by Meghan March
Ruthless King
Meghan March
Contents
Ruthless King
Copyright
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Also by Meghan March
About This Book
1. Keira
2. Keira
3. Keira
4. Keira
5. Keira
6. Keira
7. Keira
8. Keira
9. Mount
10. Keira
11. Mount
12. Keira
13. Keira
14. Keira
15. Keira
16. Keira
17. Keira
18. Keira
19. Keira
20. Mount
21. Keira
22. Keira
23. Keira
24. Keira
25. Keira
26. Keira
27. Keira
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About the Author
Also by Meghan March
Ruthless King
Book One of the Mount Trilogy
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Meghan March
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Meghan March LLC
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All rights reserved.
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Editor: Pam Berehulke
Bulletproof Editing
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Cover design: @ Letitia Hassar
R.B.A. Designs
www.rbadesigns.com
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Cover photo: @ Sara Eirew
www.saraeirew.com
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a review.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Also by Meghan March
Mount trilogy
Ruthless King
Defiant Queen
Sinful Empire
* * *
Standalone
Take Me Back
Bad Judgment
Beneath Series:
Beneath This Ink
Beneath These Chains
Beneath These Scars
Beneath These Lies
Beneath These Shadows
Beneath The Truth
* * *
Flash Bang Series:
Flash Bang
Hard Charger
* * *
Dirty Billionaire Trilogy:
Dirty Billionaire
Dirty Pleasures
Dirty Together
* * *
Dirty Girl Duet:
Dirty Girl
Dirty Love
* * *
Real Duet:
Real Good Man
Real Good Love
* * *
Real Dirty Duet:
Real Dirty
Real Sexy
About This Book
New Orleans belongs to me.
You don’t know my name, but I control everything you see—and all the things you don’t. My reach knows no bounds, and my demands are always met.
I don’t need to lend money to a failing family distillery, but it amuses me to have them in my debt. To have her in my debt.
She doesn’t know she caught my attention.
She should have been more careful.
I’m going to own her. Consume her. Maybe even keep her.
It’s time to collect what I’m owed.
Keira Kilgore, you’re now the property of Lachlan Mount.
* * *
Ruthless King is the first book in the Mount Trilogy.
Keira
Are those footsteps?
I freeze outside the door to my locked office and stare at the handle like it’s tainted with anthrax.
My employees wouldn’t dare. They know my office is off-limits. And my parents are seven hundred miles away in Florida, living it up as retirees on the monthly payments I send them from the dismal profits of the distillery. It’s barely hanging on, even after four generations of clinging to life making Irish whiskey in New Orleans.
This basement isn’t haunted. This basement isn’t haunted.
I repeat that truth like a chant until my heart slows to a semi-normal pace. My dead husband’s ghost better not be inside, or heaven help me, I’ll kill Brett again myself.
Summoning the same iron will it has taken to dig this company out of the trenches, I grasp the handle, yank the door open, and fling myself inside, attempting the element of surprise. Or false courage. Or . . . something.
“Trying to make an entrance?”
The deep voice that comes out of the dark chills me to the very marrow of my bones.
I’ve only heard it once before, through the battered wood of the same locked door I just barged past, but it was delivering threats I didn’t understand, not asking a question in that cool, controlled manner.
There’s no way I want to be in the dark with this voice.
He’s not a ghost. He’s worse.
He’s the frigging boogeyman, whispered about in the shadows but never mentioned in polite company, almost as if saying his name will make him appear. And no one wants that.
I’ve never said it. I don’t even want to think it now, but my brain conjures it anyway.
Lachlan Mount.
I fumble around, slapping the concrete wall to find the light switch, but when I flip it, nothing happens.
Oh, sweet Jesus. I’m going to die and I won’t even see it coming.
My antique desk chair creaks just before the dim glow of my desk lamp clicks on.
I see his massive hands first, then darkly tanned forearms with white cuffs rolled up. The light doesn’t reach his face.
“Shut the door, Ms. Kilgore.”
