Chapter 14
June
I was possessed.
By fear. By guilt. By God knows what else was clawing at my insides.
There was nothing I could do back there—nothing useful, nothing grounding—yet my legs moved on their own. My mind kept mumbling nonsense, looping the same fragmented thoughts, but still I found myself heading toward the one place I absolutely shouldn’t be.
Lincoln needed my help.
Surely he did.
Surely that justified the madness rising inside me.
Following the overhead signs toward the taxi stand, my pulse thudded in my temples. I should have ordered a car the smarter way—through whatever app the locals used, the equivalent of Uber—but every time I pulled out my phone, patience evaporated, halfway through the process.
Search the name of the app: scroll through fifty look-alike icons. Download. Register. Think of a password that met fifteen different rules. Verify identity. Add card details. Verify with the bank.
At what point did modern convenience become a ten-step torture ritual?
I’d gotten so used to having an assistant that I’d somehow forgotten how to function like a technology-capable adult.
The last time I was here, Wendy handled everything.
We had a driver waiting and I got to drift through the day blissfully absent-minded.
Traveling alone meant there was zero margin for error. Every decision counted. Every second too.
By the time I reached the taxi rank, relief washed over me. Praise be—traditional taxis still existed. But the line ahead of me was long, ridiculously long. Apparently, I wasn’t the only human being left on this planet who didn’t know how to navigate ride-hailing apps.
Stepping into the queue… the realization hit me.
The worst part? I had no idea where I was going.
Calling Lincoln was the only logical step.
Before the call even finished connecting, a familiar voice burst through the speaker.
“Hello! June, it’s me.” Chloe.
“I know.” A frown tugged at my face as I checked the screen even though I’d clearly heard her. It was Lincoln’s name displayed. My phone still ran on the Malaysian travel SIM card. I hadn’t even switched back to my US number yet. How did she—?
“I’m expecting your call,” Chloe said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Did Link forget his phone? Where exactly is he?” My voice snapped out, too sharp to control. Too demanding. Too much like someone barely holding it together.
I’d come here like a maniac. Dropped everything. Left Dannie behind in a hospital bed. All because of that same awful, choking feeling—the one that drove me to wreck my car to lure Kai back.
Fear. Pure, irrational fear.
And stupidity always came marching right after.
“We swapped phones,” Chloe explained gently. “Lincoln didn’t want to be disturbed while he was out there.”
Out there. The phrase alone made my stomach twist.
“Your brother knew you’d call, and… it was probably better for me to answer.”
“Smart,” I muttered. Lincoln knew I hated his big-brother tone. Lately though—maybe because of Chloe and her laid-back magic—he’d softened. Lectures had become rare. Almost nonexistent. He had even let Liam and me survive a situation recently without giving us the usual ten-minute sermon.
“Kai was taken.”
Plain. Direct. No cushioning. Chloe knew me too well.
“Dammit.” The words tore out of me. My heart clenched hard enough to hurt. Kai—taken again. What had he done, in this life, to deserve this cycle?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I had to be.
Even if I didn’t know what I could realistically do in Shanghai, I couldn’t sit comfortably in Malaysia while he was in danger.
Kai was my brother’s best friend, practically another brother to all of us—and I was the one closest to him.
At the very least, I could be here for moral support. Emotional backup.
Watching your friend—your fellow billionaire friend—get taken… that had to be a special kind of hell for Lincoln.
“Where are you now?” Chloe asked, her tone casual but thinly veiled concern. She knew me well enough to understand how badly I needed space right now.
“Shanghai.”
There was a pause.
“No. Really? Last time I spoke to Liam, he said you weren’t in China.”
“Where did he say I was?” The question left my mouth too sharply—accusatory, like I was interrogating a suspect.
“He just said somewhere in Asia. But Liam wouldn’t tell us exactly where.”
That was exactly like Liam.
Protective in the most irritating, selective-truth kind of way.
Half honesty. Half secrecy.
Annoyance prickled—of course they knew I’d left the country, but I was also relieved they didn’t know where I’d really been.
Anyway, someone would eventually find out my hideout once they heard about my new venture—a hospital in Malaysia. That secret had an expiration date.
“How did you get to Shanghai so fast?” Chloe pressed.
A simple question on the surface. But Chloe wasn’t simple. She was probing, peeling back the layers. She wanted to know how close I had been all along—how near I was to China, how easily I’d managed to slip past everyone.
