The Billionaire Beast

by Jackie Ashenden

  Having to live here was another thing she hadn’t expected, but on thinking about it, she decided it wasn’t a problem. The apartment she’d once shared with Charles could get lonely at nights, the silence reminding her acutely of a man who shouldn’t be in a hospital bed but back at home with her. As the months had passed, she’d toyed with the idea of moving, going somewhere else, somewhere smaller. But then, what if he woke up? What if he wanted to come home? She had to make sure his home was still there for him if that happened.

  “I should warn you that I don’t sleep much,” Nero said. “And if I want something in the middle of the night, you’ll have to wake up and get it for me.”

  Again, that wouldn’t be a problem. Her own sleep had been disturbed for two years now, and getting up and having tasks to do was certainly better than lying awake thinking. “I can deal with that.”

  Nero took a couple of steps back and put the heels of his hands on the desk, leaning back against it and curling long, powerful fingers over the edge. “I might want anything in the middle of the night.” That hard, uncompromising gaze held hers. “Sex for example.”

  Perhaps this was another test to shock her. In which case, he was going to be disappointed.

  Phoebe lifted a shoulder. “Then I’m sure I can arrange that for you.”

  He didn’t move but his gaze drifted down her body in an openly appraising look. “And what if I want sex with you?”

  Her heartbeat sounded weirdly loud in her head and she could feel her cheeks heating. Which was annoying. He didn’t want her, of course he didn’t, so why the comment should unsettle her, she had no idea. This was merely yet another test. He did seem to be a man who liked to push people.

  “Again, we’d have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” she said, making sure her voice was completely calm.

  His gaze narrowed, zeroing in on her like a sniper with a target. His features were completely unyielding, as if they’d been carved out of granite, and she had the odd impression that if she flung herself at him, his body would feel just as hard, too. She’d probably break herself or shatter or—

  Good God, why was she thinking about flinging herself at him? She wouldn’t, not in a million years. Why would she? She was engaged, and it didn’t matter that the man she was going to marry was in a coma. She still loved him.

  But would you have sex with him? If he asked? For six figures?

  Phoebe ignored that thought, too, keeping her hands clasped in her lap, meeting Nero’s disquieting stare.

  He said nothing, the silence around them becoming not so much awkward as heavy, dense. As if she was standing on a mountain top and the clouds were rolling in.

  Then abruptly he pushed himself away from the desk and turned, heading toward the mysterious door behind his desk without another word.

  Phoebe blinked at his retreating back. Was he leaving? Was the interview over? “Mr. de Santis? Is that it? Do I have the job?”

  He reached for the door handle, gripping it in one long-fingered powerful hand. Then he paused and turned back to her, his expression hard. “Do you want the job?”

  It’s not like you have a choice.

  “Yes,” she said firmly, ignoring the disquiet that coiled in the pit of her stomach. “Yes, I do.”

  “Then it’s yours. You start in an hour.”

  Phoebe stared at him in shock. “Wait . . . What? An hour? But I’ll need to get back home to—”

  “James will organize to have your stuff brought to you,” he said curtly. “You should find everything else you need here already. An hour, Miss Taylor. Be ready.”

  And then before she could ask him any more questions, he’d disappeared through the door, shutting it very firmly behind him.

  Phoebe allowed herself a glare in the door’s direction. Ridiculous. Did he really expect her to take up the position within an hour of being given it? There was so much to prepare. She had to get home and organize her things, go to the hospital, and give the staff her new contact details. Tell her parents she had a new job and would be living somewhere else. And . . . and . . .

  Not so much to do.

  Phoebe let out a breath. Well, maybe not, but still. An hour? He really expected her to start what was sounding like a very difficult job without any preparation at all?

  Apparently, he does.

  At that point the door to the office opened and James, the butler, came in, his craggy face expressionless. “Mr. de Santis has requested that your belongings be brought here, Miss Taylor. If you could kindly let me have your apartment key and a list of items, I’ll make sure that happens as quickly as possible.”

