The Billionaire's Ruthless Revenge

by Clare Connelly

  Annie lifted her knees to her chest and pressed her cheek to them. She stared at his back, wondering what she could say to make him understand.

  “And if I won’t?”

  He spun around, and his eyes were dead. The emotions that she felt slamming into her were all dark. “I want you any way I can have you,” he admitted finally, pinning her with the intensity of his eyes.

  “So your original ultimatum stands?” She pushed softly, her voice shaking.

  He dragged his fingers over his stubble-roughened jaw. “Yeah.” He nodded. “I’m afraid it does.”

  Annie let the words sink in and their full implication became clear to her. “For how long?”

  “For how long?” He repeated, planting his hands on his hips.

  “How long do you want me to stay?”

  He expelled an angry breath. “Until I tell you otherwise.”

  Until I tell you otherwise. The words chased around her brain all morning, as she dressed and packed her suitcase and prepared not just for a return to New York but for a full return to her life as Mrs Kyle Anderson.

  It was all so much worse than she’d imagined.

  She spent the whole flight back to New York in a brooding silence, staring out of her window with her mind in overdrive.

  But every avenue she explored brought her back to the same dead-end.

  She couldn’t let her brother go to prison. And she couldn’t risk Juanita being put under stress.

  Her only option was to go along with Kyle’s preposterous proposition despite the certainty she had that it would lead to her own eventual heart break.

  Again.

  The plane touched down with a few bumps and then came to an abrupt stop. Annie didn’t realise, so lost was she in the tangle of her thoughts. It was only when Kyle reached over and rubbed her shoulder that she startled into the present. He didn’t speak.

  His eyes locked to hers and she swallowed nervously.

  “You still have a key?” He asked off-handedly, as though it wasn’t a weighted question.

  She shook her head. “I left it, remember?”

  “That’s right.” It had been the first clue that she was actually gone and not just out licking her wounds after their verbal sparring match. “The doorman will let you in. I’ll have Maria call ahead.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly, standing with as much dignity as she could muster. Her silent stoicism made his chest compress like a bag of cement had been placed on it.

  “My car will take you ...”

  “I can get a cab,” she contradicted quickly.

  “My car will take you,” he said again, leaning closer towards her. “Stop arguing with me over things that don’t matter.”

  “Like my freedom?” She volleyed back, immediately regretting the acidic rejoinder.

  “You have your freedom,” he responded gently. “And this is what you’re choosing to do with it.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “You said that you thought we had enough between us worth saving.” He was silent as she chose her words carefully. “You’re ruining that.” She stared at her ring unconsciously and twirled it with her finger. It was a nervous habit that had always made him smile. “You’re destroying any good feelings I had left. How can I care for you at all in the face of this?”

  His expression was one of sardonic frustration, not least of all because she had an excellent point. “Go home, Annie, and wait for me there.”

  She opened her mouth to say something but promptly shut it once more. After all, he was right. She’d agreed to this. She could have left Adam to face the consequences of his actions but instead she’d chosen to come to his rescue, yet again. And that meant returning to her husband.

  Her eyes drifted downwards. Completely out-positioned, she made a noise of agreement and grabbed up her handbag.

  She walked ahead of him with her shoulders bent forward and her head dipped down. Her face, which he glimpsed in profile as she turned to exit the door, was ashen.

  * * *

  “Let’s talk about your future,” Kyle said grimly, gesturing at the drinks cart as Adam took a seat in the sofas near the window.

  Adam was nervous. That was deeply satisfying to Kyle, who hadn’t been sure exactly what he could expect.

  “Drink?” He prompted, pouring himself an ice-cold mineral water.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Adam tapped his foot against the floor, his manner jumpy. Kyle crossed to him with their glasses and took the seat opposite.

  “You have a problem.” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. He was unknowingly intimidating in the hyper-masculine pose.

  Adam nodded. “I know. Look, mate, I’m sorry. I don’t know if Annie explained ...”

  “Your sister does little else but apologise for your failings,” Kyle interrupted with chipped cruelty. “You are fortunate to have someone like her going to bat for you. Without Annie, you’d be in prison already.”

  Adam’s face blanched and while Kyle felt a thump of satisfaction from the reaction he also experienced anger. This man looked so like Annie – they were not identical twins but they were alike enough to clearly be identified as siblings –and yet he was such a markedly different character. He was cut from an entirely different cloth.

  “Annie understands me,” Adam defended bitterly.

  “So she says. But I wonder if anyone truly gets what makes you tick.”

  “I was worried about money,” he said simply and Kyle let out a harsh bark of derisive disbelief.

  “My God. You were worried about money? Do you know anything of my upbringing? My childhood? You have no idea what it’s like to truly worry about money. To worry about where food will come from.” Kyle cut himself off short. He wasn’t interested in bearing his soul to a worthless piece of trash like this.

  “The baby ...”

  “Would always have been fine,” Kyle cut across angrily. “But with you in prison?”

  He enjoyed the look of anxiety that twisted Adam’s features. “I can’t go to prison. I’m not a criminal.”

  “Like hell you’re not,” Kyle retorted.

