Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (19 page)

“Do you remember you
taught me all of them?” she asks.

“I still don’t see how
this has anything to do with you torpedoing my reputation with
nearly
everyone I know,” I tell her.

She lifts the front of
her shirt to check her abdomen for bruises, but I focused most of my aggression
on that stupid, perfect face of hers. I bet she regrets ever getting those
piercings. They, or more accurately, the skin which held them didn’t fare so
well. “I was tired of being that person,” she says. “Every time I’d come home
after school upset, you’d comfort me and tell me what I needed to do to fix
whatever the problem was.”

“I didn’t see it before,
but you’re right. Man, I had it coming
for
being there for you all the time,” I snipe.

“We are the exact
opposite, you and me,” she says.
“When I have an
opportunity, I latch onto it, usually tight enough that I kill it. At the end
of the day, I come back here to my sister’s place that I can’t move out of
because I’m a woman in her late twenties that can’t pay her bills.
Do
you know how humiliating that is?”

“Then move out,” I tell
her. “I’ve never forced you to accept anything.”

“That’s just it, though,”
she says. “You’re always the one with her head on straight. You’re always the
reasonable one. Yeah, I’m the chick guys I went to school with still get all
nervous around, but everything always works out for you. The problem is you
never grab onto something until you can’t have it anymore.”

“So you spread all that
about me because you thought I was squandering an opportunity?” I ask.

“It sounds
pretty stupid
when you say it out loud,” Naomi
mutters. Now she’s holding her top lip up and pressing one finger of her other
hand against one of her incisors, saying, “I think my tooth is loose.”

“Yeah, it sounds pretty
stupid,” I echo.

Naomi closes her mouth
and washes her hands. She looks at herself in the mirror and attempts a smile,
though it quickly turns into a wince. “Well, after the cotton balls and the
cream and the makeup, I’d say I look positively awful,” she says.

“You’re welcome,” I
answer.

“You
don’t look too hot yourself,” she says.
“In fact, I
think you got
the worst of it.”

Looking at us both in the
mirror, I tend to disagree. She landed a few good head shots, but her body game
is pathetic the way
it always was
. I
don’t have to check my chest or stomach to know I don’t have any bruises there.

“So you wanted to cause
me to break up with Nick because I wasn’t doing a good enough job ‘accepting
the opportunity’ to be with him?” I ask.

“How many times did you
say you didn’t think it was going to work out?” she asks. “Even when I was
staying with you two at the beach house, you were still holding back and
looking for an excuse to call it quits.”

“That’s not true,” I say.
“When I first went to New York, yeah, I thought it was just going to be a
two-week
thing that I’d tell my grandkids
about—minus the naughty bits. After that first night in the beach house,
though, I was all in for the long term. I didn’t know what was going to happen,
but I was willing to find out.”

“Uh huh,” she says. “When
you got back here the last time, was there any part of you that thought you’d
see Nick again?”

“It’s different,” I tell
her. “I even went out to dinner with him after he got here to hear him out.”

“You didn’t, though, did
you?” she asks. “Come on,
El. It
’s not
like you don’t tell me this crap.”

“You weren’t there,” I
tell her. “He started going off about—”

“—stuff he couldn’t have
known unless he’d hired a private investigator or bribed someone or something,”
she says, completing the thought. “I get it. The problem with that is he was
about to tell you how he knew all that, and rather than trust him or even listen
to what he had to say, you just left. You were never really in this
relationship. At first, yeah, I maybe told a few people a few things because I
just didn’t want you to have him.”

“How sweet,” I mock as I
grab the bottle of hydrogen peroxide and unscrew the lid. Holding the bottle
over
my right hand, I pour slowly, the clear
liquid foaming as it comes in contact with the tiny, bloodless cuts on my
knuckles.

“After a while, though,
you’ve got to admit I was doing you a favor,” she says. “You wanted a way
out,
and I gave you one.”

I protest, “I didn’t—”

“The first thing you said
when we got home was you didn’t know how long
you
could stand being back home if you were still going to have to deal with the
fallout of dating Nick,” she says.

“Yeah, that
you
caused,” I fire back.

“Maybe so,” she says,
“but if you were all head-over-whatever for this guy, it wouldn’t matter. I
mean, come on, sis,” she says. “The guy’s a billionaire. It’s not like you
couldn’t just move somewhere else and never have to deal with it ever.”

“I’ve never asked him for
money,” she says.

“Yeah,” she says, “I
know. My sister the martyr. Even when you didn’t know I had anything to do with
it, you were still blaming Nick. You even told me you knew it wasn’t his fault,
the way people were acting, but that never seemed to matter.”

