Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 874

On the pink sand island, morning sunlight slipped quietly into the bedroom just as Dean’s phone started ringing. He glanced at the screen, his brow tightening the second he saw the name.

“Talk,” he said.

On the other end, his subordinate’s voice trembled. “Sir, we lost James again.”

Dean pressed his fingers to his forehead, the anger radiating off him. “What’s the point of paying you all if you can’t do one simple job?”

“We tried, sir. That guy from The States, he’s... he’s not like anyone we’ve ever seen.” The fear in the man’s voice was obvious. “We learned from last time. We set up traps on land and at sea. The whole place was locked down. But he—he just dove straight into the ocean, no gear, nothing. Gone.”

“And when we sent the drone over, he shot it down with a slingshot. By the time we got there, he had vanished.”

Dean’s eyes went cold. His voice dropped, dangerous and low. “Double the search. I want everyone out looking for him. I don’t care if he’s some kind of super soldier—he’s still just a man. There are so many of you. Don’t tell me you can’t bring down one person.”

“Find him. I don’t want him alive. Just kill him.”

“But... Brian said—”

Dean cut him off with a bitter laugh. “Brian? Out here, I’m the only one you answer to. Remember that. James has to die.”

He hung up, the darkness still heavy in his eyes. For months now, he’d been tangled up with Brian, that old fox who only cared about his own pleasure and left all the mess for others to clean up. Even getting rid of James was dragging on forever.

Clearly, he’d have to take care of this himself. Even if killing James sent the entire Nelson family into chaos, why should he care?

Dean’s mind was spinning. The Pacific was massive, with more than twenty-five thousand islands. How had James managed to find Fiji so easily? It couldn’t be luck.

He dialed another number, his voice sharp. “Did you figure it out? Why did James suddenly show up in Fiji?”

When the session was over, she wrapped herself in a blanket and stretched out on a beach chair. The wind off the sea was soft, the palm trees swayed, but she might as well have been on another planet.

Some afternoons she’d play with the local kids for a bit, but most of the time she was alone on the sand, staring out at the endless blue. Sometimes she’d curl up in a hammock under the coconut trees and sleep the whole afternoon away.

One day, Dean came back from work and found her like that again—lost in thought, barely moving. She looked even more faded than before, like the spark in her eyes was slipping away.

His chest tightened. He called in the island’s best performers, gathered everyone around a bonfire, and kicked off a night of music and dancing.

For a little while, Emmy would let herself get swept up in the celebration, singing and dancing with the locals. If someone handed her a guitar, she’d take it and play a couple of simple songs.

In those moments, she came alive—real and bright, the center of every smile and laugh. But as soon as the bonfire burned low and people drifted away, it was like someone snuffed out her light. She was just a candle, barely holding on. The crowd could spark something in her for a while, but once the party was over, the flame in her eyes vanished all over again.