Billionaire Romance10 min read
Teach the Tyrant: Study First, Love Later
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The leather was cold under my palms and his shirt was a mess. Forest Jorgensen sat back on the sofa like a man who had broken the weather for himself. I smelled whiskey and something like iron on his collar.
“Stop,” I said, and my voice sounded steadier than I felt.
Forest blinked, a deep, slow blink. “Why?”
“I need you to read these.” I tapped the stack of folders on his desk. “Before anything else.”
He laughed once, low and surprised. “You’re serious.”
“I’m your secretary, not your lover.” I put the cup of ice water on the table and held his gaze. “Read the files.”
The system in my head spoke then, cool as a winter hall. “This is Strict Tutor System 009. Host, you have died in your world. You can sign a contract to return, or be recycled. Complete tasks: prevent the world’s male lead from derailing his company by lust. Success equals points; points buy returns.”
I swallowed. “009,” I whispered, “I sign.”
“Contract begins in three… two… one.” The voice was a machine and a judge.
Forest took the ice water and drank until the glass fogged. “You can go rest,” he said, voice clipped with work.
I almost skipped out of the room, shock fizzing in my veins. I had been a high school teacher all my life. I had lesson plans, papers, and teenagers’ futures on my shoulders. I had no place in a billionaire’s mansion. But the money in the original owner’s account, the wardrobe full of sharp suits, the keys to a life I never asked for—these were tools. And I had children in my real world who still needed me.
“I’ll be in my room,” I said. “Wake me if something urgent comes up.”
Forest watched me go with a look I did not understand. He had dark lashes, a strong jaw, and a softness I would mistake for weakness if I did not know better.
“You can’t let him fall for women,” the system warned as I closed the door.
“Then I won’t let him,” I answered aloud, swallowing the weird pride that rose at being called a tutor. I hung a plain blouse. I laid out lesson notes I would never have used for a CEO’s mind. I slept on goose-down and dreamed of chalk dust.
Morning was sunlight and an unfamiliar body—my own—dressed in a professional silk blouse and coffee-still fingers. The household staff called me Ms. Xu with respect that tasted odd in my mouth. Honoka, the head housekeeper, was gentle and plain-spoken.
“You should rest more,” Honoka said, handing me a tray with soup. “Master Forest worries.”
“He worries?” I was amused. “That’s a new flavor.”
At the office, I did what any steady hand would do: sorted files, flagged risks, and told Forest in firm notes that he should meet Grayson Neumann at lunch—whatever the original script said, Grayson could be the boost his research needed.
“You booked him?” Forest snorted. “You made decisions for me?”
“You gave me a job,” I said. “I’m doing it.”
We went to class together, of all places: a public management seminar at the university. I sat next to him like a stern assistant. Julian Armenta taught with the mild fire of a man who believed in students. Forest pretended not to check his phone. I stole it, plucked it from his hands, and told him, deadpan, “Management first.”
“You serious?” he whispered.
“As serious as grading papers,” I said.
He listened. He learned. He surprised me by remembering two entire models by the end of the hour.
“You’re acting like my teacher,” he said on the walk back.
“Because I am,” I said. “And you need lessons.”
We were making progress. The system rewarded me with points—little sparks of victory I could feel like pennies in my pocket. One point for a meeting, another for a lecture. Forest’s board began to nod at presentations again. I felt the job in my ribs, the way a teacher feels a class come to attention.
But a storm was gathering. Ezekiel Santoro—my boss’s uncle on the surface, the predator underneath—had been patient and careful for years. He smiled like a man who never got his hands dirty but ordered others into mud. He had a seat in the family branch offices and eyes like knives.
One night at a place called Night Opulence, I walked into his web with a plan. I let him see what he wanted: flirt, bait, play the part of a young woman who might be bought.
“You’re late,” he purred.
“Traffic,” I said, and baited the hook with a laugh.
Ezekiel believed in slow knives. He whispered promises that made my skin crawl. I pretended to be dazzled. I recorded the whispers with a phone that pumped the audio into 009.
“Hold this,” I told the server. “Please. It’s special.”
The server thought it flirtation. He took the phone to the back like the good little spy he was. I walked out. I walked straight into danger, because Forest was on his way, and I had to make sure the trap stayed closed.
And then there was the gunfire.
“It’s S,” 009 screamed. “A hacker strike.”
I had found myself ducking behind a corroded door in a ghost-kitchen as men with black jackets and worse intentions came through. Forest was nailed against a car hood, not a chair. Someone shouted: “There, him!” A bullet decided that day’s fate.
I leaped.
The pain was a bright white star that cut my breath. The world narrowed. I felt blood and then the cold of floor and then hands—Forest’s hands—lifting me with a strength I had not expected.
“You crazy woman!” he hissed as if that was the only thing to say.
