The Billionaire Beast

by Jackie Ashenden

  “You have to stay inside, Nero,” his mother whispered outside the door. “You can’t come out, not yet. It’s not safe.”

  He couldn’t make his fingers work to turn the knob. They’d gone numb, and all the air in the entire room was rushing out. The pressure around his chest made him feel as if he couldn’t inhale, as if his ribs were unable to expand. This was worse than the night he’d first left his control room and gone to Phoebe’s bedroom. Far worse. Holy fuck, he was going to choke . . .

  “Please stay inside.” His mother’s voice this time was desperate. “You know he can’t know you’re here and I’m afraid of what he might do to me if he finds out. Please stay there. For me.”

  His hand dropped from the door knob and he took a couple of stumbling steps back, and the air rushed back into his lungs, the sound of his gasping breaths loud in the silence.

  After he’d gotten out of that room, the attention had overwhelmed him. There had been cameras in his face, people calling him, following him wherever he went. Crowds of people all pushing into his space, suffocating him, and the only way he’d managed to keep them out was by staying home. By closing his front door and shutting them all out.

  And why not? There was silence in his house. And space. He could breathe. There weren’t people everywhere, shoving things in his face and asking him how he felt. Asking him how he’d survived. What he thought about having a father like Cesare de Santis. Asking questions about his mother, questions he didn’t know how to answer.

  No, in his house the world was his to control, utterly and completely.

  The press had kept hounding him though, knocking on his door and filming through the windows. So he’d retreated even farther, into his office, into his control room, and there he’d stayed. Until eventually they’d given up and left him alone.

  Those rooms, they were his refuge. His safety. His haven.

  Nero stared at the door. His hands were shaking, so he curled his fingers into his palms, his nails pressing into his skin.

  “The truth is there. You just don’t want to see it.”

  He shut his eyes, because even now, even when he could feel the illusion under which he’d kept himself safe shatter around him, he didn’t want to see it.

  But she had. Phoebe knew. She’d been the one to confront him with it. Then she’d left him.

  She’d gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

  And you can’t go after her.

  He cursed aloud, forcing himself to walk to the door, to take that door handle again. But the sense of doom was back, crushing him, stealing his breath, choking him, whispering to him in his mother’s voice, and he couldn’t fight it, he just couldn’t.

  Stumbling back from the door again, he shuddered as the feeling passed. Then he flung back his head and roared with frustration. With fury. At himself. At the past that he’d tried so hard to put behind him and yet was still trapping him.

  At Phoebe, who’d told him she was his and then left. And hadn’t come back.

  But even that didn’t help, the fury burning him up from the inside out.

  He stormed down the hallway, pulling pictures off the wall and flinging them on the floor, breaking frames, and shattering glass. Destroying the windows to the outside world, all the little illusions he’d allowed himself to have. To believe.

  They were lies. They were all lies.

  They’re not the only lies you tell yourself.

  But he couldn’t bear to face that thought, not yet.

  He went into the dining room, broke all the pictures on the walls, overturned the chairs where she’d sat and shared his wine. Hurled the dining table he’d spread her over and where he tasted her against the wall, heedless of the expensive vase that smashed with it. Then he went into his office, tearing the pictures off the walls there, too, before striding into his control room. He picked up his chair and hefted it, hurling it straight at the wall of screens in front of him.

  They broke. Every last one.

  Chapter 13

  Charles died on the second day. It was peaceful and quiet, and she held his hand as he passed. Even though she’d been expecting it, the grief was still sharp. Not so much for his loss—she’d lost him two years ago and the pain of that wasn’t so raw—but for the future that had died with him and for the loneliness that she knew would engulf her the moment he was gone.

  Except . . . it didn’t. Grief, yes. Loneliness, no.

  She didn’t want to think about the reasons for that though, so hours after he’d died, she moved around his hospital room like a zombie, collecting belongings and tidying stuff away to make it ready for the next patient. She’d already called her parents to let them know the news, her father stoic and silent, her mother weeping and being histrionic, begging her to come home to “be with your family.”

  Which sounded nice, but it wasn’t love and support she would have come home to. They only wanted her back because they both needed something from her. Her mother needed an emotional crutch and her father needed her to support her mother. Neither of them actually wanted to see her.

  She’d made up some lie about how she couldn’t possibly come home now, that there was too much for her to organize and that she’d be in touch later, then she’d disconnected the call before her mother could start with the emotional blackmail.

  Phoebe took the sunflowers out of the vase and dumped them in the bin. They didn’t even look like they were wilting, and it seemed like a waste, but she wasn’t going to take them home.

  Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her jeans, and she pulled it out, glancing down at the screen. Nero, again.

  Her throat ached, her chest sore.

  He’d sent her lots of texts and had called as many times, too, but she’d ignored all of them. It hadn’t felt right to talk to him or even respond, not with what was going on with Charles, so she’d left all of them unanswered.