“Someone sold me their ticket.”
“You flew commercial?”
Her tone was feather-light, but the intent was sharp. If I’d taken a private jet, she could easily find the manifest, the charter company, its pilot, its flight route… and the person helping me hide from the people who loved me.
“Yes,” the word came out clipped, mechanical.
“Honey, do you believe in fate?”
“No.”
I didn’t believe in fate before—not until I met June.
There were no tickets left for the flight to Shanghai.
Not according to the internet.
A frantic search in the back of a speeding taxi had turned up nothing—scrambled through every travel app I could think of, testing different airlines, different times, different layovers.
Direct flights, multi-stop flights, flights that would take me the long way around the globe if it meant arriving at the same destination.
Every single search came back with the same answer:
FULLY BOOKED.
The last flight today had zero available seats.
But I headed for the airport anyway.
Because being at the airport felt closer to him.
Lincoln.
Not Kai.
I reminded myself.
The terminal was smaller than I remembered. Some of the old ticketing counters still stood near the check-in area, though the shutters were down. Their signs faded. They looked like artifacts from another decade, abandoned while the world moved fully online.
The final direct flight to Shanghai departed in under two hours. The fastest way to get there. The only way tonight. If I could get a ticket.
Bypassing the kiosks, I went straight to a staffed check-in counter. The line moved painfully slow. My anxiety grew with every person ahead of me who dared to exist and breathe and take up time.
By the time it was my turn, something inside me snapped.
The tears arrived before I could stop them. Not gentle tears—no, no. Big, choking, ugly tears. Begging the staff for any seat I could get. Any. Even a seat inside the airplane toilet. I told them I would pay First Class prices for that toilet seat. I even offered to clean the toilet afterward.
The staff blinked twice and said, “No.”
No.
To a once-in-a-lifetime offer like that.
Unbelievable.
“All ticket purchases must be completed online,” she recited, in that dead-eyed polite tone people used right before fantasizing about strangling you.
A strained smile clung to my face even as the tears worsened—blubbering, bargaining, suggesting absurd scenarios, trying to convince her with logic that made zero sense. It wasn’t my finest moment. I was very aware I was making a fool of myself.
People stared.
A few recorded.
But embarrassment didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing mattered except getting on that damn flight.
Eventually, the staff’s patience cracked. She subtly pointed toward two security officers lingering nearby, the universal sign for ma’am, you are five seconds away from being escorted out.
Airport security.
Oh God.
I had a terrible history with airport security.
Before they even moved, I bolted. And the woman gave me the kindest fake smile as she promised she’d “add me to the wait list.”
There was no waitlist.
I knew it.
She knew it.
The universe knew it.
Wiping tears with the back of my sleeve, I wandered aimlessly through the small international terminal. Eventually, I drifted into a buzzing café near the entrance.
A family of three vacated a table, leaving behind half-eaten food, sticky spills, and abandoned napkins. Too drained to care, I sat anyway, letting the mess be my emotional support landscape.
At that same moment, a young blonde girl dropped into the seat across from me, setting her backpack down on the third chair. The girl didn’t ask permission. She simply claimed the seat.
Annoyance prickled as I stared at her audacity. Then again, technically we had both claimed the table at the same time. Maybe it was shared territory by default.
But still.
I was not in the mood to share anything.
“Hi,” the young woman in her early twenties greeted me.
Only a nod came out of me, as my throat refused to form any word. My vocal cords had simply gone on strike after the humiliation at the check-in counter.
“Sorry,” a sniffle escaped her. “I overheard… I think I can help you.”
“I’m not religious,” I replied without thinking. They always knew when and where to find you—when you’re sad and lonely, vulnerable and helpless. The airport was basically a breeding ground for spiritual recruitment.
An awkward little noise escaped her, something between a laugh and a squeak. Honestly, I didn’t have the bandwidth to decode it.
“Or…” Leaning forward, she said, “you could help me.”
“What do you want?” I snapped. “I’m not in the mood for—”
“Do you want a ticket to Shanghai?”
Shut the fuck up.
“Are you mocking me? Who sent you? Did you see me earlier? Are you here to rub more salt into—”
“I’m going to stop you right there.” Her palm lifted in front of my face… bold for someone who barely looked old enough to rent a car. Her thick British accent made the command even sharper. “Please just listen for two minutes.”