Billionaire Romance16 min read
He called me "Emi" and I never wanted to leave
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"We'll toast to the end of exams."
"We did it. Freedom at last."
"I'll miss Mr. H, though. Weird, right?"
We clinked plastic cups and laughed like kids who had cheated a test.
"I'm fine," I said, and smiled too big.
Brittany nudged me. "Emi, you're red. You sure you're okay?"
Dyer laughed. "Drunk? We're drinking soda, genius. You're fine."
"I just—" My head did a small, traitor spin. My knees went soft.
"I'll go to the bathroom," I whispered.
"Okay," Dyer said. "Don't take too long."
I walked out into the summer heat and tried to breathe. The night was a scattered string of light and cars. I felt heavy as if someone had wrapped my legs in lead.
The last thing I remember was a bright white flash and then nothing.
When I woke, it was dusk.
I sat up and blinked. The room was black, not shadow-black but a planned black. Curtains, furniture, even the bedspread—black. My skin felt wrong in it. I could not think of a single memory that belonged to this room. Panic rose like a bird.
The door opened. A man filled the frame.
He was too beautiful to be real. Straight nose, thin mouth, eyes like polished stone. He wore a suit like armor. He did not smile.
"Do you remember me?" I asked, because my mouth ran on its own.
He looked at me like I had said something odd and said, "Call the doctor. Check for fever damage."
An hour later, a man in a white coat explained words I could not sort at first.
"She had high fever for too long. Some brain cells were damaged. Memory loss is possible. It may recover."
"How long?" I asked.
The doctor shrugged. "Weeks, months. We wait."
The man who had brought me stood by the doorway. He watched me and said, almost offhand, "If she has no name, call her Emi for now."
"Emi?" I repeated. The name landed like a small, bright coin.
He looked surprised I liked it. "It suits you."
I wanted to ask him who he was. I wanted to ask my own name. Instead I said, "Do you know me?"
He watched me. "No. But you're safe here."
"Why are you being so kind?" I asked.
He frowned and did not answer. He only said, "Rest."
I fell asleep again thinking: who am I if I cannot remember who I am?
I learned his name much later.
"Greyson," he said once, in a low voice that made the back of my neck warm.
He never used my full name. He called me "Emi" and later "Emiliana" when it suited him. I liked the sound of "Emi." It was small and soft and it fit the new, empty corner of me.
*
Back at my family home, my parents were tearing the place apart.
"She went to the bathroom and didn't come back," my mother sobbed when I later called them. "Her phone was on the floor. We called the police."
My brothers, two big kinds of worry, hugged each other in the hospital corridor.
"Find her," Kellan said into his phone. "Stop everything. Search the neighborhood. Someone must have seen something."
Pax kept glancing at the door as if it might open and she would run inside.
"I will find you," I thought, but I couldn't remember how to run home.
I had been found by Greyson Kuenz, who drove a black car the color of his clothes and said little. He took me into his house because the ambulance had stopped the bleeding in my arm, and because I had been losing pieces of myself.
"Why did you save me?" I asked that night in his kitchen, awkward in clothes that were not mine.
He looked at the small cut on my hand. "Because you were hurt," he said. "Because I couldn't watch anyone hurt you."
"You don't even know me," I said.
His jaw tightened. "I know enough."
He introduced me to the people who worked for him. The house had staff who smiled too fast and an old but stern houseman who wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and called me "miss Emi." They gave me warm milk and new pajamas and a room with a bed that didn't smell of hospital plastic.
"You can stay," Greyson told me that night. "Until you remember."
"Until I remember," I repeated like a promise I would keep.
*
"Do you need anything else?" the houseman asked softly on my second day.
"No," I said. "Thank you."
Greyson watched me put on shoes the wrong way and smiled like it was the smallest thing.
"You forget how to put on a shoe?" I asked, laughing.
"I forget many things," I said.
He took me downstairs by the hand. The house hummed. Staff prepared breakfast. Greyson wore a black shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He looked good doing boring things like reading papers and pouring tea.
"Does this house have rules?" I asked.
He tapped paper in front of him. "No rules you would like. But don't run with knives."
I smiled. "Good rule."
He gave me my plate and fed me with a spoon when my hand still shook.
"You're so careful," I said when he popped toast into my mouth.
He looked almost shocked at my small voice. "Eat," he said. "You're weak."
I was not used to being cared for. I liked it and it scared me.
"Greyson," I said one afternoon when he let me walk to a nearby store with a staff member, "who are you?"
