Billionaire Romance11 min read
"I Took His Money to Kill Ghosts — He Bought Me a House"
ButterPicks13 views
"I will decide my fate, not heaven!"
I screamed and swung my sword up into the sky.
"Cut the drama, you old sky," I said, as lightning pounded the peak. Hair singed, I spat black smoke and cursed the thunder like a sailor.
A moment later, the thunder stopped. The lightning fell apart like someone had turned off a lamp.
"Hey!" a man shouted from above as he spun out of the lightning and rode a current up, or rather, away. "You dog of a sky! You think you can hit me like that?"
His apprentice voice growled far away. I rolled my eyes. My master had the taste of drama and zero sense. I brushed grit from my face and made a small plea.
"Sky, if you won't get rid of my master, at least don't hit the village."
The rain came. Not a light rain. Heavy, clean rain. The kind people call blessing rain when the old tales are right.
I sat down in the rain and closed my eyes. The wet air filled my chest. My late-stage golden core barrier creaked like old wood. I felt it crack a little. Good. Change is messy.
Someone from my sect burst into the courtyard, breathless. "Master, the sky—there's spirit rain!"
"Spirit rain?" the eldest said, voice shaking. "This is our chance. A power rose. We must find them."
They gathered their followers and left for the mountain where my master had been. I had other plans.
I packed a few things, tied my sword to my waist, and left the peak.
I had work to do among the living. And a family line to fix.
The cliffs were sharp and ugly, but I was used to moving where others feared. A blue robe and a thin, light step make cliffs look like city streets.
Then I stopped.
A smell crawled the air. Not just bad. The scent of old hate. Ghost smell.
My sword, the long blue blade "Tai A", slid from its sheath and hovered at my shoulder like a small, hungry pet.
"I'll get the food," Tai A said in its own voice with a clink against my cheek.
I laughed at the sword. "Wait your turn, little brat. Let me see who is stupid enough to call down the dead alone."
I crept into the bamboo. Two men in cheap purple robes were waving peachwood swords and reading nonsense from a book. Ghost smoke bubbled nearby like a pot left on fire.
They had no real power. Cheap tricks. I wanted to laugh, but then the black shadow rose like a hand from mud, eyes like spilled ink.
"Help! Ghost!" the two fake priests screamed and ran.
The ghost smelled like a grave. It lunged. It wanted a feast.
I stepped forward and clapped once.
"Excuse me. This line is closed," I said.
The ghost froze and stared at me.
"Who are you?" one of the assistants asked from where he hid behind a tree.
"I'm Aiko Cole," I said, and smiled. "Human, not ghost. See my shadow?"
I pointed. The sun shone through the leaves and the shadow on the ground was clean. The ghost hissed and stepped back.
A man's deep voice cut in then. "Fifty million. If you clear this, I will give you fifty million."
I blinked. "Excuse me?"
Adrian Christiansen stepped from behind the bamboo like a statue that can blink. He looked like money and cold air. He looked like someone who could buy a mountain and not feel the cost.
Adrian's assistant froze. "Sir—"
"Fifty million," Adrian said again, slow and steady. "To hire a ritualist to end this for us."
My mouth went dry. Fifty million. I had heard numbers. I had not heard numbers that made my whole plan jump.
"Five—fifty? You mean five hundred? You mean five?" I stammered, then I laughed. "Deal."
"You promise?" Adrian asked.
"Deal," I said. "You better not try to bail."
The fake priests had been folded into a heap of shame and two men who could barely stand. I pointed Tai A and let the sword bring a bright blue line across the hollow piece of pottery that held the ghost's anchor.
The ghost shrieked. My sword danced. In less than a minute the creature dissolved into a blue mist. Tai A chirped like a happy dog.
Adrian's assistant staggered. "You... you did that?"
I bowed. "Work done."
Adrian pulled out a thick check and slid it to me. "This is five million now. The rest after."
I stared at the number. The paper felt thin but it had weight. I stuffed it into my pouch like treasure.
"One condition," I said. "No lies. No tricks."
Adrian nodded. "You will have access to my house. Stay there while you work."
I did not refuse a house. My "rent" had been a mountain stream and a cursed pillow. I liked the idea of a real bed.
We drove back to his villa. The place was too big and smelled of nothing. In the yard, air curled wrong. Someone had set a trap.
"There's a stitch of bad air around the house," I said. "Someone put a gathering formation here."
Adrian's face went dark. "My place?"
He followed me inside. The main door slapped behind us. The house breathed. A black laugh crawled through the halls.
A ghost rose where a painting should have been. It smiled with someone else's life.
"Who are you?" the ghost's voice was dry like old leaves.
"I am you," it said. "I will dine tonight."
Adrian stepped in front of me.
"Don't," I told him. "Back behind me."
"No," he said. "I stay."
He gave me a small charm. "Wear this."
I took it. It was smooth and warm. He fixed his gaze on me for a beat too long. It landed in my stomach like a spark. I hid my pulse.
