and worn shoes, who'd smiled at me like I belonged here, who'd wished me a good evening as I'd stepped into Xander's world like I had any right to be there—pretended not to notice as I stumbled past him in

Three days.Seventy-two hours of silence stretching between us like an ocean I didn't know how to cross. Seventy-two hours of staring at my phone, willing it to ring, to buzz, to give me any sign that he was thinking about me, that he regretted what he'd said, that he was fighting his way back to me the way I'd fought my way to him. Seventy-two hours of jumping at every notification, my heart lurching into my throat, only to find it was Sophie or the hospital or another spam call about my car's extended warranty—a car I didn't even own.He didn't call. Didn't text. Didn't show up at my door, didn't send flowers, didn't do any of the things I'd secretly, shamefully, desperately hoped he would do.I told myself it was fine. Good, even. Let him hide behind his walls. Let him freeze in his ice palace with his billions and his loneliness and his beautiful, broken heart that he was too afraid to share. I had more important things to worry about. I had my mother. I had her life to save, her

The words echoed.Not the way normal words echo—fading, diminishing, eventually dissolving into silence. These words grew. They multiplied. They burrowed into the dark corners of his mind and built nests there, laying eggs that hatched into more words, more doubts, more questions he couldn't answer.*She needs something only you can provide.**Convenient coincidence.**Desperate people do desperate things.*Xander sat in his office long after Isabella left, the city darkening outside his windows, his phone dark on his desk. He'd picked it up a dozen times. Started typing a dozen messages. Deleted every single one.What would he even say? *Are you using me? Is your mother's life the only reason you looked at me? Was any of it real?*He couldn't ask those questions. Couldn't give voice to the poison Isabella had injected into his veins. Because if he asked—if he actually said the words out loud—then he'd have to hear the answer.And what if the answer was yes?He thought about the night

The revolving doors spun once, twice, three times, and then they were gone.Xander and Isabella. Together. Walking out of that building like they'd never been apart, like the past five years had been nothing but a pause between acts, and now the play was resuming with its original cast.Ella stood frozen in the middle of the marble lobby, the sound of Isabella's laughter still echoing in her ears. That laugh. Bright and careless and victorious. The laugh of a woman who'd won something Ella hadn't even known she was competing for.*He said he didn't want her*, she thought, the words scraping through her mind like broken glass. *He said he felt nothing. He said I was the only one.*But he'd let her touch him. He'd let her lean close and whisper in his ear. He'd walked out with her, his hand on her elbow, his body angled toward hers like she was the one he'd been waiting for.And he'd looked at Ella like she was a stranger.The receptionist was saying something—words Ella couldn't hear,