  God. This was moving too fast. Far too fast. She needed to get home and sort through her stuff, not have someone else do it for her. What if she forgot something important? And did she really want some complete stranger going through her knicker drawer?

  “Miss Taylor?” James prompted.

  Come on, pull yourself together. This isn’t how you deal with unexpected changes. You cope. You handle it. And apart from anything else remember. Six figures. Every three months.

  Phoebe shook herself. “Yes, of course. Do you have something I can write on?”

  Five minutes later, after she’d collected her discarded hairpins and given a list of items to James, plus a few instructions on what not to touch in the apartment, Phoebe was escorted upstairs and through the hallways of the house to what would be her rooms.

  Nervousness and a certain amount of trepidation sat in her gut, though she did her best to ignore them, looking around her at the house to distract herself instead.

  It seemed much bigger on the inside than it had looked on the outside, with great long hallways, stairs spiraling up to other floors at various intervals, and lots of doors leading to many different rooms. It was almost mazelike. And there was hardly any furniture. A hall table there, an armchair shoved into a corner there, a shelf or two against a wall.

  What there was a lot of, though, was art.

  Paintings lined the dark walls, along with beautifully shot photographs, all, without exception, landscapes. Of cities. Of jungles. Of mountains. Of deserts. There were none of people whatsoever.

  Interesting. Did he have something against people, or did he just prefer nature?

  As they passed one long, artfully framed panorama shot, obviously taken from the top of a mountain, Phoebe murmured “I see Mr. de Santis is fond of the outdoors.”

  “Yes,” James said. “Mr. de Santis appreciates landscapes.”

  “Lucky he has lots of walls in that case.” She glanced over her shoulder at the long hallway stretching behind her. “This house is certainly much bigger than I thought it was.”

  “Mr. de Santis bought the whole block. The buildings have all been renovated into one house.”

  Phoebe stared at the butler in surprise. Well, that certainly explained why the house felt so big inside. “That’s . . . what? Five houses? Seems an awful lot of room for one man.”

  “Mr. de Santis likes his space,” James replied with finality, indicating that was the end to the matter.

  But she couldn’t resist pushing a little. “They say he never leaves his house. Is that really true?” She could hardly imagine it was. There was something so vitally alive about him, a kind of raw, animal vibrancy that didn’t go with the image of a man huddling inside his house, too afraid to go out.

  It would be like putting a lion, or a tiger, in too small a cage.

  James didn’t answer, his expression forbidding, so Phoebe let it lie. She’d find out the truth soon enough, she supposed.

  Finally, James led her through an ornate door and into a spacious and surprisingly light set of interconnected rooms.

  There was a bedroom painted a delicate shade of mint green, with huge windows covered in swathes of sheer, billowy white curtains, and an honest-to-God four-poster bed in one corner. Off the bedroom was a small sitting room painted in the same shade, with lots of bookshelves full of books and a comfortab
le looking white couch and armchair. There was a bathroom off the bedroom, too, white-tiled, with a separate shower and bath that looked big enough for an entire football team.

  It was rather lovely, she had to admit. Not to mention unexpected. The decor was feminine and romantic, that made her think that Nero de Santis had definitely not had a hand in planning it. Though maybe she was doing him a disservice. Maybe there was a hidden romantic underneath that hard, intensely masculine exterior of his.

  The thought made her smile. No, there was nothing romantic about him, she’d bet her life on it.

  “Anything else I can get for you?” James asked, already moving toward the doorway, clearly impatient to get on with whatever it was he did.

  “No, I don’t think so. Oh, I suppose Mr. de Santis will . . . what? Call me when he wants something?”

  “Yes,” James said. “He will.” And before Phoebe could ask him anything more, the elderly butler vanished through the doorway, pulling it firmly shut behind him.

  Phoebe stood for a minute in the middle of the room, feeling the sudden silence settle down on her like a heavy weight, combining with the nervousness and considerable trepidation to form a thick, hard lump in her gut.