  It hurt, though. She wanted very much to go back to his house, to walk through the door and into his arms. To feel him around her, comforting her, protecting her. But she couldn’t let herself. Her fiancé had died, and to go straight to another man was wrong on just about every level there was. No matter how badly she wanted to.

  Besides, there was also the matter of Nero’s terrible past. He was just as trapped and as broken as Charles had been in his coma, except with Nero it wasn’t physical, it was mental. Which made it even more difficult for him to heal, especially when he refused to acknowledge the issue.

  No, she definitely didn’t want to take on caring for another broken person. She’d been doing it all her life, first with her parents, and then with Charles. Even before the accident, she’d been the one who’d run their household and organized things because he couldn’t. Or maybe because he wouldn’t. And after the accident, she’d been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces, who had to pay for the hospital and make the medical decisions. Who visited every week.

  She couldn’t face a third person. She didn’t have the emotional energy. It felt as if it had all been sucked out of her and she had nothing left.

  She needed some time, some space. She needed to figure out who she was when she didn’t have anyone else to focus on.

  “I can leave whenever I fucking want to . . .” Nero’s voice, harsh and insistent, refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of him . . .

  God, how could she fight that? What could she offer him that would help anyway? All the emotional support she’d given her mother had only made her mother more needy and her father even more critical. Organizing her and Charles’s life hadn’t made him any more capable of doing it himself. And then after the accident, sitting beside his bed and playing songs . . . Well, that had done nothing at all.

  No, Nero needed more help than anything she could give him.

  Quickly, she keyed in a text: Charles has died. I need some space.

  There was a brief pause and then he responded: I’m sorry.

  So simple, only two words, making her eyes prickle. No
one had said that to her, certainly her parents hadn’t. A simple acknowledgment of her loss that made her heart ache, that made her suddenly want Nero with an intensity that left her breathless. She wanted his arms around her and his big, hard body surrounding her, his strength taking some of the load for a while.

  But no. She would be strong. She didn’t need him. She had to do this on her own.

  The next week passed in a blur.

  Charles had no family, so she had to do all the organization for his funeral by herself, plus there was the sorting out of his stuff back at their apartment and getting his affairs in order. Even in the two years since he’d been in hospital, she’d left all his belongings in the apartment as they were the day he’d walked out of it. She hadn’t wanted to get rid of them just in case. But now there would be no “just in case,” and there was no reason to keep them, so she spent at least two days putting everything in boxes and donating them to Goodwill.

  That was difficult, as was the funeral. While he’d been in hospital, Charles’s circle of friends had dropped away, so there weren’t very many of them who turned up. And even though her mother called her every day asking when she was going to come back to London, her mother never suggested flying over to attend Charles’s funeral.

  After that was over, Phoebe came back to the empty apartment to find a bouquet of flowers had been left for her, roses with jasmine winding through them. They smelled so sweet, reminding her of the scent that used to drift up from the garden at Nero’s house and in through her windows in the evening.

  There was no note but she knew who they were from all the same.

  The smell of them made her throat close and her chest tight, and she thought about texting him to say thank you. But she couldn’t face it so she didn’t. Instead she put them in a vase on her nightstand and went to sleep with the scent of them around her.

  Another week passed.

  She kept herself busy with making final arrangements for a headstone and dealing with the lawyers and the details of Charles’s will. Then she took a few days to decide what she was going to do. All her life had been spent revolving around other people and what they wanted, so it was strange not to have that. Strange to have to think about what she wanted.

  She really didn’t know what that was.

  Eventually she decided that she was going to have to leave New York, get out of the city and go somewhere different. Definitely not back to London, but somewhere she’d never been. Somewhere with big open spaces, where she could breathe and could figure out what her life was going to look like from now on.

  For some reason, she kept thinking about that picture of Everest Nero had given her, the one that had hung on the wall in her bedroom in his house. The one that made her think of freedom and the world at her feet. Maybe she’d go to Nepal. Maybe she’d go trekking.

  Maybe you should go back to him.

  Ah, but she couldn’t do that. She’d left it too long. And besides, she couldn’t tie herself to yet another needy person. She had nothing left to give, not that she’d ever made a difference to him anyway.

  Yet another week passed and she began the process of packing away her New York existence. Putting her stuff into storage and giving up the lease on her apartment. It was all so depressingly easy, as if the life she’d had here was merely a picture drawn in chalk on the sidewalk and a shower of rain had washed it away, leaving the sidewalk clean. As if she had never been.

  Nero stopped sending her texts, and he didn’t call. Part of her was relieved that he’d stopped, and part of her wasn’t. Part of her wanted that contact from him, was desperate for it, and because that part of herself reminded her too much of her mother, she ignored it.

  But after another couple of days had passed, she realized that going to see Nero was something she was going to have to do. She couldn’t leave the city without at least seeing him and telling him her plans. It didn’t feel right. Besides, she still had a lot of her belongings at his place she needed to collect, plus she hadn’t formally handed in her resignation as his assistant. True, she could do all of that over the phone or via email, but that felt too much like a coward’s way out, and she wasn’t a coward.

