Billionaire On Fire: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Billionaire Romance) (41 page)

For the next hour I sat in the teller’s
booth with my hands covering my face, bawling my eyes out, not even caring that
there were cameras set up here and Zayden would be able to see how miserable I
was. There was hardly any shred of my pride left anyway. I had sold all my
dignity for sixty-thousand dollars. I was that girl.

Chapter
10

Zayden

I angrily slammed the phone onto my bed. I
wasn’t controlling. That was a terrible excuse to get out of the contract. It
wouldn’t be a contract if she could just bail at any time. It felt for a bit
like I was being taken advantage of. I was getting the shabby end of the deal
anyway. In a fit of fury, I had failed to notice that Gina was watching me from
outside my open door.

“What was that about?” She asked with an
annoying smirk.

“Why do you care?”

“Cause you’ve been swearing uncontrollably
for the past five minutes. I am just curious,” she said.

I hadn’t even realized I was doing that.
Aria was capable of making me feel completely and utterly out of control.

“It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

Gina didn’t take the hint. Instead, she
made herself comfortable on my bed and extended her hand, which I refused.

“Zayden,” she said, looking at me sharply.
“If we are going to make this work, we have to learn to be friends.”

“I don’t have any interest in being your
fucking friend. Now get out,” I snapped.

She didn’t flinch. Instead smiled, which
annoyed me to no end. “Lady troubles I presume?”

“Did I not tell you I didn’t have any
‘ladies’ to worry about?” I asked, wishing she would just get out of my room.

“That’s not what it sounded like on the
phone. You haven’t seemed so passionate since we first met. Come on, you can
talk to me. I know you better than you know yourself.”

“Bullshit. If you knew me you wouldn’t be
here in my room when I just want you to leave me the fuck alone.”

“I’m just trying to help. I don’t suppose
you have had the chance to consider my offer yet?”

“Clearly I’m dealing with much more
important shit right now. If only you saw beyond yourself for just a second.”

She got up and approached me, while I
clenched my fists, still burning with anger.

“Do not touch me,” I said, glaring at her.

“I wasn’t going to.” She shrugged and
walked towards my liquor cabinet. “I am way past any pretenses. I told you what
I wanted and I am not going to make futile and needless attempts to try and
sleep with you anymore.”

She walked towards me with a glass.
“Scotch on the rocks. You look like you need a drink.”

“You think you know me so well because you
know what I like to drink?” I scoffed. “Guess what? So does ever teenage girl
in the country who reads ZEN magazine.”

“Just take the drink and relax. I can draw
you up a nice bath if you want. I’m here for you. Although you don’t think
that’s possible, obviously.”

I begrudgingly accepted the drink and took
a large swig, surprised by how much better it made me feel. “Happy?”

“Not yet. Who were you speaking to? What’s
bothering you so much?”

“It’s work,” I lied. “A very important
deal might be falling through but I won’t know until tomorrow. It’s a takeover
of a boutique bank that would have really helped our expansion strategies.”

“Is the boutique bank named Aria?” She
said, probably feeling clever. “I heard you use that name.”

“Aria is an employee helping me with the
paperwork. Do you want to see her employee profile from the bank? You probably
don’t believe she is actually working for me do you?”

“Oh, I believe she’s working for you
alright, but in more ways than one.”

“You want to be friends?” I snapped. “Then
don’t fucking push it and trust me. I don’t know if I will be accepting your
offer yet, but if you want me to then you really need to do better than
whatever this is.”

“I made you a drink!” She exclaimed as
though she had just built me the Eiffel Tower.

“And now I am asking that you get out.”

“Fine. I tried.” She marched away, leaving
me alone with my thoughts again.

I had no idea how I was going to deal with
the Aria situation. I had two options. The first was completely unacceptable: I
could terminate the contract on her terms. No, that was not happening. I would
have to be really weak in order to let a twenty year old girl win like that.
Letting her off easy would be admitting defeat, something I had never done in
my life, and I wasn’t going to start now. This was why I wanted to continue the
contract. Plus, I craved her body. I slept every night dreaming of the times we
had sex and thinking of all the ways in which I could please her and she could
please me. I wasn’t going to sit there and pretend that the sex part didn’t
matter; it did and it was quite a significant part of why I enjoyed our
dalliance so much.

But there was more…

There were the sassy conversations we had.
There was her intelligence. There was her stubborn defiance that at once made
me so fond of her and so frustrated with her. There was the way she laughed: so
contagious. And the way she removed her perfectly red hair from her eyes,
slightly frowning through the side of her mouth, assuming nobody would notice
her annoyance with the strand that dared to interfere with her vision. There
was also the way she fucked me: with so much passion and effort. For someone
who had only had sex once before me, she was more talented than any woman I had
ever slept with. She just knew how to drive me completely and utterly insane,
in and out of bed.

Somewhere between the contract and the
dates in my office and all the talks about her Economics paper, Aria Roberts
had managed to penetrate a part of my being that I believed had long ceased to
exist. This wasn’t something I was proud of, but it was, unfortunately, a fact
that I could no longer ignore. I cared about Aria, more than I had cared about
any girl or woman in a long time. It mattered to me that she was happy and it
mattered to me that she was happy with me. The way things had taken a turn, she
was not going to be happy with me if I forced her to stay in the contract. But
the alternative was to let her go, and that was not something I would allow
happen.

