Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 403

Ben froze. He looked back, his eyes darting from the stuff on the table to his son, who was barely holding it together.

“Dean, I get it, you can’t get over Emmy. But you don’t have to lie to yourself just to win her back.”

Dean’s voice was tight. “Dad, just look at it, okay? Please. Then say whatever you want.”

“This is the Letter from the Other Side module—Fantasy VR. The cops already took over the system. You know what it does—it digs up your deepest subconscious memories. You can’t fake that.”

Ben stared at him for a long moment, silent. In the end, he sat back down and picked up the VR headset.

Time dragged on, the silence growing heavy.

When Ben finally set the headset down, he looked surprisingly calm. He just rubbed his brow and let out a breath.

“You know this is illegal, right? Stealing someone’s subconscious memories like that? That’s a crime.”

Dean stared at his father, stunned.

He’d played out a thousand scenarios in his head—maybe his dad would explode, break down, fall apart. He’d pictured rage, grief, shock. Anything but this cold calm—anything but his dad turning it all back on him.

The anger and heartbreak exploded inside him. He jumped up, voice loud and raw.

“My mother was murdered by Evelina! This is proof! She has to pay for what she did!”

But Ben didn’t even flinch. He just looked at Dean like he was a kid throwing a fit.

“Dean, do you remember that story I told you? About when I was a kid and got kidnapped, taken up into the mountains?”

“There was a girl there. She was just a kid herself, but she risked everything to help me escape. After I got back to the Sparrow family, I never stopped looking for her.”

“And eventually, I found her.”

Dean glared, confused and icy. What did any of this have to do with now?

Ben’s voice was steady, almost flat. “But the Sparrow Group hit a financial crisis. I had to marry your mother to save the company.”

“And you—you only exist because your mother drugged me. That’s how she got pregnant.”

He looked at Dean’s pale face, but his eyes were empty, almost blank.

His heart, he realized, had been lost in that mountain decades ago.

He’d only been five years old when he was sold off, dumped in some remote village. He couldn’t stand the food, cried every day for home.

But there was a little girl with pigtails. She’d sneak him a soft bun, a piece of candy when no one was looking. She’d whisper that he’d been taken by bad people, and that she’d help him escape.

For three endless years, she played with him, comforted him, made every day a little more bearable.

Then one day, the kidnappers forgot to lock the door.

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