Running From The Billionaire

Aliya Barrera's eyes snapped open.

The dim overhead light burned her retinas. A dull, throbbing pain hammered against the back of her skull. She tried to sit up, but her muscles felt like liquid. Her arms gave out, and she collapsed heavily back onto the cheap, lumpy mattress.

Her lungs fought for air. Memories that did not belong to her violently shoved their way into her brain. She grabbed her head, her fingers digging into her scalp.

A car crash. A hidden body. A fabricated story about growing up in an orphanage together.

Her heart skipped a beat. The blood drained from her face, leaving her skin ice-cold. She recognized these fragmented images. She had transmigrated into the American romance novel she read just last night. She was the vicious supporting character, the woman who would eventually be sent to a maximum-security prison for the rest of her life by the male lead.

Aliya looked around in sheer panic. The peeling paint on the walls and the particle-board furniture confirmed the reality of the bottom-tier life the original owner had built on a foundation of lies.

She looked down at her own hands. They were skeletal. The original Aliya had been on a hunger strike to force the male lead to buy her a designer bag. A wave of nausea hit her stomach. It was absurd. It was a death sentence.

Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door. The old wooden floorboards groaned in protest.

Aliya's breathing stopped completely.

The metallic scrape of a key sliding into the lock echoed through the thin walls. He was back. Cyrus Pace, the amnesiac billionaire currently living under the delusion that he was a broke laborer, had returned.

The front door pushed open. The biting chill of a New York winter wind swept into the living room. Aliya instinctively pulled the thin blanket up, hiding the lower half of her face.

A heavy backpack hit the living room sofa with a dull thud. The movement carried the sheer exhaustion of a man working back-to-back shifts.

He didn't turn on the light. He just stood in the dark living room and took a deep, ragged breath, suppressing his visceral disgust for this apartment and the "girlfriend" inside it.

In the bedroom, Aliya listened to his heavy breathing. Her mind flashed with images of his ruthless revenge once he regained his memory. Her body began to tremble uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered against each other.

Cyrus took long strides toward the bedroom. He pushed the ajar door open. The faint light from the hallway hit his broad shoulders, casting a massive, suffocating shadow over the bed.

His deep gray eyes swept coldly toward the mattress. He expected the usual high-pitched screaming and crying for money.

Instead, he saw Aliya shrinking into the far corner of the bed like a terrified rabbit. Her eyes were wide, filled with an undisguised, raw fear directed entirely at him.

Cyrus's brow furrowed slightly. This unnatural silence and sheer terror fell outside his expectations. A sliver of doubt crept into his mind.