The Mogul (Necessary Lies Book 2)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Alison Ryan

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Design: Shayne Rutherford @
Wicked Good Book Covers

Y
ou can also find
Alison Ryan on
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. Or email her at
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T
o Greg
. As always.

T
he MOGUL is
part 2 of a 2-book story. If you have not read
The MENTOR
yet, it is highly suggested you read that book first before diving into this one.

Also, this book has a bonus book in the back, so The MOGUL will stop around the 30 % mark.

Enjoy!

I
t was
the last thing I ever expected Nolan Weston to tell me.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “My father is alive?” I was shaking from the revelation. I felt sick to my stomach. Either Nolan was lying to me now, which was completely fucked up, or he’d lied to me then, which was also completely fucked up.

“Your father is alive and in hiding,” Nolan said. He was so matter-of-fact about it that I wanted to scream.

“Hiding from what?” I snapped. “Me? The CIA? The IRS? The firm? I don’t understand, Nolan. You’ve watched me almost have a nervous breakdown over this. You seemed so genuinely distraught that he was gone… And now you’re standing here telling me he was never dead at all?” I shook my head. “It’s kind of scary how good you are at being whomever people need you to be, to get whatever you want out of them.”

I watched him clench and unclench his fists, his eyes fixed on me.

“That’s not what this is,” he said. “I
couldn’t
tell you. I shouldn’t even be telling you now. It’s
because
of how I feel about you that I’m telling you this, Camilla. I promised never to lie to you. And besides not telling you the truth about your father, I haven’t lied to you. Everything I have told you is true.”

“Well, lying to me about my father being dead is a pretty big deception for me to get past,” I cried. “Why would you do that? Why would
he
do that?”

“It’s complicated,” Nolan said. “I can’t tell you why. That’s his place alone to tell you.”

“You said you wouldn’t lie to me anymore!” I yelled. “And you’re already doing it again!”

“I’m not lying,” he said quietly. “But there are some things I can’t tell you. At least I’m honest about that. It’s for your own good, Camilla. I can’t let anything happen to you.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m really sick of people deciding what is or isn’t good for me.” I walked toward the door as I spoke. “I need you to tell me where he is. Take me to him.”

Nolan shook his head. “That’s not happening. Not now, anyway. He doesn’t know you even know this. I’m breaking protocol by telling you.”

“Fine,” I said, pulling out my phone. “I’ll just call Jessa. She called me a couple of months ago to see what I wanted to do about the firm. She’ll tell me where he is. She works for me now, right?” I started scrolling through my phone, honestly not even sure I had her number, but hoping it would get Nolan to confess.

Suddenly he yanked the phone out of my hands.

“I can’t let you do that,” he said. “No one knows your father is alive. Especially not people at the firm. Only I know. And you. And, obviously, Richard.”

I was furious now.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked, my voice shaking with rage. “Why would my father pretend to be dead?”

“Camilla, listen to me,” Nolan said, gently touching my shoulders. Even as angry as I was at him, his touch still raised goosebumps on my skin. My mind was filled with rage, but it wasn’t enough to convince my body that it shouldn’t have a raw, primal reaction to his touch. The same touch that had given me ecstasy beyond my wildest imagining. “You can’t know anything. The less you know, the better you’re protected. It’s ‘plausible deniability’. If you don’t know anything, you can’t be tricked or coerced into revealing something. And there are people who would do both, or worse, to get you to talk. Know that I’m not avoiding these questions to hide anything from you. I’m giving you the gift of blissful ignorance. In case you’re ever asked anything, you can honestly say you know nothing.”

I cried, my shoulders shaking.

“I was starting to move on,” I said. “I’d almost made peace with his death. I was starting to think of you less and less. I’m supposed to get on a plane tomorrow morning, on my way to a new life. And you waltz into this room and take that away from me. What the fuck, Nolan?”

He stared at me for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I could see regret in his eyes. I could sense something in him that was still there from when I’d first loved him. And despite how stupid it was, part of me was desperate to trust him. I was desperate to believe he loved me and that those nights in Tahoe had meant as much to him as they’d meant to me.

“I know,” he finally said. “It’s not fair. None of this is. Maybe it was a mistake to come, but I couldn’t let you… I couldn’t let you leave without telling you how I felt. I don’t want to take your dreams away from you, Camilla. I want you to be happy more than I want anything.”

I wiped the tears from my eyes.

“You made me happy,” I whispered. “And now that I know what happiness really is, it’s been hard for me to live without it.”

“Camilla…” he said, pulling me toward him. God, the heat of his body against me. It was all I’d needed; all I’d been able to dream of for months. And here he was again.

I would have given him anything he wanted.

He touched my face, our eyes locked on each other.

“I want you so bad,” he said. “I’ve been dying without you, Camilla.”

“I want to believe that,” I said. “You have no idea how much I want to know that’s true.”

His mouth pressed against mine while his strong arms gathered me up, and I immediately wrapped my legs around his waist, accepting everything he gave me, my body aching for more.

His kisses were answers. I moaned at the taste of him, the forbidden fruit I’d been missing all this time.

“Let me show you,” he growled against my ear. “If my words won’t make you believe me, my body will.”

* * *

E
verything was
as it once was for a moment. He stripped me of my clothes, my defenses, and my soul. I accepted him back in without a fight. There was no chance that I’d ever be strong enough not to let Nolan Weston back inside me. He was the drug I was hopelessly addicted to, the human heroin I never had a hope of denying myself. I called out his name as I came for him, begging and crying for mercy for an hour as he did anything he wanted to my body.

When we lay next to each other afterward on top of my bare mattress, neither of us could say anything. I listened to our breathing go from ragged back to normal. He’d released himself inside of me, just as I’d wanted. Having a part of him in me was a salve on my wounded heart.

“Camilla,” he finally said. “I missed you so much.”

Tears fell from the corners of my eyes into my hair.

“Nolan, you about killed me,” I confessed. “You broke my heart.”

“I know,” he said. “I will always hate myself for that.”

I turned to look at him. He was staring up at the ceiling, his eyes sad.

“Why?” I asked. “Who was on that phone call?”

He turned over and pulled me toward him, kissing my head as he ran his hand down the side of my naked body.

“Jessa,” he said. “I had to tell her those things so she wouldn’t be suspicious. She’s not someone who can be trusted. And being that I can’t know who in our firm is a mole, I can’t chance her knowing how I feel for you.”

“Okay,” I said. “So, how would she know about us anyway?”

He sighed. “You don’t want to know.”

“What do you mean?” I said, pulling away for a moment. “Tell me.”

“Your father’s house is bugged by the firm,” Nolan said. “Something I didn’t know until Jessa called me and wondered why I was sleeping with my dead boss’s daughter.”

Holy
.
Shit
.

“So we were being spied on,” I said. “The entire time? Why? How could you not know this?”

“Believe it or not, I don’t know everything,” he said.

I thought about all the things that had happened in Tahoe between Nolan and me. The thought of someone listening to us made me sick to my stomach.

“This is so fucked up,” I said. “It just keeps getting worse and worse. And what do you mean, there’s a mole at the firm? Who? Why? I’m completely lost. You’re telling me so much at once…”

Nolan pulled me close to him, his arms tightening around me as I sobbed into his chest.

“Just promise me,” I cried. “That I can trust you. That all of this really is because you love me. Because my heart wants to believe that, but my brain is telling me to run from you as far and as fast as I can.”

“If there is anything I can promise you,” he said, taking my face in his hands. “It’s that I will never let anything happen to you.”

He kissed me again, long and deep. But despite how much I wanted to…

I didn’t believe him.