“It’s not Nick that’s the
problem,” I tell her. “The problem is everyone who catches a glimpse of him in
the distance. You started the whole thing here in town, but if you remember,
you’re not the one that got me in the tabloids.”

“Again,” she says, “if
you
were invested
in the relationship,
why would that matter?”

“Because it does!” I
shout
but immediately wince. I’ve split my lip
open again and over the next few minutes, I don’t say anything. I just hold a
cotton ball against the cracked skin to stop the bleeding.

Naomi doesn’t say
anything else, but she doesn’t have to. I don’t know how Nick found out all
that stuff about me, but I can no longer ignore the fact that the
relationship’s dead because I killed it.

The problem I have with
relationships—the problem I’ve
always
had—is that even when
I
was dating guys
in high school, I just assumed it was never going to last. I don’t know if it’s
a problem of self-worth or if
I’m used
to
being overshadowed, but Naomi’s right about that much.

Naomi leaves the bathroom
before I do, even though my lip stopped bleeding a while ago and there’s
nothing left for me to cover.

The night I walked out of
the restaurant on Nick, I deleted his cell phone number. I’m still skeeved out
by how much he knew about me, but maybe Naomi’s right. It’s possible he’s a
sleazebag
, but it’s also possible I overreacted
because I was scared.

Okay, it’s more than a
possibility.

I sidle over to the
bathroom door and twist the lock. It takes a minute to wash everything off of
my hands, but I still have Nick’s office number in New York. Pulling out my
phone, I find the
digits
.

The phone rings.

“You’ve reached the
office of Nikolai Scipio of Stingray Next-Gen Technologies,”
a man’s voice answers
.

“Hi,” I say and then
follow it with a long pause.

“… hi,” the man says. “Is
there something I can help you with, miss?”

“Michaels,” I say. “And
now I just realized you probably weren’t asking for my name.”

The man sighs. “Ma’am, if
this is a prank call—”

“No,” I say, “it’s not.
I’m
Ellie Michaels.” I say, “I was hoping I
could speak with Nick, or at least leave a message.”

“Yeah, Mr. Scipio isn’t
taking phone calls right now,” the man says.

“Okay,” I say. “I can
leave a message for him. Just tell him that I—”

The line clicks. I look
at my phone. That little punk hung up on me.

I call the number back
and the same voice answers, “You’ve reached the office of Nikolai Scipio of
Stingray Next-Gen Technologies.”

I say, “Yeah, I think we
got disconnected.
It’s
Ellie—”

The line clicks again.

My first reaction is
just to assume
Nick told his assistant he
didn’t want to speak with me, but even if that is the case, I can’t be too mad
about it. Excuses aside, I know I ran out on him.

I still don’t know that I
want to find out how Nick learned all that stuff about me, but the shock is
gone. All that’s left is the
space
where
our relationship should be.

It’s impulsive, and maybe
even a little silly, but I take a quick look at my bank balance on my phone. I
have about five hundred bucks left.

That should be more than
enough for a plane ticket.

Chapter
Sixteen

The Seduction of Power

Nick

I’m just getting home to
the penthouse when there’s a knock on my door. Whoever it is, I’m not in the
mood.

After spending all day on
the phone with investors who swore they’d have my back through anything, only
to find out they’re already preparing for when I’m gone, I don’t want to speak
to anyone. I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to be in the same room with
anybody
.

What’s worse, Jacque won’t
answer my calls, and even when I went out to his house, he wouldn’t come to the
door. Objectively, Stingray’s just moving in the same direction every other
company that doesn’t give a crap about anyone or anything has been for ages.

Is the world going to be
that much different if they get their way? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean
I’m just going to lie back and let it happen without doing
something
.

That’s what’s going
through my head as I open the door.

“Before you say
anything,” Ellie speaks before the door’s all the way open, “I’ve done some
thinking,
and I don’t know if this is going to
change or not, but for now at least, I don’t want to know how you knew all that
stuff. Perhaps you had a good reason,
maybe
you didn’t, but if there’s any chance for anything happening with us right now,
I need some time before we come back to that.”

“Hey, you’re at my door
for half a second and already back to making demands,” I say. “Looks like we
picked up right where we left off, didn’t we? Did you want to come in?”

“I guess I deserved
that,” she says. “If I’m wasting my time here, I’ll just go.”

As I’m looking at her, I
notice swelling over parts of her face. Her bottom lip is split, too, right in
the middle.

“What happened?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes. “It
was a whole thing with Naomi,” she says. “Can we talk?”

