A Woman Worth Billions Dated the Wrong Brother novel Chapter 395

Amber POV

Jasmine was two rooms away. I refused to leave Jason, so after her wound had been cleaned and treated, Pamela brought me à tablet and connected the video call from Jasmine’s room.

The screen came to life, and Jasmine appeared sitting upright in bed with fier upper arm bandaged and secured. She looked exhausted, filthy and far too satisfied with herself for someone who had recently been shot. Noah sat beside her, looking furious and worried, the kind of angry that only happened when fear had nowhere else to go.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said.

Jasmine’s expression became serious. “I followed the blood trail. Once I got that deep, my phone lost all service but I knew Marcus was behind me, so I kept going.”

Noah’s jaw flexed, but he said nothing. That was probably an achievement.

Then I heard footsteps.”

“What kind?”

“Several people moving quickly. I killed my light and waited near a turn.” She glanced toward Jason through the screen. “When they came around the corner, two men were carrying him.”

My hand tightened around Jason’s. “He wasn’t conscious?”

“No.”

“Walking at all?”

“No. One had him under the shoulders, and the other had his legs. He was completely out.”

I looked at Jason. The image formed too easily in my head-his body being carried through those tunnels like cargo, unable to fight or even know where they were taking him.

“Then what?”

“I shouted.”

Noah finally spoke. “You shouted.”

“Yes.”

“At armed kidnappers.”

“They already had Jason. Stealth had reached the end of its usefulness.”

He stared at her. “Continue before I develop an aneurysm.’

“The third guard came at me. I knocked him down.”

“The other two?”

“They dropped Jason.”

My stomach tightened. “Could that have caused the head injury?”

“No.” Her answer was immediate. “I saw blood in his hair before they dropped him.”

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My eyes went to the back of Jason’s head. He had already been injured before Jasmine reached him.

mine continued, her expression hardening. “That’s when I saw Mr. White. He was behind them.”

My anger returned instantly. “How close?”

“Twenty feet, maybe less.”

“You saw him clearly?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

She glanced toward her bandaged arm. “He shot me.”

Noah’s expression darkened immediately. “Without warning?”

“No.”

“Fucking coward.”

Jasmine glanced at him. “Mr. White wasn’t interested in a fair fight.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I went down.”

4. 4.

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Noah turned toward her. “You told Emory you stayed standing.”

“I may have simplified.”

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“You fucking lied.”

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“I’m sitting right here.”

“With a bullet wound through your arm.”

“Technically there are two holes.”

Noah stared at her. “Do you have some kind of biological inability to stop making this worse?”

Jasmine almost smiled. I didn’t.

“What did Mr. White do?”

“He ran deeper into the tunnels.”

“And you?”

For the first time, Jasmine hesitated. “I wanted to follow him.”

Noah swore under his breath.

“I really wanted to,” she continued. “He was right there, Amber. After everything he’s done, I could hear him getting away.”

I understood. If I had been standing there, I didn’t know whether I could have let him go either.

“But Jason was on the ground,” Jasmine said. “And the two men who’d been carrying him were still moving.”

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That was the choice: revenge or rescue. Mr. White or Jason.

What happened to them?”

“One went for his weapon. I knocked him out. The other tried to get away.”

“And you knocked him out too,” Noah said.

“Yes.”

“While shot.”

“I still had one good arm.”

Noah closed his eyes.

“And two legs,” she added.

His eyes opened again. “Please stop helping.”

Then Jasmine looked back at me, and her voice changed. Everything playful disappeared.

“I went to Jason. He wasn’t moving.”

I looked down at him.

“I checked his pulse first. It was weak, but it was there. Then I checked whether he was breathing.” She paused. ” He was.”

Something inside my chest loosened, not because I hadn’t known. I’d been watching Jason’s chest rise for hours now. But Jasmine had been the first person to know. In the darkness beneath Sum, with Mr. White disappearing farther into the tunnels and blood running down her own arm, Jasmine had put her fingers against Jason’s neck and discovered that I hadn’t lost him.

“I tried waking him,” she continued. “Nothing. I saw the blood around the back of his head, so I didn’t move him more than I absolutely had to. My phone had no service that deep. I couldn’t call Marcus, the mine command center or you.”

“The tracker,” I said.

She nodded. “The SOS beacon you added.”

Before she’d left the castle, I’d personally attached the tracker to her gear. Its regular location beacon was designed to communicate through the repeater network installed throughout the active search routes and send her position back to the mine command center, just like Marcus’s tracker.

But I’d added something else.

A separate emergency channel.

If Jasmine pressed the SOS control, the tracker would transmit a priority distress packet through every repeater it could reach. One copy went to mine command. The other went through an encrypted backup channel I’d

configured to mirror directly to my tablet at the castle.

Jasmine had made fun of me for being obsessive when I’d tested it three times.

I’d threatened to sew the tracker into her clothes if she took it off.

Now that extra emergency channel was the reason we’d known something had gone wrong.

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“I pressed it,” Jasmine said. “I didn’t know whether the signal would make it through.”

did. Mine received it.”

Her eyes met mine through the screen. “Good.”

“The command center didn’t.”

Her expression hardened. “What?”

“Your tracker was working. So was the emergency channel. But someone disabled the regular tracker feeds coming into the mine command center. They weren’t seeing you or Marcus anymore, and because the system was still showing the repeaters as operational, the officers there initially thought the missing updates were normal underground interference.”

“Mr. White.”

“Maybe.”

“Amber-”

“Later.”

She stopped, and for once Jasmine understood immediately. I couldn’t hunt Mr. White from Jason’s bedside, and I wasn’t going to let him steal this moment too.

“What happened after you triggered the SOS?”

“I waited.”

Noah gave a disbelieving laugh. “You waited.”

“Yes.”

“For Marcus.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him he’d better keep breathing because you were going to be really annoying if I came back without him.”

“He was worse.”

Now?”

“Because I was conscious enough to know I was conscious.”