All Chapters of The Secret Billionaire's Return : Chapter 101
- Chapter 110
202 chapters
it's just a dream
The car ride home was a sealed tin of tension. The kind where every bump in the road feels like a personal affront. Streetlights strobed through the windshield, painting fleeting masks on their silent faces.Iden, settled in the backseat, broke the quiet with an observational tone that was utterly detached from the mood. “The Lady Bella possesses a most striking visage. A flame in a dim room.”Neither Chloe nor Leo responded. Chloe was staring out her window, her jaw set. Leo’s grip on the steering wheel was just a shade too tight.Finally, Leo spoke, his voice carefully measured against the hum of the engine. “I still don’t like that you agreed to go shopping with her tomorrow.”Chloe didn’t turn. “She needs things, Leo. She showed up with one bag.”“I get that. I do. But agreeing to a whole ‘girls’ day’?” He shook his head, a quick, frustrated motion. “She’s your sister, fine. I’m trying to wrap my head around that. But she’s also a stranger. We don’t know her.”“Says the man who we
She's possessed
Morning brought a fragile normalcy. Leo left early for the office, pressing a kiss to her forehead that felt like a seal on last night’s truce. Chloe moved slowly, the nightmare a faint smear on her consciousness. She dressed in comfortable jeans and a sweater, ready for a day of mundane retail therapy.Descending the stairs, she stopped short.Iden stood in the foyer, and for the first time, he was not in his usual, slightly anachronistic trousers and tunic. He wore a pair of dark, well-fitting jeans and a simple grey Henley shirt that Leo had bought for him in a hopeful moment. The modern clothes suited his lean frame, but he wore them with the stiff formality of a suit of armor.“Iden? You’re… up early.”He turned, and his grave expression didn’t match the casual attire. “you're departing for thy commerce with the sister.”“Yes. Girls’ day. You’re staying here, okay? Make yourself at home.”“I shall accompany you both.”Chloe blinked. “No. Iden, it’s a girls’ thing. We’re going sho
Let her go
Iden did not walk; he moved with a predator’s loping stride that ate up the distance. The modern clothes felt like a disguise, but in this place, he was home. The wall shimmered at his approach, and he passed into the cool, silent dark. He went straight to the bestiary section, his long fingers trailing over spines until he found what he sought: a heavy tome titled “Manifestations & Mortal Anchors: A Treatise on Lower Plane Interlopers.”He hauled it to a stone table, the thud echoing in the silence. He read not as a scholar, but as a hunter scanning for tracks. The pages flew under his hand. Possession by coercion… voluntary harboring… anchor objects…His finger stopped on a woodcut illustration. It showed a crude figure, a horned shadow with a third eye, its clawed hand fused with the hand of a weeping woman. The text was in Latin, but he knew it well enough.“The Kha’ruul,” he whispered. A hunger-demon. Not a grand destroyer of worlds, but a parasite of spite. It fed on envy and f
She can't stay here
The cliff edge was no place for a subtle fight. This was going to be ugly.As the Kha’ruul, wearing Bella’s snarling face, lunged for him, Iden didn’t meet force with force. He sidestepped, letting the demon’s momentum carry it past. It was like dodging a charging bull. Bella’s body slammed into a pine tree, and the wood splintered with a sickening crack. The demon didn’t seem to feel it.“You dance, old ghost?” it taunted, Bella’s voice shredded by that hollow echo. “Dance until your heart gives out!”It came again, faster. A fist swung. Iden caught the wrist, and the strength behind it was immense, inhuman. It felt like holding back a moving car. He gritted his teeth, his boots scraping through dirt and pine needles. He couldn’t overpower it, not without breaking Bella’s bones.Chloe, gasping on the ground, saw a glint in the scrub grass. A rock, about the size of her fist, jagged. She didn’t think. She grabbed it and scrambled up.“Hey!” she shouted, her voice raw from being strang
You will beg at my feet
The spare room at the end of the hallway had always felt a little cold, no matter how high the heat was turned. Chloe and Iden maneuvered Bella’s limp form onto the twin bed with a grim, shared effort. She was lighter than Chloe expected, a bundle of sharp angles under cheap clothing. They arranged the blanket over her, the normalcy of the gesture feeling absurd given what had just transpired on the cliff.In the dim light from the hallway, Bella’s face looked younger, stripped of its calculated seduction and its demonic fury. Just tired. And marked with the thin, red lines of her own fingernails.Chloe closed the door softly behind them, leaving it open a crack. She leaned against the wall, letting out a shuddering breath that seemed to come from the soles of her feet. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a hollow, trembling exhaustion.“Iden,” she whispered. “Thank you. For… for having my back. For knowing what to do. I don’t know what would have happened if you weren’t there.”Iden sto
The demon will grow
The promise burned inside her, hot and sharp. But what good was it? They had Iden. They had each other. She was just one hurt woman against a whole strong house.Then, something answered.It wasn't a real sound. It was more like a feeling. A buzz in her teeth. A hum deep in her bones. It felt like a voice saying yes. Yes to all her anger. It liked her rage. It told her this was only the start.She didn't think. She just pushed the window open. Cold night air rushed in, smelling of wet dirt and rain coming. She climbed out, easy, like she was sleepwalking. She dropped onto the grass. The dew was icy on her feet, but she hardly felt it.She was walking. Barefoot, in the borrowed clothes, across the perfect lawn. She headed for the trees at the back, the line between the tidy houses and the old, wild land. Branches pulled at her pants. Stones cut her feet. She didn't care. The humming call pulled her forward like she was metal to a magnet.She moved between the trees like she wasn't real
What's wrong?