  Had she really done the right thing in taking this job? It clearly wasn’t going to be easy, not with Nero as an employer. He was . . . strange.

  In fact, this whole set-up was strange.

  Phoebe moved over to the windows, pushing aside the gauzy curtains, peering out. For some reason, she half-expected there to be bars over the glass, but there was nothing marring the view down into what looked to be a stunningly beautiful garden.

  There were small trees and shrubs and beds of colorful flowers. White shell paths wound through the foliage, and she could even see the sunlight catching on the drops of a fountain in one corner of it.

  She leaned her head against the glass, half-smiling. New York could be wonderful like that, with small emerald gems of gardens hidden behind imposing brick walls or behind the gray facades of buildings. It reminded her of the rose garden in London her father was fanatical about maintaining, though that garden had been planted much more rigidly than this one here was.

  There was a wildness to the garden below her window, a certain untamed quality to it that her father would have never allowed in his rose garden.

  Rather like Nero de Santis himself.

  Her scalp suddenly prickled at the remembered sensation of his fingers in her hair, the skin over her cheekbone tingling from where he’d stroked it.

  Frowning, Phoebe shoved him out of her head. It wasn’t time to be thinking about her employer, it was time to be preparing herself for her new job.

  Letting the curtain fall, she made her way over to the bed and sat down on it, putting her handbag in her lap and digging around for her phone. Bringing it out, she punched in the hospital’s number, giving them her new details about which they sounded completely uninterested. After that, she quickly checked the time, then called her parents to let them know that she finally had a job and would be living somewhere else temporarily.

  Her mother answered the phone on the second ring, sounding the way she always did, light and slightly out of breath, as if she’d been running to get the phone. “Oh, Phoebe! I’m just on my way out. Why do you always call at such an inconvenient time?”

  Once, her mother’s first words every phone call had been “How is Charles?” Now, they were either about how inconvenient Phoebe’s call was or questions about why hadn’t she called sooner.

  “Sorry,” Phoebe said patiently. “I just wanted you to know that I have a new job.”

  “But how wonderful!”

  “Yes, it is. But it’s a live-in arrangement. Which means I won’t be at the apartment for a little while.”

  “Sounds fabulous! Oh, Phoebe, I do wish you were back here. Your father has decided to give a dinner for those stuffy old colleagues of his and . . .” Her mother wittered on, relaying the usual catalogue of complaints and slights that had been the soundtrack to Phoebe’s life for years. She didn’t ask about Phoebe’s new job, not one single question, which was pretty much what Phoebe expected since her mother was only interested in one thing—herself.

  “That sounds dreadful, mum,” Phoebe said, only half-listening, her brain already going over whether the items she requested from her apartment were the right ones and what she’d do if she’d forgotten something. All her mother required was soothing anyway, not actual input.

  Another five minutes and more soothing noises later, along with the usual gentle “No, I’m not coming home quite yet” statements, Phoebe disconnected the call and sat on the bed, fighting the feelings of vague frustration that always filled her after a phone call with her mother.

  Then, just as she’d begun the laborious process of pinning her hair back into place, her phone buzzed again with a text message that looked to be a long list of instructions. It was from Nero.

  Phoebe slid the last pin into place, smoothed down her skirt, and picked up her phone.

  Okay, Nero de Santis. Bring it on.

  She was ready.

  Chapter 3

  Nero hit Phoebe’s name on his contact list and she answered on the second ring, which pleased him since he hated to be kept waiting. In fact, she’d proved to be incredibly responsive over the past three days, no matter what time of the day or night he’d demanded her presence, which also pleased him.

  Especially as he’d been working her hard. The first day he’d kept her up till midnight in his office, taking notes at a video conference with some of his Silicon Valley team. She hadn’t murmured a word of complaint, not even when he’d kept her up for another hour after the meeting had finished. Then he’d woken her at 6 A.M. the next morning to go get his morning coffee. There hadn’t been any complaints then either, nor when he’d sent her to a DS Corp, meeting at DS Tower downtown in his stead. Or when he’d sent her to an art auction afterward to purchase a rare Van Gogh landscape that had unexpectedly come up for sale.

