THE UNDERESTIMATED BILLIONAIRE TYCOON

I Don't Have A Home

Blake's hands were steady.

They always were during a crisis. Steady when he signed billion-dollar contracts. Steady when he'd watched that proposal video. Steady now, as he pressed the sterilized needle against Emma's inner arm.

The hotel suite was silent except for her shallow breathing.

He'd done this once before—years ago, when a business partner collapsed at a dinner in Shanghai. The old treatment. Barbaric by modern standards, but effective when time mattered more than comfort.

The first incision released a thin line of dark blood.

Emma's fever had spiked to 104 degrees. Her skin burned like coals. Without this, she'd seize within the hour, and her organs would follow.

Blake worked methodically—inner arms, behind the knees, the traditional pressure points. Each cut shallow, precise, releasing the poison the drug had flooded through her system.

Her breathing steadied.

The fever broke.

By 3 AM, her pulse was normal. By 4 AM, the toxins had cleared. By 5 AM, Blake finally allowed himself to breathe.

He cleaned the wounds, bandaged them carefully, and covered her with the blanket.

Then he collapsed in the chair by the window, whiskey in hand, and waited for her to wake.

______

Emma's eyes opened to white ceiling and foreign silk.

Wrong. Everything was wrong.

This wasn't her apartment. Wasn't her bed. Wasn't her—

She sat up too fast. The room spun.

Her arms stung. She looked down.

Red marks. Lines of them. Precise. Deliberate. Running up her inner arms like—

No.

Her hands flew to her body, patting, checking, confirming the nightmare. Her blouse was intact. Her skirt was—

Wait.

The marks were everywhere. Arms. Behind her knees. Places she couldn't see without—

Oh God.

Memory came in fragments. The cemetery. The men. The cloth. The heat. And then—

Nothing.

Now she was here. Marked. In a hotel bed.

The door handle turned.

Emma's hand found the vase on the nightstand before conscious thought. Heavy. Crystal. Perfect weight.

A man stepped through.

She threw it.

"You bastard!" Her voice cracked. "Rapist! I'll kill you—"

The vase exploded against the doorframe. The man had moved—impossibly fast—and now stood three feet to the left, staring at her with something between surprise and exhaustion.

"If you're done trying to murder me," he said calmly, "maybe take a moment to remember last night."

Emma grabbed a lamp. "Stay back!"

"Look at my face."

"I don't care what you—" She froze. Actually looked. "You."

The cemetery. The three men. The man who'd moved like violence incarnate and saved her.

The lamp slipped from her fingers.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I thought—" Her eyes dropped to her arms again, to the marks, to the evidence that screamed something she desperately wanted to un-believe. "What did you do to me?"

The man's expression didn't change. "Think carefully. Do you feel violated?"

The question was so blunt it startled her into honesty. She took inventory—body, sensation, the intimate awareness of wrong that women carried like a sixth sense.

Nothing.

No pain. No wrongness. Just exhaustion and the sting of shallow cuts.

"No," she admitted. "But these marks—"

"Are from the treatment." He moved to the door, opened it. "Sam. Doctor Williams."

Two men entered immediately. The first was middle-aged, sharp suit, the bearing of someone used to authority. The second was older, carrying a medical bag, wearing the calm of a professional.

Both bowed slightly to the man who'd saved her.

"President Blake," they said in unison.

President?

"Check her," Blake said.

The doctor approached. Emma extended her wrist automatically, still processing. President Blake. This exhausted man in rumpled clothes was a—

"Pulse is strong," Doctor Williams announced after a moment. "Temperature normal. The bloodletting was executed perfectly." He turned to Blake with something like admiration. "You remembered the old techniques. Most wouldn't have the nerve. Or the precision."

"Bloodletting?" Emma's voice pitched higher.

Blake set down his whiskey glass—when had he picked that up?—and met her eyes. "You were drugged. A synthetic compound designed to overheat the body. Twelve hours without treatment, and your organs would've failed." He gestured to her arms. "I used bloodletting to purge the toxins. It's archaic, but it works fast. Those marks are incision points. Nothing more."

Emma stared at him. At the doctor nodding confirmation. At the other man—Sam—looking at her with professional disinterest.

"You... saved my life?"

"I happened to be there," Blake said, as if it was nothing. As if he hadn't spent hours cutting, cleaning and watching over a stranger. "Doctor Williams will give you care instructions. Keep the wounds clean and dry. They'll heal in a week."

Doctor Williams stepped forward, already pulling out ointment and bandages. "Simple aftercare. You were fortunate President Blake was trained in traditional methods. Most hospitals wouldn't have acted fast enough."

Emma felt her face burn. Not from fever this time. From shame.

"I'm so sorry," she said again, looking at Blake. "I threw a vase at your head. I called you—" She couldn't even repeat it.

Blake waved it off. "You woke in a strange room with unexplained injuries. Your reaction was reasonable." He paused. "Where do you live? I'll have someone take you home."

The question should've been simple.

It wasn't.

Emma's throat closed. "I don't... I don't have a home. Not anymore."

Silence filled the suite.