A Boudoir Book for the Billionaire

Prologue

“What did you say, ‘Nong (older brother) Rum?”

Quila frowned as she walked out of the mall that early evening. The twenty-six-year old was on her way to the parking lot where she parked her motorcycle after buying a cake for her father. It was his fifty-eighth birthday, and she wanted to surprise him with it as they had family dinner together with their relatives, close friends and neighbors.

“Papa tripped and can’t stand up?” She echoed what her brother on the other end of the line said. Her heart beat furiously in her chest upon hearing it. She instantly knew it was not good. She recalled it was not the first time their father felt weak in his ankles and legs. She, her mother and her five brothers urged their father to see a doctor. However, their old man was adamant about not going to “make the doctors siphon his money” since he quite had a large sum of money saved in his bank account. They could do nothing about it, so she bought some supplements, vitamins and minerals for him, especially those with potassium-rich ones. She suspected he had potassium deficiency, according to the symptoms he said her, which she googled. Although she found something more serious, she did not want to think of it.

 “Yes! He almost hit his head on the floor!” Rum recounted.

“Maria Santissima!”

“What are we going to do now, huh? He can’t stand up now. The visitors are here. They even saw what happened to him and are very concerned,” Rum narrated, sighing.

“And they of course want him to be checked in the ER,” she guessed. “Let’s do that!” she decided, hurrying and ending the call.

Without even paying attention to the man in a black jacket wearing a baseball cap and a foreigner with his back to the former, she suddenly moved past between them. She grunted when she felt something sharp that stabbed her left forearm. It was stinging and so painful that she groaned, giving the man a horrified look. She involuntarily dropped the box of cake and her cell phone, and the man ran away like there were hounds at his heels.

“You sick b*stard! Get back here!” she shouted, cradling her bleeding forearm with her other hand. She could feel the sticky and warm blood that oozed from it.

“Miss? Are you alright?” The foreigner with a Brit’s accent asked with concern, fussing over her.

She didn’t look up at him and was about to pick up the white box with a blue ribbon, but he beat her to it, giving it to her.

“You’re bleeding!” he exclaimed.

Still, without looking up at the concerned man, she picked up her cell phone and placed it in her slacks front pocket. She hoped the phone was fine. She could not perhaps afford a new one now since her average salary was budgeted.

Because the lamp post was right behind the tall foreigner, she could not see his face clearly while he already wrapped his light blue handkerchief tightly around her wounded forearm. She could very well smell his unique amber and cedarwood scent that seemed to embrace her. She thought it was a nice scent to wear.

“T-thank you,” she murmured.

“I think we should go to the hospital. I can drive you there,” he offered, gesturing to his chocolate-colored full-size crossover nearby. “Actually, I would’ve gone after that bloody b*stard if you weren’t bleeding.”

“I-I’ll be fine, I guess. I’ll go to the hospital with my father anyway, so…” She shrugged and turned to leave the faceless man.

“Thanks for saving my life, miss!” he said as she mounted her blue-and-black 150cc motorcycle.

She winced as she balanced the box of cake with her injured forearm, driving only with one hand and navigating through the heavy traffic. She could feel the throbbing pain caused by the stab wound.

Why did he say that I saved his life? Was he about to be stabbed by that b*stard instead of me? How did he know in the first place? Were there already attempts on his life before? Maria Santissima! I hope I’ll never meet that guy again! He’s pure bad luck!