“You live because I jumped,” I croaked.
He shouldered men aside. My world went to a hospital and came back with tubes and a mattress that did not teach like a classroom. We both learned a new language there: the one of staying.
Forest sat with his gloved fingers tapping at a phone. His eyes were hollowed with something like sleep deprivation and a deeper thing—blame.
“You did this for me?” he asked when I could open my eyes.
“For you,” I said. “And because I can’t go back yet.”
He cared. He worried. His hands fussed over soup. He called the staff to bring me the meds I would need.
I healed fast enough to be annoying. I learned an odd domestic rhythm in that house: meals like rituals, the family doctor who had a grave look that meant “these wounds are more than flesh,” and Honoka who made soup that smelled of safety.
But danger kept finding us. Forest discovered I had snooped in his study. He watched the footage I had taken and suspected the worst, because people jump to worst these days.
“What were you doing in my study?” he demanded one evening, voice hollow.
“Looking for patterns,” I said. “I’m building a net.”
“You lied to me.”
“I began as a liar,” I admitted. “Then I made myself a tutor.”
He kissed me anyway. He was clumsy and careful both at once, like someone learning how to be close to a person with a live wire.
“Say it,” he breathed. “Do you like me?”
“I do,” I said, and meant it—because the days of pretending had shifted into real warmth.
We had a private happiness: classes together, a system feeding points into my account, a small circle of allies—Grayson now at the company, Colton Santos and Callum Nunes in Forest’s small, beautiful tech room. Their old life as a secretive hack lab now served the public good: we chased down transactions, we found patterns, we read code like it was a new language.
But a final blow was coming. Ezekiel’s men planted a story, used recordings, and bribed an assistant to hand over video. Forest saw the clip: me at Night Opulence, my mouth moving in ways the camera captured too well. He came home blood-quick, eyes like two flints.
“You and him—” he said, and then more: “You were planning to be his wife. You were mocking me.”
“No.” I tried to explain. “I set a trap. I needed proof.”
“It looks real,” he said.
He was wrong about everything that night. He pushed me to a wall. He dragged the chain of my ankle—some jewel, some prison—and locked it because that was the only way he could hold a person he did not yet trust. I sat silent while the house hummed and servants glanced and said nothing. Love had become a kind of prison.
They found the evidence soon. Not the way I had hoped—quietly and in a box—and not the way Ezekiel had planned. It burst out like a carnival of justice. We set a public stage: a shareholders’ meeting in the central hall, every strong light turned up until people squinted and cameras flashed like bees.
I stood at Forest’s side, watching him stand and speak. He was steady now, his jaw set like iron. He walked to the podium and said three words: “The truth, now.”
The lights were cold. The hall brimmed with investors, journalists, employees, a hundred cameras, and a hundred phones. Ezekiel sat at the back, the picture of someone who believed power could protect him.
“Ezekiel Santoro,” Forest began. “You have manipulated my company. You have paid for lies, hired men to create evidence, threatened lives, and used other people as bait. Here is what you did.”
Then the room changed. A man opened a laptop. Screens lit up at the front with bank transfers, voice recordings, and the grainy moments of surreptitious meetings. The slideshow showed his name tied to accounts, to land deals, to the assistant who had taken hush money. The pictures rolled: hands shaking, checks signed, a timeline from lie to lie.
“You’ll see here,” Forest said calmly, “my uncle gave him money this month, and these are the transfers. You’ll see here a video taken with a night server. You’ll see a recorded confession, staged, and then burned. You will also see, at the exact time of my parents’ accident, messages that prove he arranged the brake cut.”
Ezekiel’s face changed as the evidence hit like hail. First came the small smirk—the old confidence that never left him. Then the smirk froze. His mouth opened. “You lie,” he barked.
“That is denial,” Forest said. “Now watch the bank. Now hear the recordings.” The crowd was silent except for the thin hum of cameras. Men in sleek suits shifted. A woman in the front row put her phone on record. A teenager from our old school program, now an intern, bit her lip and stared at the screen.
“Turn them up,” Ezekiel shouted.
“Good,” Forest said. He pushed a second button. Ezekiel’s recorded voice, clear and low, filled the hall. “Cut the line. Make it look like an accident,” the voice said in the recording, then laugh, the kind of coached laugh of a man with no conscience.
Ezekiel’s eyelids fluttered. He looked around, and the faces around him looked like mirrors. People he thought were steps saw him for what he was. “This is slander,” he managed, trying to keep his tone of command.
A reporter stood. “Is this comment true? Did you order tampering with the vehicle?”
He tried to answer. It came out a string of protests and threats. It was too late. The recorded voice had become judge and jury in the bright hall.
I remember the room’s noise shifting—first people whispered, then a murmur grew into a chorus. “Shame.” “How?” “Who covered this for him?”
