In Bed With the Billionaire

by Jackie Ashenden

She turned, looked up at the man who’d kidnapped her, threatened to kill her, then had ultimately fallen in love with her, the way she’d fallen in love with him.

  As usual the blunt features of his rough, scarred face were unreadable. Except for her, of course. She could read him, and she could see the concern in his dark eyes. He was worried for her. “Is it wrong of me, Eli? Is it wrong of me to want him to be okay?”

  Something in his face softened a little. “No, of course not. He’s your brother.”

  She let out a breath. “I mean, I can understand why the others don’t trust him, not after what Dad put them all through. But … after what Temple told us. God. He’s spent all this time working behind the scenes and actually trying to destroy the network. That doesn’t make him anything like Dad.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Elijah’s voice was flat, the way it always was when he was delivering unpalatable truths. He was a hard man who didn’t flinch from stuff like that, and that was part of what she loved about him. He never lied to her. “But sixteen years is a long time to pretend to be a villain, princess. Some of that sticks. You know that.”

  Of course she did. Elijah had spent seven years as her father’s right-hand man, and he hadn’t emerged from that unscathed. “Yeah, but you came back from it.”

  “And you remember what I was like,” he said without hesitation. “I would have done anything to get what I wanted, and I didn’t much care if that was right or wrong.”

  Violet lifted her chin. “You don’t much care now.”

  One corner of his scarred mouth lifted in a rare smile, the one that never failed to make her feel like she’d somehow made it rain in the middle of the Sahara desert. “Well, I care about you.”

  “And Theo cares about me. I don’t think he’d do anything that would hurt me.”

  “You don’t ‘think’…”

  “I know, okay? He wouldn’t.” Even when she’d thought he was all bad, when after sixteen years of thinking he was dead, he’d suddenly turned up and taken her from Elijah by force a month earlier, he’d done it to get her out of the ruins of their father’s empire, to keep her safe. And okay, so he hadn’t let her in on his real reason for being Jericho, but she understood that was to keep her safe too. He’d always been her protective older brother and that hadn’t changed, she could feel it in her heart.

  Out of nowhere a memory came back to her, of the look in his eyes as he’d faced her in that dingy apartment in Alphabet City. The weariness in him. A bleakness that made her soul hurt. A man coming to the end of his strength.

  Fear crept through her once again, and this time it wasn’t so much about whether the others were going to kill him as it was about the fact that he might even welcome it.

  No, that wasn’t going to happen. Not if she could help it.

  She turned and reached for the door handle. “Come on, let’s do this.”

  The Second Circle was an exclusive private members’ club owned by Alex St. James, one of the billionaire members of the Nine Circles Club, and was where the Nine held their meetings.

  They had a private room that gave the impression of an old-fashioned English gentlemen’s club, with tall library bookshelves, wingback armchairs, a long sofa, and a fireplace with a fire burning in the grate.

  Honor St. James, her best friend, was standing next to one of the armchairs by the fire, talking to a tall, broadshouldered blond man. Gabriel Woolf, ex-biker turned billionaire construction magnate, Honor’s lover and also Violet’s half-brother. Which was still weird even after a month had passed since she’d found out about it. There had been some fairly awkward conversations with Gabriel over the past couple of weeks, but she thought the two of them were coming to terms with their unexpected sibling connection. Family was important to Gabriel, and Violet liked that since it hadn’t been for her own family, the Fitzgeralds.

  One thing was for sure; at least she knew she could count on both Honor and Gabriel backing her if she had to argue for Theo’s life. And maybe she’d be able to get Alex, Honor’s brother, on board too. He was sitting on the sofa with his arm around his lover and blonde Russian bodyguard, Katya, his head turned in Honor’s direction. Alex had been estranged from his sister for a long time, but now they’d found each other, the two of them had gotten close. If Honor supported her, Alex would, Violet was sure.

  Of course that just left the other two members of the club, Zac Rutherford and Eva King. And they were not friends of the Fitzgeralds, not at all.

