Kidnapped by the Billionaire

by Jackie Ashenden

  It was strange. Her friend looked just like she always did. Same smooth, black bobbed hair and delicate feline features. Same deep blue eyes. Same taste in beautifully tailored, professional-looking outfits. And Violet couldn’t quite understand how her friend could be just the same, when it felt to Violet like her whole world had shattered.

  Shouldn’t the earth have moved? And why the hell was New York still even standing?

  But of course the world and everything in it was the same. It was she who’d changed.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Honor asked after a moment. “You don’t want me to call a doctor or anything?”

  For a second Violet didn’t understand what her friend was talking about. And then she realized. Her wrist. “No, I’m fine,” she said, resisting the urge to pull down the sleeves of her top to cover the bandage.

  “Not for…” Honor paused. “Anything else?”

  Violet frowned at her. “What else?”

  Her friend’s blue eyes were very direct. “Did he hurt you, Violet?”

  “No.” A flash of something that felt very much like anger went through her. “No,” she repeated sharply. “Of course he didn’t hurt me. And if you’re asking whether he raped me, then no, he didn’t fucking do that either.”

  Honor didn’t seem to take offense at her tone, only gave a nod. “Well, okay then. I had to check. I mean there’s your wrist and,” she gestured at Violet’s shorn head, “the fact that you’ve had your hair all cut off. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  Violet reached for her coffee, anger still twisting inside her and not really wanting to show it. Because her friend was only trying to help. Honor didn’t know what had happened between her and Elijah, and if she did … Well, shit, she’d probably be appalled. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d be expecting something like that to happen, because God knew Violet had been hiding behind the façade of the sexual free-spirit for years.

  She sipped her coffee, holding onto the mug with both hands, the hot liquid warming her.

  Honor said nothing, letting the silence sit between them, though Violet knew her friend must have had a thousand questions all waiting to be asked.

  Eventually, she said, “I’m fine, Honor. Really.”

  The other woman scanned her face as if she was checking her over. “Can I ask what happened?”

  Violet took another sip of the coffee. “You don’t know?”

  “Eva managed to track you via security camera footage on the subway, so we saw Elijah kidnap you at gunpoint. Then Gabriel found him and tried to convince him to let you go. We got to the apartment eventually by picking up the last known signal from your phone.”

  Another jolt went through her at the realization that a day ago this would have meant so much to know her friend was tracking her, had been trying to find her. But now she just felt … empty.

  “Yeah,” she sighed. “That’s pretty much what happened.” Because what else could she say? Honor didn’t need to know all the details.

  Another silence fell.

  “What happened to your hair?” Honor asked eventually.

  “Elijah didn’t like the dreads,” Violet said. “So he cut them off.”

  An expression of concern crossed her friend’s face. “Oh, Vi…”

  “It’s fine. I was getting sick of them anyway.” Weird how little she felt about that now. How pathetic her attempt at rebellion had seemed and how stupid getting angry when Elijah had cut them had been. It was just hair, after all.

  “Sick of them?” Honor echoed, the crease deepening between her brows. “But you—”

  “I didn’t want them,” she interrupted. “Like I said, it’s fine.”

  The other woman stared at her. “You’re in shock, aren’t you?”

  Violet blinked, realizing abruptly how she’d sounded. “Maybe. I mean, I guess it’s not every day you get kidnapped by some freaky-ass dude and then get told your father was murdered.”

  Honor sat back. “Oh. So you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Violet gripped her coffee mug tighter. “Elijah told me some … other things as well.”

  “Ah.” There was sympathy on Honor’s face, but also a kind of unflinching honesty that made Violet want to turn away and pretend none of this ever happened. Because there was a part of her that had secretly hoped what Elijah had told her wasn’t true. That he’d been lying to her. That her father wasn’t dead and wasn’t the Godfather of some evil empire of crime.

  But one look in Honor’s blue eyes told her that was a vain hope.

  All of it was true.

  Violet made herself hold her friend’s gaze. “Tell me, Honor. Tell me about Dad.”

  Honor’s brow creased. “Perhaps now’s not the best—”

  “Tell me.” Holy shit, was that her voice? Since when had she sounded so hard?

  Honor gave her a measuring look, as if she was checking to make sure Violet was still Violet. “Okay then,” she said. “So what do you know about him so far?”

  “That he ran a drug operation. That he was into sex trafficking. That he had some kind of underground casino thing going on right here in New York.” Saying it all out loud, to another person, felt wrong. Felt on some level like a betrayal.

  Honor let out a breath. “Unfortunately, yes, he was doing all those things.”

  Violet swallowed, the last shred of hope vanishing. “I see.”

  “You should also know that … what he did affected some of Gabriel’s friends.”

  You don’t want to know.

  No, she really didn’t. But she couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t run away from it. The time for pretending ignorance, the time for running away was past. Her father was dead, which meant she had to deal with this herself.

  She gripped her mug hard, feeling the hot burn of the china under her fingers. “What did he do?”

  “He kept Eva King as his personal sex slave for at least two years.” Honor’s voice was so very calm. So very level. “And … I’m so sorry, Vi, but he had my father killed.”