  Or maybe you just want to see him one last time?

  No, of course that wasn’t it. Of course, it wasn’t.

  She texted him, a formal little note telling him she needed to see him to hand in her notice and asking when it would be convenient. Uncharacteristically he didn’t reply for at least a few hours, and when he did, his text in return was terse and to the point, giving her a date and a time only.

  He was angry with her, probably, and fair enough. Even though there had been extenuating circumstances, she had walked out on him and never came back, and that must have been difficult, especially considering she’d left only after he’d finally revealed the extent of his own damage.

  The memory of that afternoon still made her heart hurt, and she didn’t need that right now, not on top of everything else, so she tried not to think about it.

  She tried not to think about it when the day she was due to visit him came around either. Instead, she dressed carefully in her usual professional outfit—pale gray pencil skirt and a crisp white blouse—and made sure her hair was carefully pinned. She took more time with her makeup, hiding the tell-tale dark circles of her sleepless nights with lots of concealer, and going for a brighter-than-normal lipstick.

  She pushed aside the churning nervousness as the taxi picked her up from her apartment, distracting herself by looking up Nepal on a few travel websites.

  As the cab pulled up outside Nero’s house, Phoebe had to take a moment to get her breathing under control before she paid the driver and got out. She also tried not to take any notice of the other feeling that was quivering there under the nervousness. Longing. She hadn’t thought she’d miss him, but she did.

  Phoebe shook away the thought, clutching her handbag as she pushed open the iron gate and walked slowly up the front stairs. All she was coming here to do was to let Nero know that she was leaving the city and that she was resigning as his assistant. That was all. She wasn’t going to stay. She couldn’t. She had nothing to give him, and, besides, she needed to go and find out who she was.

  Taking a breath, Phoebe knocked on the front door.

  It swung open, revealing James’s familiar face. “Come in, Miss Taylor,” the butler said. “Mr. de Santis is waiting for you.”

  Her throat constricted, and she couldn’t speak, could only nod and tighten her grip on her handbag even more as she stepped inside.

  James closed the door behind her and gestured for her to follow him. As he led her down the hallway toward Nero’s office, she couldn’t help noticing something. All the walls were bare. There had been a huge painting of a mountain on the wall near the front door, and now it was gone. They all were.

  Foreboding began to wind through her nervousness, because there was something heavy hanging in the atmosphere of the house. A kind of emptiness that hadn’t been there before. It reminded her of the apartment after she’d cleared it out of all Charles’s stuff, as if no one lived there anymore.

  James stopped outside Nero’s office and held the door open for her, his expression blank.

  Phoebe took a breath and stepped inside. And everything inside her drew tight.

  Nero was standing beside the windows.

  Had it been two weeks? Or was it three? She couldn’t remember, but whatever. It felt like months. Like years. Eons even.

  His arms were folded over his massive chest and once again she was struck by his height, by the broad width of his shoulders, the sheer power of his physical presence. He was in his normal business clothes—a perfectly tailored suit—and yet . . . something was different about him. There was a stillness to him that hadn’t been there before, his raw energy muted somehow.

  The harsh lines of his face were absolutely unreadable, but his eyes . . . They were so dark, the glittering brightness that had once lit the depths, va
nished. Black holes with no bottom, no end.

  Her heart contracted, and it was difficult to breathe. What had happened to him over the past couple of weeks? What had he done once she’d gone?

  “Hello, Phoebe,” he said, his voice harsh and deep in the silence of the room and absolutely devoid of expression. “You wanted to see me?”

  * * *

  She looked tired. That was the first thing he noticed. She had dark circles under her eyes that she’d obviously tried to hide with makeup, but he could see them all the same. She hadn’t been sleeping, clearly. Her skin was pale, too, the white blouse making her look like a ghost. Her beautiful hair, though, that was the same, all coiled up and neat on the top her head. It made his hands ache to reach out for it, to touch it, pull out all the pins and feel the silky warmth of it on his skin. He ached to hold her, to feel her, period.

  But he wasn’t going to do that.

  Over the past two weeks since she’d gone, since he’d destroyed his paintings and all the screens in his control room, he’d retreated from the rooms he’d shared with her, returning to the safety of his office and his gym. He’d initially spent most of his time running endlessly on the treadmill or lifting weights, doing anything he could to ease the fury and the pain that ate away at him.

  But it hadn’t worked. So he’d paced in his office, going around and around like a tiger in a cage, while his mind did the same thing within the confines of his skull. Unable to accept the reality of his situation, wanting to return to the same old familiar lies that he could go out at any time.

  He kept thinking about pursuing that last lead he had—his mother. But something in him kept shying away from the idea. The same protective instinct that had kept him from stepping outside his front door protected him again.

  It made him angry. What was it about his mother that he needed protecting from?

  That evening when he had destroyed his art and his security monitors, he found a laptop he hadn’t destroyed and sat in the library, calling up the file he had on his mother, but there wasn’t anything about it that set off alarm bells. Except her address, which was a hospital.