I move out of the
way,
and Ellie comes in.

“To be honest,” I tell
her, “I’m a bit surprised you found this place. If I’m not mistaken, this is
the first time you’ve been here.”

“You told me what
building you were in when I first came here to New York,” she says. “I figured
finding your place from there couldn’t be too difficult. Thanks to the
tabloids, everyone knows who I am and assumes we’re still very much together,
so making it past the lobby was relatively easy.”

I close the door.

I don’t know what I’m
meant
to be feeling right now, but my emotions
are too raw to feel much of anything but overwhelmed. If I had to take a guess,
I’d call what I’m feeling right now anger with a hint of surprise and just a sliver
of hope. That emotional structure changes from moment to moment, though.

Walking Ellie into the
living room, I say, “Here’s the obvious first question: why are you here?”

“I’m here to tell you I’m
sorry for the way I acted,” she says. “Not just for the way I left that night
in the restaurant, but for all of it. I was blaming you for things. After Naomi
and
I
had our slugfest, she helped me see
how I’ve been running away from this, from us, from you, from whatever from the
get go and if nothing else, I wanted to apologize for that.”

“You could have called,”
I tell her, looking out the window.

“Yeah,” she says. “I
may have
deleted your number after that night.”

“I’m sorry, Ellie,” I
say, “but it’s been a long few months and today’s felt just as long as the rest
of it put together, so if you don’t mind …”

“What I came to realize
was that I’ve been running away, not because I thought it would never work out
with you, but because it was starting to look like it could,” she says.

“I don’t get you,” I tell
her. “I deal with a lot of people, but I have never met anyone whose motives
are more a mystery than you.”

“I get that a lot,” she
answers. It looks like she’s trying to smile, but her lips hardly move. “I
guess what it comes down to is I want to see if you’re willing, maybe, to give
things another shot.”

Yes, of course. Nothing
would make me happier in the world.

“Why would I do that?” I
ask. My brain and my mouth aren’t communicating very well right now.

It takes a few seconds
for her to answer.

“Because at the end of
the day, I realized that the feelings I have for you are
real, not just some fantasy.
I’m ready to stop
running,” I tell him.

I look away from the
window and back at Ellie. “It feels like you’ve said something like that
before,” I tell her.

“Did I?” she asks. “If I
did, I’m sure
I
wanted to mean it. But I
was still so—should I just go? It seems like you have a lot on your mind and it
looks
like I’m not helping.”

“No,” I tell her. “Stay.”

“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Your face is all
red,
and there’s a vein
above your brow that’s popping out to the point it’s starting to worry me.”

What I feel right now is
played with and discarded. Any lingering guilt about not telling Ellie
everything from the
outset
is located in
a part of my mind I can’t access
right now. I’m considering keeping it that way.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “If
you don’t mind, I’d prefer if you sleep in the guest room, at least for
tonight.”

“Okay,” she
murmurs
. “There’s still a lot I’d like to talk
about, but with the fight and the flight—huh.
Usually,
it’s one or the other—I’m dragging right now.” She says, “Do you mind if we
pick it up in the morning?”

I know what she’s doing.
She stays here
tonight,
and it’s going to
be that much harder saying no to her tomorrow. Only, even as upset as I am, as
frustrated as I am with work, and how angry and hurt
I
am toward Ellie,
I
don’t
think I could bring myself to tell her no now.

“That’s fine,” I tell
her. “Get some sleep. If we’re going to talk in the morning, though, it’ll have
to be pretty early. There are a lot of ducks I’ve got to get in a
row,
and it looks like every one of them is
afraid of getting shot.” I chuckle. “Maybe I overextended the metaphor there,
but you get the idea.”

“Yeah,” she says. “If I’m
not up when you get up, wake me. I want to get it right this time.”

“And you have no interest
at all in hearing what I was going to tell you in the restaurant?” I ask.

She winces and I’m not
sure if it’s because I brought up the forbidden topic or if she moved wrong and
aggravated one of the minor injuries all that makeup isn’t hiding.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“It’s still a bit much for me.”

“Even if it would put
your mind at ease, you don’t want to hear it?” I ask.

She shakes her head.
“Maybe it sounds stupid, but I’d like to get my head totally straight about
everything before we add too much more information to the mix,” she says.

“So, if it was that I was
going to tell you I’m a serial
killer,
and
I
got all this money because I
murdered the guy who was supposed to have this life?” I ask.

“I wouldn’t believe
that,” she says.

Smirking, I say, “It’s
good to know you have at least
that
much trust in me.”