  Or that second night, at 3 A.M., when he’d gone for a run on his treadmill and then discovered afterward that he was out of his favorite soda, which had necessitated Phoebe making a run to the nearest 7/11.

  Yes, at 3 A.M., she’d answered on the second ring, which even his best assistant hadn’t managed.

  It was impressive, he had to admit.

  “Mr. de Santis?” she enquired in her cool, calm way.

  “I need coffee,” he said without preamble. “Espresso, two sugars. Also, get me a plain bagel with cream cheese and lox.”

  “I can do that for you. When would you like these?”

  “Now.” He didn’t wait for a response, disconnecting the call and tossing his phone carelessly down on his desk before going back to the email he’d been reading. Which he read a second time, just to be sure he understood what it said.

  Sure enough, he had. The lead he’d been following for months now had ended up with yet another dead end.

  “Fuck,” he growled, his mood darkening as he slammed a hand down on the desk, only barely missing his keyboard. He wanted to pick something up and break it, or fling something at the wall and listen to it shatter. Eyeing his phone, he considered throwing that for half a second, then decided against it. He couldn’t be bothered getting another, and there were more productive things he could be doing with his fury.

  Glancing over at the file he had open on one of his other screens, Nero scowled at it. In between his own work and his half-brother Lorenzo getting in his face about investigating some sketchy behavior in one of their father’s accounts, he’d also been fiddling with this particular file. In fact, he’d been fiddling with it for a long time now, gradually accumulating names and dates and locations, trying to put together a picture of a man he’d been trying to find for years. Unfortunately, though, like the lead he’d been following up on today, every single piece of new information he’d received had led precisely nowhere. Which made finding this particular man–his
stepfather-incredibly fucking difficult.

  And he did want to find him.

  Even before the police had discovered him, a small, emaciated teenager in a walled-up room in the back of that house in Queens, Nero had been fueled by thoughts of revenge. It had been the fire that had kept him warm at nights when he’d had nothing but a single threadbare blanket to cover himself, and it was the ice that had kept him cool when temperatures climbed to over a hundred, turning the little room that was his world into an oven.

  He’d lain on the sagging bed in that room, planning what he’d do to his

  stepfather, the man his mother was trying to keep him safe from. Nero had actually never seen him, but he had no doubt the guy existed, because he’d heard him shouting some nights outside Nero’s secret room. He’d been five when his mother had hidden him away—for his own safety, she’d always said—because his new stepfather was controlling and violent, and hated children. However, his mother had told Nero that she needed to stay with him because he was helping her pay off her debts and that as long as he didn’t find out Nero existed, everything would be fine. Be patient, she’d told Nero. Once her debts were paid they could both escape, perhaps even try to find Nero’s real father. But until then Nero just had to stay there and be quiet and not attract his stepfather’s attention. He had to stay out of sight and out of mind. The ghost in the walls . . .

  He’d gotten out of that room and that house a long time ago and not with his mother in the end, but the need for revenge burned hotter in his blood than ever.

  He wanted to destroy his stepfather, the man who’d ensured that for ten years Nero had to stay hidden in one tiny room. He wanted to destroy him utterly.

  Except that prick had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

  It was frustrating, especially given all the resources at Nero’s fingertips. He was a goddamn computer genius who not only designed some of the world’s foremost digital defense systems, but could hack into them, too, and he could not find one stupid, lousy asshole.

  His irritation deepening, Nero pushed himself out of his chair and stalked out of the control room, heading for the doorway to the gym that led off his main office. It was going to be impossible to get any other work done when he was this pissed, and the only way to burn off the frustration was to run it out on the treadmill or bury it under some good, old fashioned weightlifting.