Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87996 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
I didn’t want to risk him being able to be comforted by his lover when his life fell apart.
I then sent everything to no less than six tabloids under a fake e-mail account.
On a whim, I also sent it to Olivia’s assistant with a note to never hire this man again and suggested she hire one of the freelance writers to do a story about powerful women being targeted by leeches.
Watching from the sidelines as his life fell to pieces would be a nice distraction while I waited for Luc’s retaliation to my plans. It would at least keep me amused.
Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
It was Olivia.
Her pale skin seemed to reflect the moonlight.
She had rolled over, and the black silk sheets were now only covering half of her body, a single alabaster leg all the way to her slender hips on full display. I had expected the sight would make my cock throb, but when my heart raced too, I knew I was in trouble.
My plans never factored in Olivia as anything more than a pawn.
I thought I could use her, ruin her, and it would be fine.
Then she’d brought back memories of the sweet teenage girl who followed me around like a puppy. I never touched her because Luc and I were friends, and he threatened to kill me if he ever caught me looking at her.
Those boyish threats were why I had targeted Olivia for my revenge.
I thought it would be fine. I thought she had left all of that life behind when she went against the norm and did something most women in our class would never dream of doing. She worked, and started her own company, and built a future for herself that was not reliant on someone else. How could I have ever predicted that her flouting of tradition included shunning dating?
She was photographed with men all the time. Wall Street types, male models, and A-list celebrities. She was even rumored to have seduced a few congressmen. Despite all of that, she maintained a flawless reputation as a serious businesswoman and a powerful woman. Many even touted her as an equally qualified successor to the Manwarring empire, an assertion she publicly laughed off and refuted, saying Luc was the best option to shepherd the existing family business into the future. She was going to focus on building a new venture that would eventually be added to her family’s empire.
By all counts, she was a modern twenty-five-year-old woman, who gained her independence while still under the protection of her family name.
How the fuck was I supposed to know that she was untouched?
I should have known. The way she blushed when I touched her, the way her thighs shook when I ran my fingers across her underwear. The way she moaned before melting into my kiss.
I should have fucking known something wasn’t right.
Even the way she looked at the statue. I’d thought it was some thinly veiled bisexual urge, but it was so much more innocent than that.
It was sexual curiosity. Yearning.
I missed the signs. Like a real asshole, I screamed in her face, stripped her, and then fucked her against the shower wall. It was her first time, and I fucked her like a whore, not even putting her in a bed and making her comfortable first.
What did that make me?
The monster that fucked her to hurt her brother. That’s what.
I had planned on ruining her, but not like this.
I wanted to get back at Luc, and I didn’t even stop to consider how this would affect her.
And I thought going after some little leach meant I was protecting her?
I took another long drag from my cigarette before putting it out in a crystal ashtray, grinding the butt into nothingness.
Olivia was innocent in this war of her brother’s making.
There were always casualties in war.
How I felt about Olivia was inconsequential.
The plan was already set, and I was going to see it through.
If anything, this just gave a hint of truth to the scandal that I was going to create. I may not have seen this turn of events coming, but I sure as fuck planned on using it.
For now, I’d let her sleep until the morning.
She was going to hate me with everything she had.
Good.
She would experience a fraction of what I felt for her brother and family.
Bring it on.
CHAPTER 15
LUC
“We are expected downstairs,” Amelia, my beautiful bride, said, trying to get out of our bed.
She was gloriously naked, and after our wedding night and each night leading up to it, she wasn’t bashful or ashamed of her perfect body with her slender curves.
It had taken me weeks of constant praise and showing exactly what her body did to me to give her just a hint of confidence without SPANXS or some other ridiculous garment meant to turn her body into a stick figure.