“You know,” she snaps,
“if you don’t want me here, you could just tell me.”

I hold my hands up, palms
out, saying, “I’m just surprised, that’s all. Things at Stingray aren’t going
so
well,
and I honestly didn’t expect to
see you again.”

“So what do you want me
to do?” she asks. “If you
need
me to go,
I’ll go. If you
’d like
me to stay, I’ll
stay, but if it’s just so you can keep making those comments and make me feel
even worse than I already do, I’d rather just hear it from my sister.”

I’m ready to snap at her
for comparing me
to that thing
she’s
related to, but for the first time this
conversation,
I
manage to keep my thoughts to myself.

“I want you to stay,” I
tell her. “I’ll get over whatever this is. Maybe we should both just get some
sleep.”

“I think that sounds like
a good idea,” she says and starts walking only to stop halfway across the room.
“Okay, I’ve never been here. Where am I going?”

“Down the hall,” I tell
her. “It’s the fourth door on your right. Clean linens are in the closet.”

She walks
off,
and I just sit on the couch a while,
savoring every moment of my utter confusion and frustration.

In the grand scheme of
things, my anger is meaningless. Ellie’s no less the person I want to spend my
life with than she was before she walked up to me that first time at Rory’s.
Just the way she was asking me if she should go or not, though, I’m asking
myself if it’s worth it.

There are so many ways that
she’s the same person I knew all those years ago, but time changes things, and
not always for the better. She was quiet back then, but she was always so clear
about what she thought and felt.

I guess it’s possible I
never knew her well enough to get the whole story.

After a long time
pondering my situation but coming no closer to any real insight, I decide to
call it a night. I’m
exhausted,
and there
aren’t that many hours before I have to be up again.

I send a quick message to
Amelie, my morning chamber maid, letting her know to let me sleep in
tomorrow,
and I’m off to bed. The problem is,
once I’m in bed, the last thing on my mind is sleep.

After about an hour just
lying there, I flip on the television. I’m not interested in what’s on; I just
need something louder than my thoughts if I’m going to get any sleep at all.

Eventually, I must have
dozed off, because when I
wake,
it’s
light outside. I’m tired and emotionally drained, but that’s no excuse. I have
to get up.

If Ellie’s not up yet,
I’ll probably just let her sleep. In a lot of ways, I’m overjoyed she’s here,
but that doesn’t mean anything is simple.

I head to the kitchen and
grab some coffee. The pot’s still hot. Amelie must have just gone.

It’s nice when things
just get done.

Sipping my coffee, I
forego the urge to watch Ellie
sleep,
and
I get back to my room.

The television’s still
on, and an old Tom Selleck movie is playing. I switch the channel over to the
news and immediately, I drop the remote.

I pull out my phone and
call Amelie. She doesn’t answer, but based on what
I see
on
television; I
’m not
surprised.

Her
voicemail
beeps and I say, “You have twenty
minutes to get here or not only are you
fired,
but I will also
use every bit of my power and influence to make sure the
rest of your life is hell. You know who this
is,
and you know why I’m calling. Get here now.”

I hang up the phone just
in time for the camera to cut back to the full-sized, though blurred, picture
of Ellie sleeping topless in the guest room down the hall from me.

*
          
         
*
                   
*

“Who the hell do you think
you are‽” I shout about a foot from Amelie’s face. “What was the point of
that?” I spit, “I hope you got a hell of a
payout
because I’m going to ruin your fucking world! And you know nobody’s going to
hire you anywhere for anything. Who told you to do this? I want you to tell me
right now before I have you arrested for voyeurism!”

She goes a full half
second without saying anything.

“I said answer me!” I
yell.

“
What
is going on?” Ellie’s voice comes somewhere to the left of me.
Ellie’s dressed in yesterday’s clothes, her hair’s a mess.

Amelie’s trembling. I’d
never hit a woman, even for something like this, but I’m no less glad she’s
scared. I hope she’s terrified.

“You’re going to want to
sit down,” I tell Ellie.

Ellie crosses her arms,
saying, “Who is this woman and why are you screaming at her?”

“She took a picture of
you while you were sleeping and now it’s all over everything,” I answer,
staring Amelie down.

“What do you mean while I
was
asleep
?” Ellie asks. “Why would
anyone care about a picture of me sleeping?”

“Ellie, you really might
want to sit down for this,” I tell her.

Is it like someone died?
No. But hearing every person on the planet with an internet connection can pull
up a half-naked picture of you anytime they want isn’t the kind of thing you
want to take standing up. Not in a literal sense.