Secret Revenge: An Enemies-to-Lovers Billionaire Romance

9. Travis

The weekend at the family villa was every bit as great as I’d hoped. I loved spending time with my brothers and cousins. While our lives kept us from doing so as often as I would have liked, we made sure to create time to be together several times in a year.

The biggest challenge was finding a day when we were all available at the same time between our business schedules, and family schedules since my cousins had started to settle down. Difficult as it was, we tried our best to make it work.

We spent the entire weekend together, eating, drinking and talking. There was a lot of catching up to do, both on a personal level and on a business level. Both ourselves and the Moustakases were intricately involved in our respective family businesses, and we were careful about the kind of information we shared. While my brothers and I trusted our cousins, we had witnessed businesses rip up the closest families a thousand times.

We only stepped out of the house once to play golf at the country club, where Alexi ran into some business associates. They joined our game and spent the entire time in hushed conversations. We returned to the Villa after dinner, none of us having the appetite we’d once possessed for long nights out on the town.

Despite how occupied my time was with my brothers and cousins, I could not keep Emily out of my mind. I kept thinking about our time together, both in bed and at dinner. The memories sent powerful jolts through my thighs and groin whenever I was alone, especially when I was trying to work. On several occasions, I uncomfortably glanced around to see if anybody could tell that I was getting aroused.

I had a long day at the office ahead of me on Monday, so I left the villa for my apartment shortly before midnight. Alexi and Leo were still in town, so I would be able to catch up with them later.

I felt awful when I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment building. We hadn’t done as much sleeping as we should have on our guys’ weekend. As I rode the elevator up to the penthouse, memories of Emily and I in the same elevator boiled to the surface of my mind. I squeezed my eyes shut to clear out my thoughts, but nothing worked. I wanted her hands on me again. I wanted to hear her voice.

I pushed into the dark apartment and navigated to the bedroom on muscle memory. Then I slumped on the bed, exhausted. It felt strangely empty without Emily in it.

She was only here for one night. What the hell? I’d never felt this way about a woman before.

I missed how urgently she wanted me. While I wasn’t big on romantic relationships, I wished she had given us a chance for more than a one-night stand. She hadn’t even left a number for me to reach her, or an address. I did have her email address, but it would be a huge boundary violation if I reached out to her using her professional contact information.

Besides, when she left the way she did she made it obvious that she had no interest in any further conversations with me. She knew where to find me. And she hadn’t tried.

I couldn’t think of another woman who had ever blown me off, and Emily now had twice. Once personally, and once professionally. Ouch.

Is that why I can’t stop thinking about her?

I had the means and the resources to find her easily if I wanted to. But, I wasn’t going to throw myself after her like some loser or worse, a stalker. I imagined she had a ton of men doing that, especially with her work putting her bio in front of so many people.

Thinking about the other men Emily had in her life cut me like a knife, so I turned my thoughts back to fantasizing about another night with her instead. I drifted off to sleep in my clothes, with thoughts of her spinning around in my mind.

I woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all.. I shrugged out of my clothes with an effort and stepped into the shower. I turned the knob on the wall and sighed as cold water rained onto my head.

I soaped my body, massaging away the knots from golfing the previous night. I was shocked to find my shaft hard when I got to it, and tried to ignore the feeling of my hardness in my hands.

Images of Emily had assaulted my dreams throughout the night, and they started again as I touched myself. I squeezed gently on my shaft, rubbing it slowly and softly. I shut my eyes, huffing loudly as my breathing became ragged.

I hadn’t touched myself in what seemed like ages, and the thought of doing so now seemed very adolescent. Regardless, it felt good, I had to admit. I could see Emily twisting and writhing like an exotic dancer in my mind’s eye, naked as the day she was born.

Would she hate knowing I was doing this? Or would she love it?

My thoughts drifted further. I could see her going down on my shaft, slurping on the entire length, saliva dripping down her jaw and pooling on the floor. I shuddered and let out a deep groan. Next in my fantasy I bent her over not so gently, and I thrust into her like a crazed animal, relishing the cries of pleasure washing out of her.

I stroked faster, spreading my legs as my knees weakened. I could taste her full lips again and feel her round breasts. I smiled a crazy smile as I sorted through the memories of our one night together, one after the other. The way her walls squeezed on me, the way she arched her back before she released, and the way her moans rang in my ears, soft like chimes in the wind.

I could feel Emily as physically as if she was with me. Finally I came, my long, winded moan bouncing off the tiles of the bathroom walls. I slumped on the shower wall, struggling to regain my breath. I stayed in the shower long after I finished, savoring the taste of sweet memories and the ecstasy of orgasm.

I dried off, got dressed, and arrived at work feeling more relaxed and refreshed than I had in days. My session in the shower left my mind crisp and sharp. But I needed to keep Emily out of my head for a few hours. I had a lot to take care of and I needed to be on top of my game.