  Eva was sitting cross-legged in the armchair opposite Honor’s, Zac, tall and massive, standing beside it like a knight guarding a princess. Eva had been her father’s prisoner for two years, held as a sex slave, and not only that.

  She’d also been the one to put a bullet through his head.

  Violet still couldn’t quite untangle her own feelings about her father’s death, let alone the fact that this woman had killed him, which didn’t exactly make her Eva’s friend. But she couldn’t deny the small, pale-haired woman had been through a lot, and it was understandable she didn’t think much of the Fitzgerald family as a whole. What was more problematic was the fact that she would side with Zac.

  Her gaze shifted to the man standing beside Eva’s chair. The big ex-mercenary’s expression was enigmatic, rather like Elijah’s could sometimes be, which wasn’t particularly encouraging. She knew Zac’s primary motivation was protecting his lover and, after Eva’s experience, she couldn’t blame him. But that also made him extremely one-eyed. He was a strong-willed guy—hell, all these men were—yet there was something very black and white about Zac, and that really annoyed the crap out of her.

  He was not going to be on board the “save Theo” train.

  Elijah shut the door behind her and for a second there was silence as the six people already in the room turned to look at her and Elijah. Then Honor was coming forward, smiling, reaching out to give Violet a hug. Gabriel came after her, though he wasn’t the hugging type, settling instead for a surprisingly warm smile, that she knew for a fact was pretty rare for him.

  Alex grinned at her from his place on the sofa while Katya nodded a greeting.

  Eva lifted her chin, while Zac merely inclined his head like a king accepting homage.

  Arrogant bastard.

  Gabriel had dragged over an armchair beside Honor’s near the fire, indicating that Violet should sit. She didn’t really want to, but Elijah’s hand settled in the small of her back, gently urging her over to it so she went, sitting down and folding her arms, trepidation lying like a stone in her gut.

  “So,” she said after a second, deciding to get right to the point, “did you find anything in Dad’s stuff we can give Theo?” She directed this to Eva, who was sitting there with a grim expression on her face.

  “No,” Eva said flatly, making Violet’s stomach lurch. “When I got into his computer a few weeks ago, I was looking for something we could take to the authorities. But as soon as I hacked in, a number of his files wiped themselves.”

  “Oh.” Violet said, trying not to let her disappointment show. Great, she’d been hoping her father had had something there that could be useful, that could somehow incriminate his whole network. And then she’d send it to Theo, he’d do his thing with the rest of his operations, taking everything down, and then he’d come home.

  You really think it’s going to be that simple?

  No, of course it wouldn’t be. Nothing ever was.

  “But.” Eva held up a hand. “I do have a guy who’s an expert on recovering deleted files. I gave the hard drive to him a week or so ago and he’s been trying to see if he can get them back.”

  Violet stilled, staring at the other woman. “And?”

  “And…” Eva grinned. “He managed to recover at least a couple. They weren’t only deleted, but heavily corrupted as well, so it was a bit of a fucking mission to get them at least readable, but … They’re good ones. Emails, financial records, lists of bad cops who were paid to turn a blind eye, plus a lot
of other shit that could implicate people who definitely would not want to be implicated. All the good stuff in other words.”

  “That’s fantastic,” Honor said, glancing at Violet. “That’s exactly what Theo needs, right?”

  “Why don’t we take this to the authorities ourselves?” Alex asked. “I mean, we were going to, weren’t we?”

  Violet’s gut lurched again. Shit, she’d forgotten. Alex was no friend of the Fitzgeralds. either, not after what her father had done to Daniel St. James, Alex and Honor’s father. Not after what had happened with a friend of her father’s called Conrad South.

  “We can’t,” Gabriel said, his voice a rough, deep rumble. He was sitting in the armchair, Honor perched on the arm next to him, his arm possessively around her waist. “Not if we want to take the rest of this shit down. You know what Zac told us.”

