Semua Bab Kiss It Better: Bab 291 - Bab 300

When independent, sassy Jasmine Baio is called home from lush, blue-skies-forever Europe, she finds out that her parents are destitute. She's the only one that can help get them back up on their feet. Jasmine might be fairy well-to-do and has everything going right for her, but she doesn't have such an enormous amount of money to salvage the kind of damage that's been caused.Helpless, she turns to the one person she would rather not.Victor Pierro.Victor has harbored an attraction towards Jasmine since they were little, and now she's come to him for help, he intends to fulfill that decades-long fantasy. How? By a proposition.Jasmine would spend five nights working for him. Warming his sheets.In return, he'll help her parents.It's a dingy deal, and Jasmine wants to back out so bad. But if she does, her parents would lose everything they've spent years building.In this game of hearts, will she win? Or will her close proximity with Victor cause her to admit the truth she's been avo

Growing up, I always told myself that once I made it, I could relax. Bouncing around the care system, working throughout high school, getting my first full time job as a valet at the Biao Casino—all those years, that’s what I kept telling myself.Push on, get through this, and one day, West, one day you can sleep through a whole damn night.All that fighting and striving. Living off beans and rice; fixing my own bike chain for the millionth time; living in a shoebox apartment with four other roommates. Working all those hours, and studying in the gaps in between.All of it was meant to build to something, to pay off one day, and now I’m sitting in my private office at the Biao, gazing out at the city skyline. It’s gone midnight, the sky is inky dark, and the lights out there glitter like gold.Has it paid off? I roll my stiff neck, pondering. There’s no fear of ever missing another meal in my life, and that’s not something I take for granted.Still, I didn’t expect victory to feel thi

The last time I saw Victor Pierro was the day he bought the Biao casino. My father made a whole big thing of it, throwing a huge party in the Biao ballroom and giving speeches to the guests, going on and on about how he saw Victor’s potential all along. How he’d built his protege up from nothing, just like the family business.Bullshit, obviously. A man like Victor isn’t built from the outside, he’s forged from within. I tried to warn my father about that, begged him to let me rewrite his speech, but he wouldn’t allow it. And for that whole party, I cringed at every patronizing word thrown Victor’s way.But Victor smiled along and laughed quietly in all the right places. He raised a glass to each condescending toast my father made, and he spun my mother around the dance floor. Old men with fat bank accounts slapped him on the shoulder, and still Victor kept his mask firmly in place.I saw it, though. What that night did to him—how much he loathed every second. Victor Pierro may have a

Part of me thinks she won’t come. That there’s no way Jasmine Biao, the spoiled little princess, will ever turn up for her scheduled humiliation the next evening. After all, even with her parents’ safety on the line, since when are any of the Biaos selfless?Hugh Biao would never do the same for her, if the situations were reversed. He’d never lower himself to save his daughter. The thought wouldn’t even occur to him as an option, and Jasmine and I both know it. She’s no fool, whatever else her flaws.Yet at eight o’clock precisely, there’s a soft knock at my office door. It’s dark outside already, city lights twinkling, but in this building our nights are only just beginning. The casino business is nocturnal by nature, and Jasmine has arrived for the start of her shift.“Princess.” I hold the door for her, waving her inside like the gentleman I am not. Jasmine sails past me into her father’s old office, her chin held high. She’s in that black trench coat again, with strappy high heel

I stumble through the next day like a tired, stiff-shouldered zombie. Every movement makes my bones creak and my head throb.Of course, Victor Pierro can’t take all the credit for my bleary eyes and hunched back. It’s not all from my shoe polish adventure. There’s also the jet lag after flying here from Switzerland and barely sleeping since, along with the stress that kept me tossing and turning even after I finally crashed into bed around dawn.I’m done. I’m toast. So tired that when the realtor I invited comes to tour the townhouse after lunch, I keep yawning every few seconds, clapping a hand over my mouth each time.“Don’t mind Jasmine,” my father says cheerfully after the eighth yawn. “She’s jet lagged, poor girl.”The realtor, a woman in her forties with a sharp suit and sharper eyes, glances at me. “Would you like to go lie down? I’m sure your parents can take it from here.”Can they? I’m way less certain.But as we all gather in the foyer, I’m swaying on my feet, and there are