I cleared the house in an hour. Tai A and I worked fast. The ghost had been attached to an old family secret—someone had buried a black jar under a stone and the jar fed on the living.
"Where did this come from?" Adrian asked later.
"Someone wanted blood," I said. "They used old rites and infant ashes. It is ugly."
"Who would do that?" he asked.
"People who are cruel," I said. "Families with money and little shame."
He tightened his jaw. "I will find them."
That night, Adrian gave me more than cash. He gave me a key to an empty villa next door and told me he would have it turned into a proper place for me to live.
"You don't have to," I protested.
"I insist," he said. "It will be mine to do. And you'll be safe."
We started to work together because he paid well. I did not expect how quickly the work would tangle in his world.
A month later, we were in a village, and a man named Marion—no, alias: "Bastian Martin"—had come to the market with a story and a fake ritual. He had been lured by money, like many. He was also the type who thought he could out-swear the gods.
"You scammed my wife," a city man shouted. "You took everything!"
Bastian wheeled and tried to lie. People started to beat him. I walked in and said, "Let me see."
Bastian stammered and confessed. He said he had been paid by someone to trick the people into calling down a curse on a family they wanted out of the way.
"Who paid you?" I asked.
He looked at Adrian and the men around him and whispered one name.
"Magnus Porter," he said.
Adrian's face changed.
"Magnus?" he said softly. "That name should not come up."
It turned out a business family had been using dark work to block opponents, to lean legal fights their way. Magnus had been a quiet man with open hands and closed eyes. He was the kind of man to bury a jar in a grave and smile at the weather.
I felt that old itch in my chest—my family line. The net that strangled the world had threads all the way back into the city and into my past.
Adrian watched me clear a room of bad air and then smiled as people called me "a savior".
"You should have charged more than what you did," he said later.
"Charity dinner?" I said. "I take what I can get."
"Then let me give you more," he said. "Help me find these people."
We fell into a steady rhythm. He paid me large sums. I used those sums to buy protections and to travel. In exchange, I gave him immediate help and a careful, steady presence. People began to whisper that his coldness had melted. His assistant, Holden Kennedy, watched me like a cat watches a warm window.
One night, at a work site, dozens of workers vanished. The crew entered a hole and the radio went dead. Teams entered. No one came out. It was wrong.
"Is this the same set-up?" Adrian asked as we drove to the site.
I frowned. "It feels deliberate. Old hurt, new design."
We entered. The air smelled like wet earth and children's toys. Ghost-babies drifted like embers in a dark bowl. I almost vomited.
"Why?" Adrian asked, face white.
"Because someone used the worst of cruelty," I said. "They trapped lives in a jar and fed the jar with the city. It is savage."
I felt the blade of my sword sing. I pulled out my knife and scarred a line on the jar. The markings inside the jar were like a map. Each mark was an order. Each order carried a name.
I touched one—my head filled with images: a burial, a black paint, a family line that held a grudge for decades.
"Why would they pick this field?" Adrian asked.
"Easy pickings," I said. "That land has been for sale. People who want it want to make the land safe for their projects."
Adrian's hands curled into fists. "I own the land. Whoever did this thought they could scare us off."
He folded his jaw and looked to me. "Find them."
I did. It took time, bribery, and old debt. It took a visit to the underworld.
"Wait—underworld?" Holden squealed when I said it.
"Yes," I said. "I have favors there."
I went to the gate where two officials waited. They were odd men—one wore a thin smile like a blade, the other wore a tired face. Their names were Mario Andrade and Dean Rice. They were used to trade.
"I need a slot," I said.
Mario grinned. "We need payment."
"Power?" I asked.
Mario lowered his head and laughed. "You already have more than most mortals. Give us a favor later."
We traded. I handed them the small white bottle with children inside. The officials were delighted.
"Spin the bottle into our line," Mario said. "We will reassign them."
"But one of them has anger," Dean added. "It will need a little extra."
I gave them a sliver of what I had—my own hard-won merit. In return, they promised to look into the jar's maker and disrupt the network of favors that covered him.
"Be careful," Dean said. "Those men do not care who they hurt."
I came back to Adrian's side, lean and shaking. He looked at me with old worry.
"Did you get answers?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "And a heavy favor from the underworld."
He put a hand on my shoulder. "I will pay you back the favor tenfold."
I looked up at him. He looked sincere. He also looked like someone who meant it.
Weeks passed. Adrian's enemies moved. The Porter family and the Zane—no, in my old notes he had a name that fit, but here I call him "Magnus Porter"—people were cornered. The net of dark money cracked.
A media scandal hit. I watched people who preyed on others be called out. Adrian's PR team countered the fake lies. Slowly, truth rose like bread.
I never thought money would change my life that quickly. It took the money and put me in a bed with clean sheets.
But the real work was not the coins. It was seeing the traces.
When they found the tomb, the old paint had a pattern that matched my own master's old curse—an old design he taught us to spot.