  Alex rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know what Zac told us. So we’re just going to rely on the fact that Temple—who, may I add, has already betrayed Eva once—will make sure Jericho does what he says he was going to? I mean, if that’s even going to work.”

  Violet frowned and opened her mouth to reply.

  But before she could say a word, Zac said, “I believe Temple.”

  “Only because she’s under contract to you,” Elijah pointed out coldly from his place behind Violet’s chair.

  There was a heavy, tense silence at that.

  Elijah had told Violet a couple of weeks earlier that Zac had taken out a contract on Theo’s life. She’d been upset, so much that Elijah had offered to send his own guy out to take down whichever assassin Zac had sent. But in the end, she’d decided that it wasn’t worth the grief. If Theo truly had become exactly like their father, then death was the only option.

  Until Temple had come along and the truth of Theo’s intentions had come out.

  There were so many reasons not to trust what Temple had said, and yet Violet had believed her instantly. Because she knew her brother. Sure, he must have changed at lot over the years, Elijah would be right about that. But she was sure that somewhere deep inside, he was still the big brother she’d loved. The protective big brother.

  What he’d been doing all this time was exactly the kind of thing he would do, and it made total sense to her.

  She wasn’t just grasping at straws. She wasn’t.

  “A contract that should have expired by now.” Violet tried to make her voice as cold and as hard as Elijah’s. “We need him alive, Zac. You know that.”

  Zac’s amber gaze was impenetrable. “And did I disagree?”

  “Well, no.” And he hadn’t. But there was still something in his gaze, in his voice, that made her doubt. “You don’t want him alive though, do you?”

  “With all due respect, Violet, you don’t know what I want.”

  “Enough.” Elijah’s hard tone cut through the tension like a sword, his hand coming to rest on Violet’s shoulder, warm and heavy, calming her. “Let’s deal with the facts as we have them now. We need Jericho alive, and we need to get him the information that’s going to ensure the American networks go down at the same time as the rest of Europe’s. And you know that getting that network down is a priority. I’ve spent seven fucking years getting it to this point and I’m not letting it loose now. Anything else we can deal with later.”

  “If that’s what he’s going to use the information for,” Alex murmured. “He could want to use it to take over instead.”

  “If he was going to do that, he would have done it years ago,” Honor pointed out calmly. “And he didn’t.”

  Alex frowned at that, but didn’t protest. Because really, what could he protest about? It was true, Theo could have come in at any time and wiped his father out. But he hadn’t.

  Violet didn’t know why that was but maybe it had to do with the relationship between father and son. A relationship she knew nothing about.

  “Why didn’t he?” Eva’s voice was soft, echoing the question that no doubt the rest of them were thinking. “I mean, he basically left the whole of the U.S. alone for years. Why was that?”

  “Fitzgerald spent a couple of years negotiating with him,” Elijah said. “Jericho kept stringing him along. But whatever the reason was, Honor’s point was valid. I don’t think he’s after the operations here. Besides, even if he was, I have a few emergency backup plans in place. It wouldn’t take much to take down all the shit here if worse came to the worst.”

  “Then I say we give this information to him.” Katya’s Russian accent was soft, decisive. “And the sooner the better.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Alex murmured. “I don’t trust Temple, but hell, what have we got to lose? If Jericho’s lying through his fucking teeth, we’ll soon find out, and we’ll act accordingly. Right, Zac?”

  “Yes,” Zac said. “Yes, we most certainly will.”

  Despite Elijah’s hand on her shoulder, Violet felt a chill steal through her. “What about afterwards?” she asked suddenly. “Once this is all over, once he’s done what he’s promised and he will do it, make no mistake, what about then?”

  “‘Once this is all over,’” Zac echoed softly. “Yes, I want it to be over, Violet. I think all of us are ready for this to be over.” He paused, and just for a moment, the barriers in his amber gaze disappeared, and she thought she saw something there, a glitter of some kind of emotion, she didn’t know quite what. “And one way or another,” he went on in the same tone, “it will be.”

