Billion Dollar Bastard: An Alpha Male Step Brother Billionaire Romance Read Free

boxes.
     
    I’m not a man who likes to be pushed. I’m not the kind of man you push. I’m the kind of man who does the pushing. I push. I don’t get pushed.
     
    But then I stopped. I found my hands sliding into my pocket, feeling the cool, sharp metal of my condo keys, pressing the metal into my flesh.
     
    No, it wasn’t worth it. I had everything else. I had money. I could go to a hotel. I would figure it out.
     
    And so, instead of confronting Liana, I had turned around and walked right back to the elevator. I took the elevator down to the lobby in silence, ignored the quiet gazes of the other residents, other bankers and lawyers and doctors who usually ignored me, usually didn’t have much to say to me nor I them. But now, the only human interaction they would offer me was a quiet look of pity.
     
    I didn’t want their pity. I didn’t fucking care.
     
    I stormed out of the building, gaze the moving company my phone number, told them to call me when they had picked everything up and take it to a storage warehouse in New Jersey. Then, I checked myself into the Hilton and called my lawyer.
     
    The divorce was easy. Liana agreed to everything, and we had signed a pre-nup beforehand, so the proceedings went smoothly. It was what happened afterwards that made my life a living hell.
     
    Liana calling me constantly, showing up at my office, interrupting dinners, stalking me around town… The particular instance immortalized on the cover of this tabloid showed a moment last weekend when she had tracked me down to a Midtown restaurant where I was holding a dinner for my new management team, congratulating everyone on a good first quarter. It was a welcome distraction from the madness of dealing with my ex-wife.
     
    And then, into our private dining room, Liana stormed, her thin, pale face running with mascara, her lipstick slathered on awkwardly, a glass of white wine in her hand.
     
    “Kyle,” she screamed. “I can’t find the fucking remote!”
     
    I remember simply putting my head down on the dinner table, face-down, as the staff escorted her out. My people know about my wife; they know the trouble we’ve been going through. None of them were surprised. I couldn’t think of a better crowd to have that happen in front of.
     
    But then, she had hidden out outside the restaurant, in a line of clubgoers waiting to get into the night spot next to the restaurant. She flung herself at me, screaming as I hailed a cab that was meant for me, but which I ended up depositing her in, handing the cabbie a hundred-dollar bill, and telling him to take her back to the condo.
     
    I guess there had been some paparazzi in the area. You can never escape. There’s something that money can’t buy me, I suppose. Damn it all to hell.
     
    “Nick, just make her go away…” I sighed. “Make it all go away.”
     
    “Like I said, Kyle. Not that easy,” my friend and PR man said with another long-suffering sigh. “You know that Jenkins Consulting is starting to say they don’t want to work with us?”
     
    My eyes widened and I sat up in my chair. Jenkins was a consulting outfit we had been looking at acquiring for the last six months. The deal was almost done with.
     
    “What? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about it?” I demanded, reaching for my phone.
     
    Nicholas smiled cautiously, smiling the smile of a man who’s not happy about anything.
     
    “They—“ this meant the other senior company officers. “—wanted me to tell you. So you wouldn’t be mad.”
     
    “Damn right I’m mad!” I yelled. “Just over this stupid thing?”
     
    “It’s everything, Kyle. Your divorce has been in the tabloids for weeks, months even. It’s one thing after another. These aren’t glamorous celebrities you’re working with—they don’t want to work with Chris Brown. They want someone who doesn’t get written up for slapping his ex-wife.”
     
    “I didn’t slap her! I put her in a taxi home!” I