The smell of coffee and bacon wafted through the house, a completely ordinary Saturday morning smell that now felt like a performance. Bella was at the stove, her movements careful and a little slow, as if her body still remembered the violence she’d supposedly endured. She wore a pair of Chloe’s old yoga pants and a soft sweatshirt, her hair pulled into a messy, humble bun. She’d set the table for four.Chloe stood in the doorway, watching, a knot of guilt and relief tightening in her chest. This was good. This was normal. Bella was healing, trying to fit in, to be helpful. It was the best possible outcome.“You didn’t have to do all this,” Chloe said, entering the kitchen.Bella turned, offering a small, wincing smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “It’s the least I can do. You’ve all been so… patient.” Her gaze flickered to the hallway. “Is Leo up?”“Showering,” Chloe said, grabbing juice from the fridge. “Iden’s probably meditating or deciphering the patterns in the wallpaper o
A rift
Leo was methodically cleaning his golf clubs in the garage, a pointless weekend ritual he used to clear his head. His head was anything but clear. The image of Chloe’s throat, the faint bruising now faded to yellow, played on a loop behind his eyes. The story hadn’t sat right. None of it had.His cleaning rag was dirty. He bent to toss it into a bin and saw them. Chloe’s white sneakers, kicked off carelessly by the door days ago and forgotten. They were the ones she’d worn that day. A fine layer of garage dust had settled on them.He picked one up. Not to snoop. Just to move it. But the weight felt wrong. He turned it over.Caked deep in the waffle-patterned tread was not city grime. it was not gray pavement dust or black street gum. It was earth. Reddish-brown, clay-heavy earth, threaded with tiny, crushed fragments of pine needle and pebble. It was the kind of dirt you found on hiking trails. On bluffs overlooking rivers.His blood went still, then began a slow, hard pound in his ea
You've become heartless
The tension in the house didn’t snap. It settled. It became part of the atmosphere, like a layer of fine dust over everything. Leo and Chloe moved around each other with a careful, polite distance that was worse than shouting. Bella was the picture of contrite, helpful silence. Iden watched it all like a man studying storm clouds, feeling the pressure drop in his bones.Leo had a big deal closing. A commercial property acquisition that had been months of work. The final documents, due Monday, were a labyrinth of pdfs, scans, and signed copies. He’d been working from his home office all weekend, a room usually reserved for paying bills and storing old board games.On Sunday afternoon, he emerged, pale and caffeine-wired, to grab another coffee. He found Bella in the hallway, holding a feather duster and a look of tentative purpose.“Just tidying a bit,” she murmured, stepping aside to let him pass. “Trying to earn my keep.”He just grunted, a man lost in a forest of clauses and conting
She has another demon in her
The quiet in the house was thick and heavy. Leo was shut in his office. Chloe was moving around the kitchen, wiping counters that were already clean. Bella was resting, or so she said, in the spare room.Iden couldn't sit still. Looking at Bella showed him nothing. She was just a woman now, tired and sorry. But his gut, the old sense that had kept him alive through darker times, itched like a healing wound. He needed to look where she had been, not at her face.He waited until the hallway was empty. He slipped into the spare room, closing the door softly behind him.The room was neat. The bed was made. But the air felt… used. Not like a sickroom. Like a place someone left in a hurry. He went to the window. It was locked. But when he looked close, on the white paint of the sill, he saw two faint, gritty smudges. Dirt. Not from shoes. From bare feet.His eyes went to the floor. In the carpet near the bed, almost invisible, were a few tiny, dried leaves and a speck of dark, damp soil. No