He stopped and looked at me like I had asked the wrong question. "What do you want me to be?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "A friend? A thief? A boss?"
He smiled then, slightly. "I am someone who will keep you safe. That is enough."
"Okay," I said, surprising myself with the ease of it.
I liked his voice. I liked the way he knitted his brows when he thought. I liked the small kindness he gave that was never loud or fake.
He had friends too—people who came and went, men and women who were dangerous-feeling in polite ways. They watched me and asked questions that made me blush. They laughed and told stories and teased me about being "Greyson’s found child." I did not correct them. I was a found thing and it felt strange but good.
One night at the mall, I clung to Greyson’s sleeve when I saw an old man with candy trying to speak to a small boy.
"Don't touch him," I said, before thinking. "That's not his grandfather."
People laughed. The old man startled and then put on a hurt face. The boy’s eyes filled with tears. People turned toward me, accusingly.
"If this is your grandson, what's his name?" I demanded.
The old man stuttered. His face went a shade of guilt. He was not a grandfather.
"Call the police," I said. "Now."
The man panicked, took a small knife out, and lunged.
Everything went fast. I grabbed the boy and shielded him. Knife grazed my arm. Blood warm and startling. I felt something leave my body.
"Emi!" Greyson's voice burrowed through the chaos.
He was at my side before I could make any decision. He shouted for help. The attacker fell under police hands. Greyson's voice was the only voice I could hear steady.
They stitched me without full anesthesia because I reacted badly to the first drug. Greyson forced his hand across my wrist and said, "Hold on. Hold onto me."
I did.
When the doctor left, he scolded me.
"Why did you do that?" he demanded.
"I couldn't leave a child with a liar," I murmured.
He looked at my blood-matted hair and then began to scold softer. "Emi, you can't keep doing dangerous things alone. Next time, call someone else. Please."
"Sorry," I said, but the "sorry" did not feel like mine. It felt like a word I owed to people who rescued me.
He wiped my tears with the corner of his suit and then fed me slivered rice and soft soup like a father. "Eat," he said. "Don't make me worry."
I watched his knuckles turn white around the spoon.
"I won't," I promised. "I will be careful."
His eyes softened. "Good."
When I closed my eyes that night on the hospital bed, his hand was still wrapped around mine.
*
The days blurred into training.
"Emi," said Lenora, a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper smile, "if you are going to live here, this place will teach you two things: how to fight and how to stop being scared."
"Teach me," I said. "Teach me everything."
Lenora called a woman named Clara and a man named Luca, and then a whole group I learned to recognize—trustful people who fought like machines and laughed like boys on break.
"You will learn to protect yourself," Clara said. "We teach simple moves. Fast. No rules."
"Like a toolbox?" I asked.
"Exactly," Lenora said. "All the tools."
Greyson watched my first lesson. He paired me with a big, clumsy man, Wells Schaefer, who pretended to be an attacker and then left the floor holding his knees because I did a move that made him lose breath.
"Good," Greyson said, and the single word felt like a medal.
I loved the training pain. It was honest and clear. It did not demand that I remember anything about my past. It demanded only time, sweat and stubbornness. My body remembered shapes I did not know my mind knew.
"You are a fast learner," Wells panted after I did a complicated spin.
"I like to copy," I said.
One evening, Greyson held me while I blinked tears. "You are like a small animal," he said softly. "You flinch at loud noises, you curl when something bigger moves near. That will change."
"I scared easily," I admitted. "But I don't like it."
"So don't be scared," he said. "Not because I said so. Because you said so."
I pressed my face to his chest and felt the even beat of him.
"Greyson," I whispered. "Promise me you won't leave."
He held me a moment longer. "I won't."
*
On the plane to the city where Greyson had business, an attendant watched us like a cat stalks a bird.
"Excuse me," she said to Greyson with something like hunger in her voice. "Do you need company?"
I did not like how she looked at Greyson. The room grew small. I felt something sour rise in my throat.
Greyson's hand on my knee tightened.
"She is my sister," I said quickly, because a lie felt like a shield.
The attendant laughed too loud. "Oh, brother and sister? That's odd."
She moved closer to Greyson and whispered something designed to sting. Greyson's jaw moved. Then he stood, expression stone.
He kicked her before she could make a scene.
"Greyson!" I gasped.
Her boss came—an embarrassed man named Sergio Pena. Greyson's men held them both. Greyson told them to apologize and then he told the boss to look through airport camera footage.
"Do you know this woman?" Greyson asked coldly.