The second option was to force her to
continue the contract – the option I had already inadvertently chosen, the
minute she talked of possibly breaking it – but to find a way to make her happy
with me again. No matter what I had said to her about my reaction to her
ex-boyfriend, truth was it was pure jealously.

Something I really needed to keep in
control, at least around her, even if I felt it inside. She had said I had
gotten too controlling. I wasn’t sure how I could fix that. That was the side
effect of my entire existence: being on top of the food chain all my life
involved the ability to get everyone around me to do as I say at all times.
Mesmerized by my wealth and power, not a single person – other than my mother,
and she too had to use emotionally manipulative tactics to defy me – had ever
felt the need to criticize my approach. People usually just resigned to
accepting me as a superior and did as I said.

Aria was obviously different from most
people I knew, so I had to find a new approach. I didn’t have to, technically.
I could let her continue the contract and be miserable. Some part of me felt
like that was exactly what she deserved. But, no. I would not be able to handle
an encounter with her where I knew that she would rather be any place in the
world other than with me. If she wasn’t enjoying herself, I wouldn’t be able to
enjoy her company. She wouldn’t be the Aria I had grown to care for.

So perhaps it was time to try something
new. I picked up my phone and called Aria. She didn’t answer so I kept calling
until she did.

“I get it, I am confined to your contract
until eternity and beyond – or whenever you decide you are done with me. You
made it very, very clear already. What more do you want?” She sounded like she
had been crying.

“I want to apologize,” I said as softly as
possible. “For my behavior. I am sorry.”

There was silence on the other end for
what felt like a lifetime. She must have been shocked. This apology was
probably the last thing she was expecting.

“Are you really sorry?” She asked,
sounding much less miserable.

“I am. But I am not letting you out of the
contract. That’s not negotiable.”

“Then why are we having this conversation
right now?”

“Because I want to apologize. Because you
deserve an apology. This contract is meaningless if you hate me.”

“Well I don’t…hate you. I never said
that,” she said, and I felt relief spread through my whole body.

“In that case, I will see you in the office
tomorrow?” I was clutching the phone very close to my ears. “You are out of
vacation days, you know. The other tellers might think I’m playing favorites.”

She giggled, to my surprise. “Well, you
are.”

“They don’t need to know that. Anyway, I
would really like to see you tomorrow at the office and we can discuss the
contract and how to proceed in a manner that pleases you. How does that sound?”

She simply said “okay,” which was still
better than a “no.” I could work with “okay.”

“Have a good night Aria, I will see you
tomorrow.”

“You too,” she said and then hung up.

Tomorrow I would have to employ all the
skills I had accumulated as a businessman in negotiation, so that when the
conversation was over, Aria would think it was her idea to continue with the
contract.

For now I was just relieved and fell into
my bed, finally relaxed after a very difficult few weeks.

THE
BOSS #3

Chapter 1

Aria

After the bizarre phone conversation I had
with Zayden, I was very confused about my own feelings. He had apologized, and
certainly sounded remorseful. If he wanted to continue this – whatever this was
– he probably would not go back to his controlling ways. Or so I hoped. On the
one hand, I really, really wanted to believe him—the truth was that I missed spending
time with him, even though I hated to admit it. On the other hand, if I had
learned one valuable lesson in my twenty years of existence, it was that people
did not change. This wasn’t
for
lack
of trying, but human nature demanded a deeply ingrained sense of self that was
intrinsic to each person, and getting rid of that was not very different from
getting rid of an actual organ. My dad had taught me this. Growing up, I saw
the efforts he made to be more financially responsible; he really wanted to change
and it was obvious even to a ten year old. Yet he managed to drag my family
into bankruptcy, the price of which we were still paying today. Especially me.
If it hadn’t been for my dad’s terrible decisions, I wouldn’t be in this
situation right now. My mom wouldn’t be in the situation she was in to begin
with. Sometimes, it was very difficult not to hate him.

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on
the door, and I was glad, because I was entering dangerous territory: Allowing
my thoughts to drift towards my father was like opening a can of worms that was
best left shut very tight.

“
Come in,
” I said yawning.

The door swung open.
It was Nick.
“So, you’re being kidnapped for breakfast.” He looked
pleased with himself, perhaps because he had been trusted with the job of
kidnapping me. Stacey usually saved any endeavor that involved persuading me
for herself, knowing Nick was too weak against my glare.

“
I am starving. I
’ll get ready in five.”

“Wait, what?” Nick looked disappointed. “
You aren
’t going to make me convince you?”

“No, Nick, I’m sorry,”
I laughed.
“Tell you what, I’ll tell
Stace I didn’t want to go, but you worked your big Nicholas charms and I
changed my mind.”

“This is why I keep you around,” he said
and winked. “She’s meeting us at the diner. She went for a run. I don’t know
what’s gotten into her.”

“She wants to be healthy?” I asked
quizzically.

“What for?” He looked so clueless I wanted
to pet him. “What does that do? She is already perfect, as far as I see it. Is
she trying to tell me to work out more?” He tentatively surveyed his skinny
arms.

I sighed.
“It’s
not a trick. She’s been reading too many blogs again. You know she’s a
hypochondriac. She thinks she will die of a premature stroke if she doesn’t
start running.”

He shook his head in what appeared to be
disapproval and frustration. “
Five
minutes, Aria.
”

---

To my relief, the diner wasn’t cramped
like it tended to be during breakfast hours. Today was the day I was finally
going back to work after all the drama, and I really needed a nice, calm
morning to get through what was sure to be an action-packed day.