Swallowing back the saliva pooling in my mouth at the fact that he knows my name, I move my hand as though directly responding to his command. I grope for the handle behind me, when all I really want to do is turn around and run.
To the police.
Maybe they could . . . I don’t know. Save me?
I glance over my shoulder, clutching the knob as the door creaks shut, the urge to flee growing as the dim light of the hallway disappears from sight.
“Take a step in that direction and you’ll lose everything.”
My feet freeze to the cracked cement floor as a bead of sweat rolls down my chest. Normally I would attribute it to the sauna-like conditions produced by the whiskey stills, but not tonight.
“What do you want?�
�� I whisper. “Why are you here?”
The chair groans as he rises to his feet, those wide fingers refastening the button on his suit coat, but his face never comes into the light.
“You owe me a debt, Ms. Kilgore, and I’m here to collect.”
“A debt?”
My mind scrambles to think of how in the hell I could owe him money. I’ve never met him before. Hell, I’ve never seen him before, only heard his voice while I eavesdropped. My kind doesn’t mingle with his—well, at least, most of my kind. A few rumors circulated that he kept Richelle LaFleur, a girl from our church, as a mistress until she went missing a year ago. I shut that path of thinking down completely.
“What are you talking about?” Somehow, I manage to form the question.
Two fingers push a document titled Promissory Note across the scarred wood of my desk into the watery pool of light. My eyes lock on the papers, but I’m too terrified to step any closer.
Oh, sweet Jesus, Brett. What did you do? My heart slams against my ribs.
“Don’t you want to know how much your husband borrowed with this place as collateral?”
“How much?” I ask, inching toward him against my will.
“A half million dollars.”
I suck in a shocked breath. “You’re lying.”
With both hands on the desk, he leans down, exposing his face in the dim light. Hard features carved from granite, piercing dark eyes, and an unrelenting stare contrast with the relative civility of the suit that fits him to perfection.
“I never lie.”
A half million dollars? No way. “I would’ve known if Brett had borrowed that kind of money, and let me tell you—he didn’t.”
He shrugs as if the information means nothing to him. And maybe it doesn’t.
“His signature says that he did, and this debt is overdue.”
My eyes zero in on the papers on the desk. If he really did this . . . The effects would be catastrophic.
Four generations of Kilgores have dedicated their hopes, dreams, and fortunes to keeping this legacy alive. It can’t end with me.
“I don’t have the money.”
“I know.”
His response throws me back on my heels. “Then why—”
He moves out of the light and comes toward me. I shrink back against the wall as he advances, blocking my escape route to the door. There’s nowhere to run. He has me trapped.
“Because there’s something I might be willing to take in trade.”
It takes everything I have to keep my voice steady as my heart threatens to burst from my chest. “What?”
He stops a foot from me, and his full lips form a single word.
“You.”
Keira
I lock the door and sag against the wooden panel as soon as it shuts behind him with a decisive click. My body trembles like I just survived an encounter with the anti-Christ. All that’s left of Lachlan Mount in my office is his deceptively alluring scent—an intense burst of citrus mingled with spice and cedar—and my terror.
And I can’t forget the promissory note.
My gaze darts to the desk and then away.
It has to be fake. Brett did not borrow five hundred thousand dollars using the distillery as collateral, because he certainly didn’t use the money for any of the improvements I’ve been making. Every dollar that has gone into this place has been courtesy of the dog-and-pony show I put on for what seemed like every banker in town.
I’m in debt up to my eyeballs. Or, at least, I was. Now I’m in over my head.
Lachlan Mount.
I squeeze my eyes shut and lift my chin toward the ceiling, inwardly cursing my dead husband. My dad would probably say I’d be better off looking down to find his spirit.
How could you do this to me, you asshole?
This debt . . . to that man . . . is the final nail in Brett’s proverbial coffin. How could I not have seen through him for the user he was? Self-recrimination floats through me for the thousandth time. It’s like a bad rerun on TV I can’t help let play on. I fell for his bullshit lines. Thought we were going to build my family’s empire again. I thought I’d found a partner. I was the dumbass who suggested eloping because I was so convinced he was the one.