I stepped off the elevator to find my assistant waiting for me with a cup of coffee and a worried look on his face. I narrowed my eyes at him as I took the coffee. I wondered what had him looking so shaken that early in the morning.

“Good morning, Mr. Ross,” he said, falling in step beside me. “Mr. Anderson wanted to let you know to come straight to conference room four as soon as you got in. Err… sir.”

I glanced at him with irritation etched visibly on my face, and he squirmed under my scrutiny. “What’s going on?”

“He didn’t say, sir,” he replied nervously. “He just let me know it was urgent.”

I rolled my eyes. Grow some spine, man.

I changed direction and headed toward conference room four. It was a dark spot for electronic devices, except those on a private, guarded network. If Victor wanted to meet me there, it was probably a crucial matter. I handed my bag to the assistant and continued on briskly.

I pushed the door of the conference room open and was surprised to see a small army waiting for me. I shut the door quietly behind me, then checked my watch to make sure I hadn’t overslept. It was a few minutes past 8am, which was earlier than I had arrived at work in centuries. So, I’m not late. They’re all early..

A seed of worry took root in my mind. What could be so bad it could bring all these people here early?

I took my seat at the head of the table and leaned back in the leather swivel seat. “Well? What’s with the stern faces? Anyone care to tell me what’s going on?”

Victor Anderson, the CFO of the company, stood in the far corner of the room. His hushed conversation with Brendan ended as soon as I entered. Jackson was seated a few spots from me, to my right. Surprisingly, Alexi and Leo were in attendance as well.

Brendan cleared his throat and walked towards me. “We have a problem.” I hated how almost every sentence he made at work began with that exact line. He set a tablet in front of me and tapped on the screen with his index finger.

“We discovered a security breach over the weekend,” Brendan continued. “Jones picked it up and fought back the breach with Carlos. They logged it and informed me about it last night. I came in early to assess the severity of the hack.”

Brendan was in charge of our tech department and cyber security. A graduate of MIT, and the most capable tech leader among the three of us—an exemplary genius in technology. He’d built the cloud software we currently used and was in charge of its security. He hand-picked members of his department, and put them through rigorous monthly testing to keep them sharp and above the curve.

“And?” I asked impatiently.

“Dangerously severe.” He swiped the screen in front of me. “Whoever the hacker was, he was no pushover. He was exceptionally good. It seems he breached our cloud using your account as an access point. We were able to stop him before he got anything useful. But this is the important part—he’d somehow gotten access to your private data.”

Alarm bells started ringing in my head.

“We tried a backtrace to find him, but he disappeared as fast as he entered. This should not have been possible. Your access point requires biometric access, as well as several redundancies. Anyway, I’ve been working on the team to beef up our firewalls, but until I have faith in our structural integrity, I implore everyone to be careful and watchful.”

I listened to Brendan’s report quietly. Having him in charge soothed my mind. I had learned to trust my brothers in their fields, even when things looked shaky. I was great with finance related matters, Jackson was an expert administrator, and Brendan was a tech genius and had earned the faith I had in his abilities. Together we were almost unstoppable.

“This looks to me like a continuation of the attacks we’ve been experiencing for months,” I said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s related to the smear campaign against us. Someone looking for dirt for an article.” I turned to Victor. “Where are we with the PR hires?”

“We created a list of the most suitable journalists who we believe are honest and perfectly independent.” Victor dropped a clipboard in front of me. It was a list of names of independent journalists. I glanced through it cursorily.

“How can we ensure the integrity of these people?” Jackson asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting started. “I mean, if they can hack our servers, it’s a small matter to plant a spy in our company as well.”

“Actually, it would be much more difficult than that,” Victor replied, adjusting his coat. “Every name on that list went through a rigorous vetting process. Every single article, comment on social media and liked post was checked to assess their views on matters similar to ours. Those were the best we found.”

I glanced up from the clipboard at Jackson to see how he responded. He nodded at Victor and let the matter go. The conversation in the room went on as I flipped the page on the clipboard, but something near the bottom caught my eye. Surprised, I went back to the page and read the list more carefully.

Close to the end of the document, I saw the name EMILY SKYE.

What? Did she change her mind?

She had told me she had no intentions of working for me without mincing her words. But….was that why she left the way she did? Did she already plan to accept? If so, she would have wanted to keep what happened between us minimal, to prevent it from becoming a conflict of interest.

I stifled the urge to laugh out loud. She’d told me she was giving me a chance to convince her to accept the invitation. Looks like I did just that. I suppressed excitement to see her when she and the other journalists started the next day.

Control yourself, Travis. This could get awkward if you can’t.

I mentally cursed at the thought of having to keep a professional distance between us. But it would be better than never seeing her again.