My heart banged. Could my family be tangled into this? My master's voice in my head: "When you are lost, find the pattern."
I asked Adrian for a favor that was not about business.
"Help me find my family," I said, quietly.
He turned and looked like he had been waiting for me to ask.
"Tell me everything," he said. "We'll find them."
He kept his promise. He used resources, old files, and my small clues. We unearthed a ledger that pointed to an orphanage and a set of hospital files with a note that someone with my family name had been taken for protection.
I went to the hospital at dawn. I felt my own breath loud. A woman in the corner nursing a cup looked up. Her name was Matilda Brandt on the chart. Her eyes were soft.
"Are you Aiko Cole?" the nurse asked.
I nodded. She took my hand. "Your mother is here. We kept her safe. She asked us to keep her name private until she recovered."
She led me down a hall to a small room with a sleeping woman. The sleeping woman had my chin.
"Ma," I whispered and felt the word like a bell.
She opened her eyes. "Aiko?"
I fell on my knees. "Mother."
She grabbed my hand. "Child. You came."
She had been kept under a watch by friends and hidden from people who wanted to hurt our line for the power it held. Magnus had wanted to cut our family out because of old anger. We were in the middle of a long debt.
I told Adrian. He arranged a security detail and legal help. "You won't worry," he said, like a verdict.
Days later, we walked side by side through a quiet park. "You did all of this," I said.
"You helped," he corrected. "You saved more than me. You did the real work."
He reached and took my hand. It was a small gesture. It set off new fireworks inside me that had nothing to do with a sword.
"What will you do now?" I asked.
"I will keep doing what I do," he said. "But I would like you to be near."
I looked at him. He had been a client, then an ally, then something unnameable.
"Stay then," I said. "Tonight we go back and settle the rest."
We did. We found the final man who planned the dark jars. He was cornered. It was a face-slapping moment that a village loves. People shouted as he tried to deny it. The man cracked. Cameras were on. He turned pale and confessed.
"Everything he did was for land," I said later. "For money that would have swallowed a street."
Adrian put a hand on my face and kissed me lightly. "You did well," he said.
"I did my job," I told him.
"No," he said. "You did more."
I looked at him. The city lights fell around us in small glassy stars. I felt something warm and clean.
Time moved. I fixed what I could. I helped the underworld send the rescued souls where they belonged. Mario Andrade and Dean Rice came by and bowed in their odd way.
"Take care of yourself," Mario said. "We owe you."
"Save the debt," I said.
Adrian and I grew closer while we fought darkness. We had late talks about nothing, and we had hard plans about everything. I learned to ask for help. He learned to listen.
One night in my new villa, I sat by the window. Rain began to fall, gentle like the day he first met me. I pulled out the old wooden plaque my master left and set it on the table.
"I thought I hated him," I told Adrian. "But he left me more than scorn. He left the shape of my work."
He drew closer. "What does your heart want?"
I thought of the people I had helped and the family I had found. I thought of how the worst things made room for something better.
"I want to be where I can do no harm," I said. "I want to heal and fight. I want to keep the ones I love."
He smiled. "Then stay," he said. "Stay for me."
I looked out into the rain. A drop hit my sleeve. It felt like a small blessing.
"I will stay," I said.
Months came and went. Adrian and I built a strange rhythm. He would fly out and fight his own wars of business, and I would travel the city and find wrong. We both had our scars.
One day in the garden I sat with Tai A and whispered to my sword, "We found our path."
Adrian picked a pot from the porch and handed it to me. Inside was a small sapling. "Plant it here," he said.
I dug my fingers into the soil and pressed the roots down. It was simple. It was a small beginning.
"Promise me one thing," I said, dirt under my nails.
"What?" he asked.
"Promise me you'll tell me first if someone wants to hurt me." I half smiled.
He laughed and held me. "I promise. And you promise to tell me if you need more than money."
"I will," I said.
We planted the sapling together. I tied Tai A at my side and Adrian stood next to me like a steady wall.
The world did not become quiet. Dark men still hatched plans. Ghost jars still surfaced in corners. But we had each other and we had a house.
On the roof that night, rain glittered. I took out the plaque and set it on the corner of the roof where the wind could touch it.
"Master," I said quietly, "I finally have a place to call home."
Adrian wrapped an arm around me. "Welcome home," he said.
I closed my eyes and let the rain wash the last of the dust from my hands. For once, I felt no need to strike the sky. I had my own will now.
The sapling would grow. The sword would rest when needed. I had my family back. I had a man who would stand beside me.
And when thunder came again, I would smile, lift my sword, and laugh.
"Come on, sky. Test me," I said.
Adrian squeezed my hand.
"Don't," he said, smiling. "Try not to get struck before dinner."
We both laughed.
The city lights looked small below, but our small garden had started something that could not be bought.
I held his hand and whispered, "This is mine now."
He bent down and kissed my forehead.
"Good," he said. "This is mine too."
We let the rain fall and did not move. We let it wash us new.
The End
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