  “So that’s it? You’re going to ruin my damned life?”

  “You are in control of your destiny,” he contradicted. “Life is all about choices and decisions.” And Kyle didn’t want to inspect his own litany of stupid choices in the past six months. “Two years ago you stole from me and I curbed my own instincts then at Annie’s behest. You swore to me that you would change. That you’d never do something dishonest or illegal again. And yet, here we find ourselves in the same office having the same conversation.”

  “I know.” Adam had a sip of the mineral water and pulled a face. He stood up and moved to the drinks cart. “Mind if I help myself to something stronger?”

  “Go ahead,” Kyle invited, resisting the urge to point out Adam was excellent at helping himself to whatever he wanted of Kyle’s. He watched with true disgust as Adam tipped a generous quantity of scotch into a tumbler. He cradled it in hands that shook a little.

  “I can’t pay the money back,” he moaned, as though it was truly just dawning on him how vulnerable his position was. “But I can work something out with you.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Kyle cut him short. He reached into his pocket and pulled his phone out. At the press of a button he heard Maria’s concise voice. “We’re ready.”

  “Ready? For what?” Adam begged.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen.” Kyle leaned back in the sofa as though he had not a care in the world.

  “What? What have you done? Who was that on the phone?”

  Kyle spoke as though Adam hadn’t. “You’re going to voluntarily admit yourself to rehab.”

  “Rehab? What the hell? I’m not a drunk.”

  “Your behaviour stems from something psychological. An addiction of sorts. At least, that’s what Annie insists. So go to rehab. Go and get help from mental health experts. Go and comprehend wha
t your behaviour could have cost you.”

  “For how long?” Adam asked, echoing Annie’s question of hours earlier.

  “I will liaise with your doctor. When your doctor and I feel you are ready, you may come out.”

  “But Juanita ...”

  “Will be looked after,” he assured Adam.

  “What will you tell her?” Adam’s voice was notching into whiny territory and it made Kyle’s blood boil.

  “That you’re an alcoholic,” Kyle said seriously. “And when you come out and have faced the truth of your situation, you may tell her whatever you wish.”

  “I don’t want to go away,” Adam snivelled, throwing the scotch back and wincing as it burned his back palette.

  “I’m sure you don’t. But this is a far pleasanter option than prison,” Kyle pointed out. “And if you don’t go to the car waiting downstairs, I’ll call the police myself.”

  “And so if I go to rehab, you’ll let this go? You won’t press charges?”

  “It’s a criminal matter, not civil,” Kyle contradicted coldly. “And you technically didn’t steal from me, so much as tens of thousands of my employees.” He let the words sink in. “But yes. I’ll sort things out with the money so long as you go along with this.”

  There was no need for Kyle to let Adam know that the money had been remunerated at the time of discovery. Without the threat of criminal proceedings hanging over his head, Adam would have been far less malleable.

  “Go now, Adam.”

  “Right now? I don’t even get to say goodbye to Juanita?”

  “I’ll call her,” Kyle promised crossing to the door.

  Adam let out a long slow breath and finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.” As though he had any choice! He followed behind Kyle and at the door, stopped to give his brother-in-law a look of gratitude.

  “I’m ...”

  “Don’t say sorry,” Kyle snapped impatiently. “I’ve heard that from you before. Just go and get your head right.”

  Adam held his hand out and Kyle shook it for Annie’s sake alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Her eyes blinked open at the sound of the door opening and she shifted her bleary eyes to the clock across the lounge area. It was hard to make out the exact time, but somewhere after midnight.

  She must have fallen asleep on the sofa somewhere in the last chapter of her book. She pressed her lips together and swallowed a few times; she was groggy.

  “You’re home,” she mumbled, sitting up and scraping her hair out of her eyes with her hands.

  “Yeah.” He stared at her for a long hard moment.

  Annie stood, walking quickly across to him. “What happened with Adam?”

  Something inside of him snapped. Hatred. Hatred and rage that she could care so much for a worthless piece of trash like Adam Smith when she’d been happy enough to leave him – her husband. Jealousy for her unswerving devotion for the man who deserved nothing.

  “Your brother’s going to be fine,” he snapped for the second time that night, only this time it felt damned good. “Well, as fine as a psychopath like him can be.”

  “Kyle,” she chastised, appalled at the force of his rage.

  “He’s the definition of one, Annie.”

  She swallowed. There was no sense getting bogged down in an argument about her brother. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him that if he stepped out of line again I’d have no hesitation reporting him.”

  She nodded. “And what did he say?”

  “Nothing ground-breaking.” He waved a hand in the air dismissively. “The usual sort of crap you’d expect from someone like him.”

  Annie twisted her hands together in front of her abdomen. “I hope he’s learned from this.”

  “He will this time.” Kyle shifted his weight. “He’s gone to an addiction treatment facility.”

  “He has?” She blinked up at him. “What for?”

  “To address this compulsion. Hopefully to learn to see sense. I don’t think he’d have much chance of staying on the right side of the law without some kind of intervention.”

  “I can’t believe you convinced him!” She gasped.

  Kyle’s smile was grim. “Apparently I’m excellent at getting people to do what I want.”