  * * *

  An hour later, the room was quiet, Zac shutting the door behind Alex and Katya, who were the last to leave.

  Eva, standing by the fire, watched as he flicked the lock then turned back to her.

  Her heartbeat sped up, because sometimes he liked to celebrate the end of a Nine Circles meeting by undressing her and then making love to her on a soft silk rug on the floor in front of the fire.

  Well, he was shit out of luck tonight. Something was up with him and she wasn’t going to be letting him touch anything until she found out what it was.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said, meeting his amber gaze. “You’re going to get Temple to kill him anyway.”

  He let out a breath then came over to her, his arms sliding around her and bringing her in close against the heat of his big, muscular body. He didn’t often touch her in public, respecting the fact that she was still getting used to touch again after years of not being able to stand it. And some part of her quite liked that he didn’t, because it made the way they came together in private so much more intense.

  Like now, when every nerve ending she had woke up, trembling in anticipation of the moment when his bare skin would touch hers.

  Except it was going to have to tremble in anticipation a little longer.

  She put her hands against his broad chest, enjoying the feel of all that hard muscle beneath the cotton of his black business shirt, holding herself away so she could look up into his whiskey-colored eyes.

  “Damn you,” he said without heat. “Since when did I become so easy to read?”

  “You’re never easy to read. I just know you too well.”

  He sighed. “Angel…”

  “You have, haven’t you? You’re going to get Temple to kill him.”

  “It doesn’t matter what his intentions are, he’s still a threat. And after this is all over, he’ll still be a threat.”

  She spread her fingers out, feeling the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her palm. “This isn’t about me, though, is it? It’s about you.”

  His gaze flickered. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m talking about revenge, Zac.” She searched his face. “When I shot Fitzgerald, I took your revenge away from you. Don’t think I don’t know that.”

  His expression softened. “That was yours to take, angel. It wasn’t mine.”

  “And yet you still want it. I can see that. It’s why you’re so set on getting rid of Jericho, isn’t it?”

  The strong line of his jaw hardened. “Fitzgerald hurt you
. He hurt so many—”

  “Yes, I know. But Fitzgerald is dead.”

  “His son isn’t.”

  Eva slid a hand up Zac’s chest, cupping his hard, stubbled jaw. “But his son may not be the same kind of guy. I mean, I don’t know him, he could be. But he also might not. He might actually be trying to do the right thing.”

  “I realize that. It doesn’t change what he’s done, though. And it doesn’t change all the lives he’s ruined.”

  “Oh, bullshit.” She let her fingers trail along his jaw, stroking. “You want your revenge. You want to take him out because you never got the chance to kill his father.”

  Zac stared at her, the fire reflected in his eyes, all gold and red and orange. “I never protected you, angel. And I should have.”

  God, this man. The past few weeks with him had been so rewarding, the happiest of her life, even with all the shit going down with Elijah, Violet, and her brother. She never thought she’d have this, never in a million years. Yet it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. Zac had a will like iron, and his dominant nature absolutely refused to let him back down.

  Luckily she was a determined bitch when she wanted to be, plus she had a secret weapon—the key to his heart. “Hey, you said it yourself, nothing can change what happened in the past and certainly not killing Theodore Fitzgerald.” She dropped her hand from his jaw to the top button of his shirt, flicking it open. “And anyway, you are protecting me. And I’m safe.”

  “Why does keeping him alive matter to you?”

  Eva went on to the next button, flicking that open too and spreading out the fabric, exposing a wedge of bronze skin. “I feel sorry for Violet. She’s lost a lot, and I don’t like the idea of her losing a brother, no matter what he’s done.” She looked up at him, willing him to understand. “You know how I feel about family.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I don’t want you to have yet another death on your conscience,” she went on over the top of him, not giving a crap about the fact that he hated to be interrupted. “You have to know when to say enough, Zac. So that’s what I’m saying. Enough.”