Sergio's face went white. "No. She... she was assigned by the company."
Greyson had her escorted off the plane with a warning not to return. The flight crew silently applauded. I realized Greyson's cold could be a shield, sharp enough to cut things away that threatened us.
"I hate when people use the weak," I said later.
He looked at me. "They will not use you."
His words were promised walls. I wanted to walk into them.
*
The city held darker things.
One night, Greyson visited a man who wore a mask and liked razors. I caught only a sliver of the life Greyson lived: hushed rooms, knives, men who made threats and then forgot they had to breathe.
"Someone took our points abroad," Greyson said on his phone. "They are using political covers. We will root them out."
"Careful," the voice on the other end warned.
Greyson fisted his hand. "I never ask for care. I take action."
When he was out, I lay awake in the spare suite with my hand tucked in the crook of his arm.
"Do you always have people who want you dead?" I asked.
He turned his head slightly. "Unfortunately."
"Why?" I whispered.
"Because I do what others can't," he said simply. "Because some people lose power when I keep mine."
I thought of the night I woke in his house with no name. I thought of men who looked at me like I was a key.
"Greyson," I said, scared, "what if the men who took me wanted to hurt you? What if they were trying to hurt me to get to you?"
He tightened his fingers around my hand. "Then they chose the wrong thing to break."
*
Days became a kind of armor. The training, the small jokes, the way he tucked a blanket around me. The more time I spent with him, the more I learned the shape of him and the less I wanted the past to come back only to take him away.
"But I want to find my family," I told him one afternoon. "I want to know who I was."
"We will find them," he promised.
"We?" I asked.
"Yes. We."
He took my chin and smiled like he had stolen a sunrise. "You are mine to look after. I don't give up."
He did not know how close to the truth he spoke.
*
The search found clues. Dyer and Brittany and Kellan called and cried and told stories, little threads of a life that was not all empty.
"You were always the loudest kid," Brittany said over the phone. "You always jumped the highest and ate the most dessert."
"I like dessert," I said, and we all laughed.
Kellan sent a message with an old video of me on a swing, tiny and glittering. I watched the video a thousand times. Each loop gave me a small necklace of memory. I clung to it.
"Your family is important," Greyson said. "Tell me every small thing you remember."
"I remember a piano," I said. "I remember an old tune. I remember being told not to tell my brothers—"
"Why not?" Greyson asked.
"Because it was a secret," I said, and pain pricked in my head.
Greyson's mouth thinned. "We will find where the secrets lead."
*
There was a moment that would change everything.
A man in a mask—someone with cruelty in his gestures—was revealed to be behind the disappearances and the fake papers. Greyson's team traced a string of fake IDs, and the ID used to enter a gated house was linked to a man named "Fu." The trail bent toward a powerful family with a daughter who was angling for position.
Greyson's group confronted the daughter in public during a charity gala. The daughter was caught offering bribes, arranging papers and threatening men. Greyson exposed the documents live.
"You used children as pawns," Greyson said, voice clipped, in front of a crowd of cameras and charitable donors.
The woman sputtered. "This is a lie!"
"Do you deny using fake IDs?" Greyson asked.
She tried to lie, tears and arrogance braided together. Phones filmed. The camera lights were a thousand small snapping teeth.
"We found transfer records," Greyson said. "We traced payments. I have messages. You cannot deny this."
She panicked. "My father is—"
"Your father will answer to the law," he cut in. "Not tonight."
The woman, who thought herself above consequence, began to break.
People who were watching turned from polite smiles to open mouths. The woman reached for her necklace like a lifeline and then screamed, "You can't do this!" Her husband—an official figure—stood, face pale. Her father called lawyers, hands shaking.
Her social accounts crashed. Sponsors withdrew. The news flashed the scandal on every channel. Men who had taken bribes in her name sent messages pulling away from her like flies blown from a light.
She left on a private car with her head covered. A single campus of town followers stood and watched in stunned hush.
It was not enough for me. I wanted to see faces break.
Greyson turned to me after the cameras left. "You okay?"
I breathed. "I wanted them to feel small."
He smiled, soft. "They will. The public will do the rest."
It felt like a first victory.
*
Later we learned the masked man was not a single actor. He had followers, men who liked to disguise themselves and sell services. A surgeon had made masks. The masks had names. The surgeon was killed. The network frayed, then snapped.
Greyson's men found a room in a basement where the surgeon kept files, and cell phones that linked to other politicians. They gave the evidence to the police and the papers took off like fire.