  A frown tugged at her lips. “In the case of my brother, an ultimatum was more than fair.”

  His eyes narrowed. He studied her in the pale glow cast by the lamp and felt a twisting in his gut. The silence arced between them like an unbreakable thread.

  Finally, he lifted a hand to her cheek. “Let’s go to bed.”

  Annie’s heart lurched. Of course she could have said ‘no’. She could have told him that she didn’t want him to come near her. But it would have been a lie. For as angry as her husband made her, as wrong as she thought their marriage was, she knew that she felt an equal swelling of desperate need and desire for him.

  It had been so long since he’d touched her how she needed to be touched. In the Dark Days, when she’d faced the grief of losing their child alone, all she’d wanted was to feel his strong arms around her, holding her up. She’d coped without him, but only because she’d had to.

  “Thank you.”

  His expression was impossible to read. “For what?”

  “For dealing with Adam.” She swallowed convulsively. “I really didn’t know if you would. When I came to you the other day, I mean.”

  Sadness ripped through him. A small part of his brain was shouting at him to tell Annie that everything had already been fixed, well before she’d arrived. That he could never let Annie’s brother go to prison if it meant hurting Annie. But damn it, pride, resentment and ego kept him from giving her the information that would have meant so much to her.

  “For your sake, I hope he’ll turn a corner.” It was a grim statement, and Annie could tell that Kyle didn’t hold out much hope Adam’s behaviour would improve.

  “I hope so for Juanita’s sake.” Annie clarified, putting a hand on Kyle’s chest. She could feel his warmth and it was like heaven. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, as though his power could travel along her fingertips, into her arm and right to her soul.

  “Yes,” he agreed, unable to look away from his wife’s beautiful face. She was so fragile. Desire warred with compassion. His body was wound like a coil, desperate to possess her. To feel her take him and to see the way she fell apart when he moved within her. But her sadness ached to be erased, and without her asking him to, Kyle understood what she needed.

  He wrapped his strong arms around her body and brought her to his chest. He held her with her head against his chest and he breathed with her.

  Annie brought her arms behind his back and linked them together.

  For all their disharmony, nothing ever felt so good and right as when they were like this.

  I love you. The words burned in her mouth, whispering in her soul, begging her to speak them aloud. For she felt it. She knew she did love him. That she hadn’t left him because she didn’t love him, but because she didn’t know how to handle that love. Her dependency on a man who would always be a lone-wolf had terrified her.

  That wasn’t his fault.

  It wasn’t hers either. It was just a fact of life that no amount of trying could overcome.

  “Let’s go to bed,” she said softly, her heart breaking for the impossible situation they were in.

  Kyle didn’t relax his hold around her. He pressed a kiss against her hair and held her tight. “These last six months,” he said and then paused, his voice low and thick. “I’ve thought of you every day.”

  Her eyes burned with tears. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. “I had to leave.”

  “Why?” He ran his fingers over her hair.

  “I wasn’t happy,” she said finally, after a long search of her feelings. It was the statement that best summed up her decision.

  “I didn’t realise.”

  “No.” She nodded. “We
’re so different, you and I. I should have understood. Our marriage was doomed from the beginning. Great sex isn’t enough.”

  “But it wasn’t just sex. We were in love.”

  She inhaled deeply, relishing his beautiful scent and stirring ancient need within her soul. “If we were, we would have found a way to make it work.” She lifted a hand to his cheek and leaned back a little in the circle of his arms.

  “I should have listened to you,” he admitted, surprising them both. “I was arrogant. I didn’t want to believe there was anything wrong with our marriage. That I wasn’t what you needed.”

  She nodded, but she knew her voice would be scratchy with emotion. After a moment to compose herself, she smiled. It was a smile that broke his heart for it was brave and beautiful all at once. “I don’t want to think anymore, Kyle. Whatever we were... whatever we are ... we both know the one place we never had problems was in bed.” She stroked his cheek. “I just want to feel that now.”

  He searched her face.

  “Can you make me forget, Kyle? Please? Just make me forget everything?”

  Alarm bells were screeching loud and clear now. What had he missed? What did his wife so desperately need to forget?

  “Please.” Her voice shifted down a notch lower. “Make love to me like you used to.”

  His chest twisted. He felt every single muscle in his body jerk in response. This would be a temporary fix; it would make them both feel an overwhelming sense of relief. But it wouldn’t address the underlying problem. Kyle wasn’t sure he knew how to do that but he would have given his last dollar to try.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Kyle stared at the Manhattan skyline with a scowl etched across his handsome face. The buildings glistened in the weak afternoon sun, and snow created furrows of white beyond his window, making it look as though angels from heaven were dousing the city in confetti.

  What was Annie doing, he wondered, picturing her in his home. Was she staring out at the city like him? Was she smiling at the beautiful snow, as she’d done in the early days of their marriage?

  He ran a hand over his stubbled jaw, remembering how perfect it had been to sleep with her again. And again. And again. A week of the most passionate nights of his life, and the coldest, loneliest days. Coldness was nothing new to Kyle Anderson; he should have been used to it by now. But coldness from Annie was a new and unyielding beast.