Dumped My Cheating Ex. Now I'm Sleeping Next to a Billionaire CEO novel Chapter 523

James watched the water in the pot as tiny bubbles started to form, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He didn’t turn around.

He couldn’t tell Grandma the truth.

Jamie was gone.

It was a wound he couldn’t talk about, a forbidden subject in the Nelson family. From the second he was born, fate seemed to have it out for him. Just because he showed up a few minutes after Jamie, their lives were split—one to paradise, the other to misery.

Jamie and James were both Nelsons, both family, both blood. But Jamie was the golden child. Everyone adored him, said he was born lucky, destined for a life most people only dream about.

James? He was the unlucky one. Bad omen. He never even got to nurse from his mother. As a newborn, he was sent away in the middle of the night to some farm out in the country.

He lived there until he was almost four, and only then did Grandma fight to bring him back home. But she was just one person, and no match for the old, stubborn ways of the Nelsons. They were determined to send him away—as far as possible.

They even put on this fake lottery, pretending to draw lots to decide his fate. James could still remember it: his tiny self, standing there looking at three identical slips of paper, already knowing that every single one said the same thing—“Camp.”

He still reached out and played along.

That’s how he ended up at a brutal training camp on the border at just four years old.

From then on, he understood. Other than Grandma, nobody wanted him to survive.

But for her, he had to.

Jamie eventually found out about him. He’d sneak visits, bring the best candy, the coolest toys, and stories about a world James had never seen. Jamie would even lie and say, “Everyone at home loves you, they’re just making you stronger so you’ll come back a hero.”

So James worked like his life depended on it. Whatever it was, he had to be number one.

At eighteen, he earned top honors. He didn’t ask for a prize, just three days off.

Those three days were all it took to lose the only person who ever truly cared about him.

He never forgave himself, or the Nelsons for how cold they were. They didn’t even give Jamie a proper funeral. Just buried him quietly, no ceremony, no goodbyes.

Only then did the family turn their attention to James. But by then, he didn’t want it anymore.

He spent the next four years taking every mission he could, doing whatever it took to cut the Nelson name out of his life.

Then one day, the Nelsons sent him Jamie’s journal.

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