Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 558

Chapter 558

Mia’s POV

Dante took the wheel, of course.

Not before having a full two-minute argument with the woman about “responsibility,” “experience,” and other ridiculous male excuses. She finally gave in with an eye roll so dramatic it was almost impressive, but she made it very clear that she would be giving the directions and he would be following them without question.

Which put her in the front passenger seat.

And dumped me in the back like a child being driven to school.

We’d been on the road for about five minutes, the snow still falling but definitely lighter than it had been earlier, when I decided I needed answers.

“Okay, um…” I started, realizing I didn’t even know her name. How had I let that happen? “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Paula,” she replied without taking her eyes off the road, pointing for Dante to turn left at an intersection I hadn’t even noticed through the snow.

“Right. Okay, Paula,” I continued, leaning forward between the front seats. “Do you want to tell me exactly what Gwen and this Nick guy are doing out there in the middle of a blizzard?”

Paula shot me a quick look in the rearview mirror but didn’t answer right away.

“Seriously,” I pressed. “I know my cousin well enough to know she’s not the type to risk her life for a

romantic night with some guy she barely knows. If that’s even what this is.”

I saw Paula let out a heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping slightly as if she were carrying a huge weight.

“Nothing romantic,” she said finally. “Your cousin is just… kind of crazy.”

Dante let out a short laugh, eyes still fixed on the white road ahead.

“Crazy?” he repeated, clearly amused. “Gwen is way too controlled to be crazy. She makes lists of her lists. Plans her plans. She’s like an efficiency robot.”

“Oh, no,” Paula said quickly, shaking her head. “I don’t mean it figuratively. I mean literally. The medical term is post-traumatic dissociative amnesia.”

The car went completely silent.

Even Dante’s breathing seemed to pause.

“What?” I managed finally.

“Gwen had a fall,” Paula explained, her voice turning more professional now, like she was delivering a

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clinical report. “She fell down the inn’s stairs. Hit her head. Since then, she’s been experiencing significant memory loss.”

Dante glanced away from the road for a split second to look at her directly.

“How exactly did she fall down the stairs?” he asked, his tone sharp now. “Aren’t you responsible for that? Proper maintenance, warning signs, that kind of thing?”

I saw Paula shrink slightly in her seat, her posture turning defensive.

“We’re doing everything we can,” she said, guilt edging into her voice. “It was an accident. The snow, the ice… it happened so fast. And we’ve been taking care of her since then, trying to help her recover.”

She paused, staring out at the white landscape.

“That’s why Nick took her out in the middle of the night, in the middle of that blizzard,” Paula continued. ” To get her to the hospital. She was in intense pain and needed medical care. He wasn’t about to let her suffer just because the weather was bad.”

“Okay,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around all of it. “But that doesn’t explain why the two of them are having a… thing. Gwen isn’t like that. It doesn’t make sense. She’s methodical. Careful. The last person she dated was…”

I trailed off, frowning as I genuinely tried to remember.

“I don’t even remember who the last person she actually dated was.”

“Matthew?” Dante suggested, steering around a particularly high pile of snow.

“She swears nothing ever happened between them. Says it was just friendship. Which makes me think the last person she really dated was that idiot who-”

I stopped abruptly.

We didn’t talk about that.

None of us did. Gwen especially never talked about it. It was a wound. An ugly, painful one that had left deep scars, even if she pretended otherwise.

“Yeah,” Dante said quietly, knowing exactly who I meant even without me finishing the sentence. “That

idiot.”

A heavy silence settled over the car.

Then Paula cleared her throat, pulling us back to the present.

“Well, that’s why I said she’s…” She paused, clearly about to say crazy again. I could practically see the word forming on her lips, but she stopped herself and searched for something more precise. “She’s suffering from dissociative amnesia. Her brain is filling in memory gaps with things that feel logical to her, even if they aren’t real.”

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“Like what?” I asked.

Paula hesitated, as if debating whether she should keep going. Then she sighed and said it anyway.

“She believes, for some reason, that she and Nick are engaged. That they’re getting married. That they’ve been in a serious relationship for a long time.”

Dante burst out laughing.

Loud. Genuine. Completely inappropriate given the situation.

“I would pay to see that,” he said between laughs. “Gwen ‘l-have-a-five-year-plan’ convinced she’s engaged to a guy she probably met, what… three days ago?”

“Two,” Paula corrected flatly. Then she pointed ahead. “And you’re about to see it. That looks like Nick’s car.”

aned forward and saw what she meant. A dark car sat abandoned in the middle of the road, almost

pletely buried under snow.

ante slowed and parked behind it, and all three of us got out almost at the same time.

The cold hit me like a physical slap. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and walked toward the car.

Paula was already there, brushing snow off the windshield with her gloved hands and peering inside.

“It’s empty,” she said, real concern in her voice now.

“Nick!” she shouted, her voice partly swallowed by the wind. “Gwen!”

Nothing.

Just wind. Snow. Silence.

Paula turned to us, her eyes scanning the area.

“There’s a cabin nearby,” she said, already moving, following a path only she seemed able to see through the snow. “If they were smart, they might’ve spent the night there. Let’s check.”

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