Joanne’s elegant composure shattered into a thousand pieces right there on the polished floorboards. She dropped her designer handbag, her face twisting into a mask of burning frustration as she took two aggressive strides toward the towering billionaire.

"Why?!" Joanne burst out, her voice rising into an emotional scream that rang through the massive foyer. "Why the hell are you so concerned for a mere housemaid, Dorrent?! Why all of a sudden are you willing to throw your body, your wealth, and your entire empire into a literal suicide trap for her?! The cold, unyielding CEO of Gammer Tech Company that I have known for years never shows a single drop of care or concern to anyone! You have run your entire industrial kingdom with absolute iron and zero emotion, yet now, you are standing in front of me half-dressed, ready to die for a penniless servant from the slums! Where is this insane overprotectiveness coming from all of a sudden?!"

Dorrent’s chest plate heaved violently, his silver eyes swamping with a dangerous, dark crimson fire that threatened to burn the room down. He took a predatory step forward, his jaw clenching. He opened his mouth, his lips curling into a venomous snarl as he prepared to roar the humiliating truth right into her face—to tell her that she was nothing but an unresponsive, useless body compared to the girl dying in the hospital.

But before a single word could rip from his throat, Shadron stepped forcefully between them.

Shadron knew his friend better than anyone else on the planet, and the exact millisecond he saw the feral shift in Dorrent’s eyes, he knew the billionaire was about to unleash a wave of completely devastating, hurtful words. More importantly, Shadron knew that if Dorrent spoke right now, he would end up spilling secret things that he was absolutely not ready to reveal to Joanne.

From the shocking, earth-shattering confession Shadron had just heard a minute ago before Joanne’s arrival, the puzzle pieces had finally locked into place inside his mind. Dorrent had been suffering from total male impotence for years. He had completely avoided having real, penetrative sex with Joanne because of this secret condition—a condition he had been too proud and ashamed to even tell his best friend. Now, a massive wave of understanding washed over Shadron. He finally understood why Joanne always came to him in private, constantly weeping and complaining about how Dorrent was completely cold in bed, how he had never actually had real, natural sex with her despite her beauty queen status.

Dorrent wasn’t acting out of romantic love; his primal Alpha brain was merely ensuring that the only woman on this entire planet who could actually get him hard was kept alive and well. He was protecting his only cure, ensuring that he would still have someone to fuck so he wouldn’t remain a broken, empty shadow of a man forever. Shadron, being a dominant Alpha himself, completely understood how that felt—how absolutely impossible it was for a powerful man to go through life without having someone to satisfy his dick.

Recognizing the absolute catastrophic damage that would happen if the supermodel discovered the tech tycoon’s hidden medical failure, Shadron aggressively raised his hands, cutting into the screaming match with a loud, calculated voice to intervene.

"Joanne, stop! You have it all completely wrong!" Shadron shouted, forcing his posture to look entirely serious as he grabbed Joanne’s trembling shoulders to draw her focus away from Dorrent’s murderous face. "He isn’t doing this because he cares about some slum rat! He is doing this because his consciousness is eating him alive right now!"

Joanne froze, her breathing shallow as she stared at Shadron through her tears. "What... what do you mean, Shadron?"

"The night Jannah was shot on that lower sector road... she wasn’t just walking around, Joanne," Shadron explained rapidly, inventing a calculated cover story on the fly while ensuring the core facts remained intense and heavy. "She was sitting inside Dorrent’s vehicle. She was traveling right next to him, and when the Boren syndicate enforcers opened fire on the car, Jannah literally took the bullet that was meant to go straight through Dorrent’s skull! She shielded him from the hit!"

Shadron let out a heavy, dramatic breath, his eyes flicking back to the rigid, silent tycoon behind him. "Dorrent might be an incredibly heartless, ruthless CEO in the boardroom, yes—we all know that. But for a sovereign Alpha of his status to just stand by, fold his arms, and watch an innocent girl from the slums die an agonizing death on his own behalf... that is way beyond simple ruthlessness. That is a matter of unpaid debt. His pride cannot handle the fact that his survival was bought with her blood, and now he feels completely bad that her system is going to shut down because she saved his life."

Joanne’s jaw dropped in shock. The burning anger completely vanished from her beautiful face, replaced by a sudden, terrifying wave of surprise and rising panic. She slowly turned her head back toward Dorrent, her eyes wide as she looked at his damp, unbuttoned shirt and his sweat-coated chest.

"Oh, my god..." Joanne whispered, her voice trembling as she took a shaky step toward her boyfriend. "Dorrent... is that true? You... you almost died on that road? Why on earth did you not tell me a single thing about this layout?! Why had you almost been killed by hitmen, and I was never told about the danger to your life?!"

Dorrent remained completely, terrifically still, his silver eyes drilling into the marble floor as he forced his jaw to stay shut, silently letting his friend control the narrative.

Shadron let out a quiet, soothing sigh, stepped back to Joanne’s side, and gently placed a hand on her coat sleeve, anchoring the deception with an absolute, heavy finality.

"Because of course he didn’t want you to worry, Joanne...He cares about you that much that he’d rather suffer in silent than make you worry about him."