A public trial followed, and the masked men were found guilty. Headlines screamed. The daughter lost her charity boards, her father resigned. Videos of her outrage trended and then died under mountains of hashtags about greed, and finally people forgot her face.
"Good," I said.
Greyson watched me talk to the cameras months later. "You did the right thing," he said.
I smiled because he had said it. That phrase kept me going like a warm coin in my pocket.
*
At home, at last, I had a quiet moment.
"Tell me something," I said.
He looked at me with a half-smile. "Yes?"
"If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?"
He thought and then said, "That you remember. Everything. Not because I want to hold the past against you, but because I want you whole."
I touched his hand. "I am whole when I am with you."
He pulled me close then, as if to test the truth of my words, and I felt the world narrow to the circle where his arm met my back.
"Promise me you will tell me when you remember," he said.
"I promise," I answered.
*
Days passed. Pieces of film memory slid in and out of my head. A laugh at the piano. A blue kite. A sudden scream. They smudged like water on paper until they became more than shadow.
One afternoon, at the training field, I collapsed.
"Emi!" Luca called. "She's down!"
Greyson was at my side in a blink. He carried me like a child and sat with me until my breath evened.
"I remembered my father," I said, tears wet on my face. "I remembered him at a piano, and how he used to say: 'Music is a safe place.'"
Greyson's fingers found my chin. "Tell me about him."
"I couldn't keep watching him," I said. "He... he hid our identities. Someone tried to pull us into a fight for power and—" My mouth would not finish. The memory of suits and an argument and then a night with a truck blocking cameras flashed and slid away.
"You were protected," Greyson said. "Protected by people brave enough to disappear."
I shivered. "I want to see them."
"We will find them," he promised again.
That night I dreamed of music and two hands. I woke knowing only one thing clearly: Greyson's hand was warm and real.
*
Months passed. The villainy of the masked men was exposed. The political family fell. The city calmed. I found short scraps of my past—a bag of photos that belonged to my mother, a piano teacher's letter, a small carved locket with three initials. Each scrap fit into a map that led to one place: I was not an orphan. My family had been hidden to protect us from those who wanted leverage.
When the last file fell into place, years of fear and hiding turned into a portrait of my life. My parents had been involved with people who had power; they chose to erase public traces to protect us.
"They did this for you," Greyson said, softer than before.
"I know," I replied. "But I want to find them. I want to thank them."
He did not hesitate. "We will bring them home."
*
The day we found them was a film reel of small days: an old doctor giving the police a folder, a tiny house outside the city, an image of my mother holding a little me with hair in pigtails.
"You are coming with us," Greyson said.
The reunion happened in a quiet hospital room where my mother lay weak but alive. My brothers stood like pillars. My father, older and thinner, took my hands like a man who had held on to rope for years.
"You were always safe?" I asked.
My mother's thumb stroked my cheek. "We thought we were," she whispered. "For a while."
"You were brave," I said, because it was the best word I had.
My father let out a laugh that tasted like regret. "We were scared," he said. "We were idiots."
I forgave them. I had to. They had saved me from worse.
"This man," my father said then, and his eyes locked on Greyson, "who is he?"
Greyson stepped forward. "I'm the man who found her."
He offered his hand. My father hesitated, then took it. In that small grip, the last distance melted.
"You kept her safe," my father said quietly.
"I tried," Greyson said.
"You have done more than try," my mother whispered.
I looked at Greyson truly then. He was not a hero in the comic-book flash. He was a man who could take cold and shape it into warmth. He had given me a home, protected me with a strange ferocity, and sat quietly while I mended.
"Stay," my father told him in a rare crack of softness. "Stay in her life."
Greyson smiled, and for the first time I saw him let down a weight.
"I will," he said.
*
The rest of the months bent into a gentle arc.
We left the city scandals behind and traveled in small ways that felt like stitches: to a piano hall where I played one crooked song badly and then better; to a park where I ran without falling; to Greyson's office where I pretended to help with meetings and actually offered useful ideas once or twice.
"You're not stupid," he said one day when I hesitated on a crossword.
"Thank you," I said. "You always know the right way to say things."
"You say weird things," he replied. "But say them often and I like them."
I fed him tea and he fed me truth. He made a joke about being "Greyson the Houseplant" because I kept watering his patience. I told him secrets about my childhood: the burnt cookie contest, the way Kellan made my hair into a lopsided braid.
"You are loud when you laugh," he said. "Like fireworks that don't explode."