  Didn’t seem to matter how hard she gripped the mug, it slipped from Violet’s fingers anyway and smashed onto the hardwood floor. Hot coffee went everywhere, soaking into the leather of the couch, into her trousers, splashing the silky green fabric of her top.

  Honor exclaimed softly, moving to help clean it up, murmuring about burns or some such crap.

  But Violet didn’t hear her. Because coffee spillage was the least of her worries.

  She got up from the couch, feeling like she was freezing solid. As if she were already frozen and one hard blow would shatter her into a thousand pieces.

  She didn’t know Eva King, but there was one salient fact about the woman she was aware of, the fact that was often trumpeted in the media. Eva was young, younger than Violet was. Which meant that her father had …

  A wave of nausea went through her, so strong it was all she could do not to be sick on the floor right then and there.

  And Honor’s father, Daniel …

  Violet walked to the windows of the apartment and stood there, waiting for the nausea to pass, for the cold brick that was sitting in her stomach to melt. Waiting to feel normal again.

  What the hell? After this? You’ll never be normal again.

  The truth of it was a punch to the face, a blade straight through the heart. Because no, she never would be, not after this. Not now that she knew what her father was. Not now that she knew what he’d done.

  Her eyes felt dry and gritty, and she was surprised that outside the windows of Gabriel’s apartment the world was going about its business as if nothing had ever happened.

  Jesus. And she’d been reflecting on how her life had blown apart not ten minutes ago. That was nothing compared to this.

  There was a pressure in the back of her throat, like she was going to cry, and yet her eyes remained stubbornly dry. Because no, she wasn’t going to cry. That would be indulgent and it did sweet fuck-all to help the people her father had hurt.r />
  She felt a sudden, violent need to look into Elijah’s bleak, black eyes. To have his voice telling her these hard, rough truths. Because he knew what it was like to live with a monster. He understood. He’d been living in that pit for seven years himself.

  Violet found she’d curled her hands into fists at her sides. “I need to talk to Elijah,” she said in a rough, croaky voice.

  “The others have him.” Honor’s voice came from beside her. “They’ve got questions.”

  Violet didn’t look around. “I don’t give a shit what they have. I need him, Honor. I need him now.”

  Her friend remained silent, didn’t ask why Violet needed him, why the hell she wanted to be with the man who’d held her hostage for two days. And just as well, because how did you explain that kind of thing? How did you explain the feeling of having more in common with a hardened criminal than you did with your best friend?

  “That’s not all, Vi,” Honor said, quiet and steady.

  Oh God. There was more?

  “Your father … raped Gabriel’s mother.”

  Violet’s hearing felt dull, as if she’d been hit over the head with something heavy.

  “Gabriel is your half brother.”

  The ground shifted beneath her feet, the world turning in dizzy circles around her. Everything had changed, everything was different. So different she didn’t even recognize where she was anymore.

  She wanted familiarity, understanding. And there was only one person in the world who could give her that right now.

  “Elijah,” she whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They finally let him out of the bare concrete room an hour later, shutting him in another room that looked like an old-fashioned gentleman’s study. They locked the door and left some asshole standing outside it as a guard.

  Elijah could have escaped easily enough if he’d set his mind to it, but he wasn’t going anywhere without Violet. They hadn’t given him an answer about whether they were going to let him take her, but he could wait. Not for too long, though, especially since he would be meeting Jericho in just a few days.

  He’d give them another couple of hours and if they were still screwing around, he’d get out of here and go find Violet himself.

  Rutherford had given him a T-shirt to put on, which he supposed was polite. But they didn’t do anything about the bloody bandages wrapping around his shoulder. Luckily the wound had stopped bleeding, so that was something. Still hurt like a bastard though.

  Waiting was always a mindfuck, so Elijah began to pace around the room, giving his body and mind something to do instead of dwelling on pointless questions such as what they were going to do with him and where the hell Violet was.

  This had to be Rutherford’s place, what with all the dark wooden library shelves and cabinetry, the leather sofa and high wingback chairs. There was just something intrinsically very English and particular about the decor that reminded him of Marie’s London-born parents.

  “I remember you too, Kane.”

  Yeah and he remembered Alex St. James. The arrogant little shit who’d flirted with his wife. Who’d made his club so exclusive, so damn attractive that Marie hadn’t been able to resist wanting to be part of it since she’d always loved feeling special.

  She’d made him feel special too.

  Grief hit him in the chest, so strong he stopped dead in the center of the room. A grief he thought he’d fought and killed and buried. Grief for his wife. For what he’d lost when she died and for all the years of bearing that loss since.

  No. Fuck no.

  Forcing the emotion away though sheer bloody-minded will, Elijah made himself move again, over to the windows, to the bookshelf, the chair by the fireplace, to the sofa, and back once more.

  He couldn’t be thinking this shit. There were people he had to call, some stuff he had to set up. He didn’t want to go into a meeting with Jericho blind, especially given the man’s reputation. And there was also the fact that his flunky had agreed to everything Elijah had said without arguing. Battery Park. The Esplanade. 3 p.m. Come alone.

  No argument always meant something was up. He just had to find out what.

