I failed my mother and sister, Returned as a Billionaire

CHAPTER 2

One stroke with his name. No second look at the name that had been his to share with her.

Olivia watched him do it, and for half a second, something flickered through her expression that almost looked like disappointment. 

Maybe she had wanted him to beg. Or maybe she had wanted him to cry on the pavement at her heel. 

Whatever she had been hoping for, she did not get it, and her mouth tightened at the corners.

"Good." She snatched the papers off the concrete. "Finally. Something useful out of you in your whole pathetic life."

Damon opened the car door for her, and she slid into the leather seat, smooth and bored, as she had just finished a meeting that ran too long over lunch. The door began to swing shut behind her.

Then it stopped halfway.

She leaned her head out into the sunlight one last time.

"Oh, by the way." Her tone had gone light, almost cheerful now. "Your mother."

Kevin's stomach dropped through the soles of his feet.

"What about my mother?"

"She's dying, Kevin." Olivia tilted her head the same way she used to tilt it when she asked what he wanted for dinner on Friday nights. "Some disease, I don't know, I stopped keeping track months ago. Drag her out of my house before that bitch dies. I don't want a corpse on my floor. It will only bring bad luck… and gosh, a bad smell. The cleaners always charge extra for that kind of mess."

"Olivia. How could you?"

He felt like his trust was broken completely at that moment. 

"Better hurry." She fluttered her fingers at him through the window. "Tick tock."

The window glided up. The car pulled away from the curb without a sound.

His mother was sick, but she was not dying; he trusted only one person, his wife. Was it his fault that he trusted his wife or the wrong person?

The thought hit him like a bullet through glass, shattering every other thing in his head. He had to move. Now. He had to get to her.

He wanted to prove himself as a husband, but in this, he failed as a son. 

He turned to start walking, but another car was already pulling up. This one made the Mercedes look like a toy. A Rolls-Royce Phantom, pearl white, gleaming as it had never known dust. The kind of car that didn't just cost money. It costs power.

The door opened, and a woman stepped out.

She was tall and beautiful, and her aura was kind of commanding. The kind of presence that made the air around her feel expensive. Her suit was cut so perfectly it looked painted on, and her face was the kind of beautiful that made people forget their own names. Two assistants flanked her, both wearing earpieces and expressions that said they would break your wrists if you stepped too close.

Kevin frowned. He didn't know her, and right now, he didn't care. His mother was dying.

He stepped around her, and one of the assistants grabbed his arm.

"Where do you think you're going? Show some respect. You're standing in front of the president of Harvard Company."

Kevin stopped.

Harvard Company. The name Sofia had just said with worship in her voice. The company she was willing to sell her soul to partner with. And their president was standing right here, in front of the prison gates, looking at him like she had been counting the minutes until this moment.

The woman smiled. Not the way Sofia smiled, cold and mean. But this was warm…Almost tender. 

She waved her assistant off and walked toward Kevin herself, her heels clicking against the pavement, each step unhurried and certain.

"You kept me waiting," she told him softly while tugging her hair strands behind her ear. "Three years is a long time."

Kevin stared at her. "Do I know you?"

She tilted her head, and her smile widened, carrying something secret behind it, something that burned quietly and steadily like a flame in a locked room.

"Not yet." She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell jasmine and something deeper beneath it, something old and powerful. "But you will. Your master made sure of that."

Kevin went very still.

"So tell me, Kevin Hale." Her eyes held his, and in them he saw the kind of certainty that moved mountains and buried kings. "When are we getting married, my future husband?"