It didn’t take long before I realized he was an opportunistic asshole who cheated on me since before we were even married and started skimming money from the distillery bank account as soon as he had access.
I slap my palms against the solid oak door behind me. “Fuck you, Brett. Fuck. You.”
I take a deep breath, open my eyes, and straighten my spine. My pity party is over. I’ve spent just over three months dealing with the fallout of his death, only a month longer than we were married, and just when I thought I was finally back on solid ground . . .
Lachlan Mount happens.
I glance once more at the document sitting on my desk. The desk my great-grandfather had shipped over from Ireland that he’d sat at when they’d signed the very first lease for Seven Sinners Distillery property. There’d been seven sons, and their optimism about ruling the whiskey market had been undeniable.
I thought I finally proved myself worthy of sitting behind that desk when my father agreed to let me buy him out. I was so proud to be the first woman to take the helm of a distillery producing the finest whiskey in the Irish tradition in New Orleans, where our family planted roots and came to prosper even with the bitch of a law called Prohibition.
Part of me wishes I’d been alive during those days of lawlessness. When might made right, and a man—or a woman—could rise and fall according to how hard he or she was willing to work. But then again, I could picture Lachlan Mount there too with a tommy gun, eliminating every bit of competition in his way. Except he was probably still eliminating his competition the same way even now.
Actually, I have no idea how we managed to escape his notice this long, but apparently that lucky streak is over.
I summon my ladyballs and cross the cold, cracked floor to look down on the document that sits on the desk so innocently. I reach out as though I should have a hazmat suit on before I touch it, and grasp a corner of the paper between a thumb and forefinger.
I leave as much of the legal BS to the lawyers as possible, but with their hourly rates running so high and adding up so quickly, and with barely enough money to pay the overdue bills I already have, I’ve had to learn plenty myself just to keep costs down.
Promissory Note.
I read it word for word. My quick-and-dirty summary: this one document spells out the doom of my family’s heritage.
Brett Hyde borrowed five hundred thousand dollars from Lachlan Mount four months ago and it was due in full last week, on the three-month anniversary of Brett’s death. Or, if you wanted to get more specific, the anniversary of the discovery of his remains in a burned-out car in the Ninth Ward with an unidentified female.
A cacophony of emotions riot in my chest like brass bands on opposite street corners in the French Quarter, competing for tourist dollars.
This is a disaster.
I can’t pay it.
Mount knows I can’t pay it.
But there’s something he’s willing to take in trade.
I stumble around the side of the desk as my knees turn to water, and I collapse into the chair.
“You.”
Shivers rip through my body, leaving chill bumps across every inch of my exposed skin, even though the leather still carries the heat from his body. Like his blood runs hotter than any ordinary man. And maybe it does. One thing is safe to say—Lachlan Mount isn’t an ordinary man.
Sweet Jesus, what would he want from me?
My inner voice of reason develops an attitude. Are you serious? What the hell does any man want from a woman? You’ll pay on your back.
There may only be a few things I know as absolute fact in this life. Seven Sinners Whiskey is the best I’ve ever tasted. New Orleans will always be my home. And I am not going to prostitute myself
to pay my dead husband’s debts.
But still, that word hangs in the air.
“You.”
My hand shakes as I flip through the pages, committing the words to memory. But, really, the only things on this paper that matter are the amount I can’t pay and the date it was due. I flip it over, not wanting to look at it anymore, but a bold scrawl on the back mocks me.
* * *
Seven-day payment extension granted.
* * *
There’s an illegible signature beneath it, but it doesn’t take a genius to know whose it is.
Seven days? It wouldn’t matter if I had seven months. I can’t come up with a half million dollars.
What did Brett do with the money?
I wait in silence like the good Lord might answer me in a booming voice from the heavens, but that obviously doesn’t happen.
Does it really matter at this point? It’s gone. He’s gone. And I’m the one left on the hook because as I unpleasantly learned, as the sole beneficiary and executor of his estate, all his debts became mine to deal with. The mess of a bad marriage lasts a hell of a lot longer than till death do us part.