I stuck a fork at him. "You're a jerk."
He laughed.
One night, when rain freckled the windows, I crawled into his lap and tucked my head under his chin.
"Will you marry me?" I said, because it was quiet and reckless and everything I felt.
Greyson's breath hitched. He was serious for a long time.
"You don't even know if you remember me right," he said.
"I know I want you," I said. "I remember the way you keep me even when I'm small and scared."
He let out a soft laugh. "You are very forward."
"I learned from your people," I said.
He kissed my forehead. "Yes," he said, like a verdict. "Okay."
*
Not everything disappeared. Old enemies tried small things—anonymous threats and old debts. Greyson fought or paid or crushed them. I watched him in the ways that only someone close could watch and still be surprised.
"You are ruthless," I said once, with shining eyes.
"I am precise," he corrected.
"Ruthless is funnier," I said.
He kissed me, quick and private, and said, "We are almost all done."
And then the last piece fell into place: a final confrontation with the man who had once pulled strings from the dark, the man who liked faces and masks and had left a surgeon's cold handiwork in shadow rooms.
They found him in a shuttered clinic with files all over and a mask in a drawer. He was not brave enough to look at us when we walked in.
"You used people as experiments," Greyson said. "You cut and sold their faces."
The surgeon tried to talk his way out.
"No one wants to buy masks of a monster who cannot explain his art," Greyson said.
The surgeon's lawyers screamed. The cameras had arrived. The police cuffed him. He screamed and cried and blamed other men. Reporters filmed and called it live. The surgeon's bank accounts were frozen. Sponsors turned away faster than a bad rumor.
The surgeon asked for mercy. People laughed. A former client spat on his shoes in front of the building. A video of the surgeon's face, all sallow and colorless, went viral with the caption: "Face for sale, humanity optional."
The man fell apart as a man's life can fall apart—lawsuits, arrests, a ruined medical license. He screamed, "This is not fair!" and people cheered that justice was done. I did not feel triumph in cruelty, but I felt warmth for the people who could now walk without fearing a face could be stolen.
Greyson turned to me after the public hearing. "You did well," he said.
"I kept thinking of the boy at the mall," I admitted. "I kept thinking of how small people get swallowed."
"You stopped him," Greyson said. "That will mean something."
It did.
*
Months later, at a small party in the house where I had first woken with no name, Greyson stood in front of our small circle.
"You made me human," he said. "You made me care about small things like a broken cookie or a bad joke."
My throat closed.
"And you," I said, fumbling with the ribbon at my wrist, "made me remember how to be brave."
He laughed and then, softer, said, "Will you marry me for real this time?"
I stood up. "Yes."
We married in a small room with my family there and his less formal circle. Lenora and Clara cried. Luca and Wells toasted. My parents nodded like old soldiers healed. Greyson wore a suit that was not armor that day. He looked like a man who had learned how to smile without danger.
"You are mine," he said quietly as he slid a ring onto my finger.
"And you are mine," I said.
We were both telling the truth.
*
Years later, people asked me about the time I lost my memory and found love.
"Was it fate?" they asked.
"Was it destiny?" others asked.
I always tell them the same thing.
"It was a bad fever, some brave people, and one very stubborn man who wore black and did not know how to stop being gentle."
He would roll his eyes and kiss the top of my head.
"If fate brought her to me," Greyson once said, "I will keep fate busy."
I laughed.
"My name is Emiliana Hayashi," I say now, pulling my wedding band into line. "But if he calls me Emi, I melt."
He is sitting across the table, reading the paper with a look of absolute concentration on his face. I get up and take his plate away.
"Don't ruin your eyes," I tease.
He looks up, a slow smile forming. "Tell me the truth," he says.
"What truth?"
"That you love me."
I slide into his lap and put my head on his chest.
"I love you," I say.
He holds me like a wall and a harbor all at once.
"I love you more," he replies.
Outside the window, the city is quiet. Inside, we are loud in private. We have a life that was built out of shards and honesty and stubbornness. It is nothing like the glitter of magazines. It is home.
I remember now who I was and who I am. I remember the fear and the music and the laughter. I also remember the black room and the man who gave me the name Emi when I had none.
"I have your name," he says once in bed, sleep in his voice.
"You have my whole life," I answer.
He squeezes my hand. "Then don't forget to stay."
"I won't," I promise.
He smiles, the way he did the very first night, and I fall asleep to the sound of his breath. The past is a map behind us, and the future is a small, steady path we will walk together.
The End
— Thank you for reading —