Hands rose with phones. Someone took a picture, then another, then a hundred. The flash of a hundred devices painted Ezekiel’s face in white. He was caught in a light that let no mask hide him.
“You will leave now,” Forest said. “You will turn over your accounts. You will resign your posts. You will explain to the police every step.”
Ezekiel’s expression moved through stages. First the grin—his private little empire. Then confusion: how did they find this? He pointed at me, like a man who must blame. “She set this up!” His voice was a cracked trumpet. “She is the one who nabbed me with photographs. She told them how to catch me!”
The crowd’s reaction was immediate. Cameras swung to me. Faces raised questions. Forest’s jaw tightened; I felt the sting of his trust battered and raw, yet he stood straighter.
“Attention!” Forest’s voice cut through the room. “She did it for this company. She did it to protect it.”
Ezekiel’s laugh broke off into denial. “You’re lying,” he said. “You cannot prove—”
“Wait.” The chief auditor pushed a USB toward the microphone. “We have a complete log. We have chain of custody. We have a sworn statement by an assistant who took the video and then tried to extort. We have transfer records showing your payments. We have witnesses.”
Ezekiel’s composure crumbled. Sweat beaded on his lip. He turned from bland arrogance to raw fear. “No,” he croaked. “This… you can’t—”
He stood up, the room leaning in like a tide. He stumbled toward the exit, then turned. “You’ll regret—”
“Sit,” Forest said, flat and final.
He collapsed into his chair as if someone had pushed knots under his knees. Smug dissolved into frantic shaking. He was suddenly human: not in power but small and raw.
“I didn’t—” he began. “Please! You don’t understand. I have children. I have—”
People turned their heads. “He’s begging,” someone murmured. Phones recorded the scene: the man with gold cufflinks begging on his knees in a hall full of witnesses.
“Get up,” Forest told him. “Tell them.”
He stood, because he had no choice now but confession. Words came jagged and then fell: “I— I wanted the company to shift. I wanted control. They asked me to help.”
Denial became bargaining. “Don't send me to prison. I can give you—”
“No more deals,” Forest said. “The board will decide your fate. The police will take your statement.”
Ezekiel’s face went white and tight. He sank to his knees on the polished floor as a camera zoomed in and children in suits from the press gallery recorded him, whispering to each other with the gawking glee of vultures. People clapped—not because they enjoyed another’s collapse, but because justice had the voice of ordinary truth.
He begged. His voice thinned. “Please! My life—please—”
Nobody moved to help. An old investor stood and clapped once, slow and ironical, a sound that felt final. Tears trickled down Ezekiel’s cheeks, and he crawled toward the exit like a caught animal, people stepping around like in a ritual.
He left the hall with his head bowed. Cameras followed. The public had him. The feeds lit up. Newsrooms hummed. Investors murmured about replacement, about control, about the man who had thought himself untouchable.
Afterwards, Forest closed his phone, breathing hard. He looked at me across the emptying hall and said, simply, “You stayed.”
“I signed a contract,” I said, fingers numb. “But I stayed for other reasons, too.”
The board meeting had cleared away the spiderweb as if a broom had been swept through a parlor. Forest’s actions were bold and raw and costly, but they were true. Ezekiel’s crowning of himself had shattered in a way only public light could shatter it.
After that night the company felt lighter. Men who had bent their knees to a boss’s favors sat up straighter. Forest’s hands shook less. He began to sleep again in slices. He began to plan rather than patch.
We went back to the small things: the management class that made him laugh like a boy when he finally understood a theory, the work studio where Colton and Callum patched code and blinked at my lack of tech but tried anyway, Grayson leading the materials project like a rescued genius, and the little black leather notebook in Forest’s study.
“You were going to read it,” he said once when he caught me looking toward the top shelf.
“I was,” I said.
He laughed, then grew quiet. “It kept my father’s notes.”
I ran my finger along its spine. “I won’t pry.”
In the end, the system gave me a choice I hadn’t expected to own. The points sat in my account like coins ready for the road. I could leave any time the contract allowed—return to lesson plans, to the kids whose futures I had promised to guard. But love, I learned, is not a one-off. It is a daily tutoring, a patient correction, a stubborn rework of character.
I left my pen in that black notebook one night and closed it. The study clock ticked: steady, small, relentless. Forest had taught me more than business. He had taught me to stand in the light, even when the light hurt.
“I’ll teach you the rest tomorrow,” I said.
“Good,” he answered. “I’ll bring the coffee. And I’ll let you grade me harshly.”
I smiled as the second hand clicked. The strict tutor system had given me a task, but I had found a life. The notebook was the proof: my name written in the margin of a plan for a company, a line that read “Marina Xu—strict but fair.” The page smelled faintly of ink and something softer—of new beginnings.
The End
— Thank you for reading —