Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 459

Emmy’s heart thudded in her chest. She hadn’t expected James to be this sharp. With just a few words, he’d come dangerously close to the wildest truth of all.

How was she supposed to tell him that she and Dean had actually come back from seven years in the future?

It was insane. Even for her, someone who’d lived through it, there were moments when it all felt like an impossibly vivid nightmare.

He’d never believe her.

He’d probably just think the whole ordeal had messed with her head, that she was rambling nonsense after the kidnapping.

She took a breath, reining in her nerves, and settled on something that sounded less crazy.

“Dean and I… we once had the same dream. Exactly the same.”

“In that dream, we were married.”

“Maybe he thought if we died together, we’d go back to that dream.”

James’s arm tightened around her waist.

Even though Emmy tried to keep her tone light, James heard the weight behind her words, something too real to be just a dream, as if she’d actually lived it.

Suddenly, a wave of fear washed over him. He almost couldn’t admit it to himself, but he was scared—scared she might really leave him for that dream.

“What about me?” he asked, voice rough and low. “Was I in your dream?”

Emmy was quiet for a moment, then whispered, “I didn’t know you in that dream.”

James’s brow furrowed. “Was this before we met?”

His voice dropped, a note of pain in it. “Back then… you still loved him, didn’t you?”

Emmy didn’t answer.

She couldn’t deny it.

Before she met James, she’d loved Dean—wildly, blindly, with her whole heart.

But people move forward. Life keeps going. Everyone has moments when they’re lost, when they take the wrong path, but that doesn’t mean they’re stuck there forever.

She turned in his arms, somehow finding his gaze in the dark.

“Maybe the universe just didn’t want me to keep making the same mistakes. Maybe that’s why I had that dream with Dean.”

“But now that I’m awake, I’m not looking back anymore.”

She reached for his hand at her waist, lacing her fingers through his, holding tight.

“You’re the one I’m with now.”

“So… James, wherever life takes us, I want to walk it with you.”

News of Pearl’s arrest and Emmy’s rescue spread like wildfire, reaching Claudia before she’d even finished her first glass of wine.

Her hand jerked, red wine spilling down her wrist, but she didn’t even notice. All she could do was stare, stunned.

“How is this possible?”

Pearl wasn’t just anyone.

He was one of the three most ruthless drug lords on the border—vicious, untouchable.

He’d kidnapped so many people over the years, and the military had never even found his hideout, let alone taken him down.

But now, just because he grabbed Emmy, his supposedly unbreakable fortress had been wiped out overnight by special forces.

Claudia couldn’t make sense of it.

If the army was really this powerful, why hadn’t they gone after Pearl before? He’d taken plenty of women, some of them from the city’s most powerful families, but the authorities had never managed to catch him.

So why now? Why go all out for Emmy?

It took Claudia a long time to process the shock, to pull herself together.

She picked up her phone and called Evelina over. Her face was dark and tense as she grabbed Evelina’s wrist, her words coming out low and urgent.

“No matter what, you need to go get that marriage license with Juan tomorrow. Do you understand?”