  Then there was the other thing that he’d had to put on hold while he’d been holed up with Violet. What to do with the remains of the Fitzgerald empire.

  His goal had always been to take it down, and gradually over the years he’d been undermining it from the inside, eroding it away piece by piece and in such a way that Fitzgerald had never noticed. Right up until Eva King had put a bullet through his brain, he’d still believed that the deaths of two members of his little coterie, the Seven Devils, had been due to a car accident and a mugging, respectively. As Elijah had intended when he’d taken them down.

  However, now that Fitzgerald was dead, that goal was a little more difficult. Especially if he was going to take out Jericho. Especially if he didn’t survive the attempt. Then again, perhaps he could leave that to Gabriel Woolf and his friends. They certainly seemed keen. Hell, if Jericho was dead, he didn’t care what they did with whatever was left. As long as they destroyed it, of course.

  From the hallway outside the study came the sound of voices.

  Elijah froze, staring at the closed door. Because he was damn sure those voices were feminine. Which meant … Violet.

  A weird adrenaline rush had the blood pumping hard in his veins, and he was moving to the door before he’d had a chance to think about why he was doing so.

  It opened while he was still halfway across the room, and sure enough, Violet came in, followed by a dark-haired woman with familiar blue eyes. Honor, Woolf’s lover. Behind her was the guard, who gave Elijah a warning look.

  Like that would ever be enough to stop him if he wanted to get out.

  Then again, Violet was finally here and he didn’t want to make things difficult for her with her friend so he stopped where he was, waiting. Deliberately not thinking about why not making things difficult for Violet was quite so important.

  And then he got a good look at her face and everything ceased to matter.

  She looked broken, like a piece of china smashed into pieces and poorly put together again. Her face was white and there were circles under her eyes. She wasn’t wearing the clothing he’d bought her, but a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and a soft sweater the same deep turquoise of her eyes. Expensive, low-key clothes that somehow made her look even more vulnerable than she did already.

  He began to move toward her and to hell with the asshole standing guard behind them, but then she said, “Elijah, stop.”

  And he did, because the same expression of desolation in her face was in her voice too, and he found he couldn’t ignore it.

  Violet turned her head a little toward her friend. “I need to speak with him alone, Honor.”

  Honor St. James flicked a glance at Elijah. “I’m not sure I can—”

  “Please.” Violet never took her gaze from him, as if he were a lifeline and she was drowning.

  Something heavy and unwelcome shifted in his chest.

  Honor sighed. “Okay.” She gestured to the guard. “Come on, let’s give them a few minutes.”

  A few seconds later, the door closed behind them, leaving Violet and him alone in the room.

  He took a step toward her, but she held up a hand. “No. Wait. I have to ask you some questions.”

  Again, he stopped, held by the awful note in her voice. The one that seemed to reach inside him, looping wire around his heart and pulling tight.

  “What questions?” he demanded. “What’s happened, princess? Are you okay?”

  “No. I’m not okay.” Her voice had thickened, and she stood there with that terrible look on her face. He wanted very badly to do something, but he didn’t quite know what that something should be. Perhaps something violent, that would involve pain and preferably to the person who’d put that expression on her face.

  “What happened?” he asked again. “What did they do to you? Bec
ause if they did something, I swear to Christ—”

  “They didn’t do anything. They told me about Dad.”

  Ah. Well, that was never going to be easy for her, was it? “About how he died?”

  “Among other things.” She stopped. “He hurt people, Elijah. He hurt them. Gabriel’s mother. Eva King. Honor’s Dad. God, so many people.” Her pale throat moved, and he could almost see the shattered pieces she was holding together break again, into smaller pieces, all jagged and sharp. “I need to know something. I need to know whether you were a part of it. Whether you knew about it.” Another pause. “What did you do for him, Elijah?”

  He’d never hidden what he was, what he’d done. Not from himself and not from anyone else. He’d embraced the identity he’d created for himself, the mercenary Elijah Hunt, ruthless and dark and absolutely as cold as ice. Taking down Fitzgerald had required it.

  He hadn’t made any excuses for his behavior and he’d never regretted it. Regrets would kill him.

  Except now, staring into Violet’s eyes, he thought that perhaps he might have regrets after all, because he wanted to tell her that no, he hadn’t done anything bad. That he hadn’t been a part of those things she’d mentioned. That he wasn’t the monster she so clearly feared he would be.

  But he had and he was. And he couldn’t lie to her.

  So he said, “What he did to Woolf’s mother was before my time and no, I had no idea about that. Same with Daniel St. James. But yes, I shot Honor’s stepfather. I was supposed to kill him, but I missed the shot. The man wasn’t like the others and his death would have been pointless. As to Eva King … Again, that was before my time. But he had other girls that I knew about.”

  Violet’s face was still deathly pale. “What happened to them?”

  “Some of them I managed to get out. Others I couldn’t without blowing my cover.”

  “You kidnapped Eva. Honor told me.”

  “Yes. I did. Fitzgerald wanted her and I couldn’t stop him. I did what I could to give both her and Rutherford the opportunity to escape.” He held her gaze. “I did what I could to help all of them get out before anyone else got hurt.”