Tainted Love (Billionaires of London #3)

Chapter 1

GREGORY

Heavy rain blasts my face as my feet pound the path through St James’s Park.

It mixes with sweat and saturates the light-grey hoody pulled over my head.

I run across Blue Bridge, the impressive sight of Buckingham Palace to the left, Big Ben and the London Eye to the right.

But even if I could see through my wet eyelashes and the January morning darkness, I wouldn’t care for the view of the buildings, just like I don’t care for the dead trees or the lifeless lake beneath the bridge.

I stopped caring a long time ago. For more than twenty years, I’ve concentrated on justifying my existence, finding a purpose, the reason I’m alive.

The only building that’s carried any semblance of meaning is my office block because until three and a half months ago, all I had was power and money.

Three and a half months ago, I found my reason to live. I found the reason blood runs through my veins, the reason my heart beats. Now she’s gone.

Each day, I extend my running route and lengthen the time I spend in the gym when I get back to my apartment.

I stay in there, beating the shit out of the punch bag, until Jackson forces me to stop.

I keep running and punching until my mind is crushed by a lack of oxygen and my body is physically drained.

For those final ten minutes, before I either stop or pass out, I have nothing left to give, my mind and body are numb, but my heart pounds in my chest and it’s the only way I know I’m still alive.

I used to have nightmares when I was a kid.

Sometimes, I still do. Countless nights, I’ve come close to dying in my subconscious.

That’s the thing about your consciousness; it always takes over just before you fall from the cliff, get hit by a train or get beaten to death by your father.

But it wakes you up. No matter how much you want that train to smash straight through you, your consciousness wakes you up like it’s doing you a fucking favour.

It’s not. It returns you up into a living hell.

Three and a half months ago, I started to believe in dreams. That dreams could exist where you don’t come close to dying every night.

Where you don’t want to die. Then that dream turned to a nightmare, slowly, surely, the way it was destined to do.

Five weeks ago, that’s when I saw the train coming at me down the tracks.

When I realised she couldn’t take any more.

That I’d mounted enough of my shit on her. That I’d broken her.

When Scarlett took that call and when she got on that plane, I willed my subconscious to let the train hit me.

But it didn’t. After thirty years of nightmares, I woke to the worst version of hell yet.

And I only have myself to blame. I shouldn’t have dared to dream.

When she walked into my boardroom, I should’ve let her be.

I didn’t, and this is my penance. This is what I deserve. I let myself taste goodness and now the black I see every day is a darker shade.

I don’t encounter another soul as I run the loop of St James’s Park then along the tree-lined path between the grass verges of Green Park and into Hyde Park.

I turn right, passing the finery of The Dorchester hotel and the murmurings of morning traffic, then further into the park’s centre, lapping the lake, taking the webbed path on routes to nowhere until I give in.

Then I work my way back across Westminster Bridge and along South Bank – dead because the tourists are still sleeping – back to the Shard.

Amy is already in the apartment, preparing to make breakfast. I nod in response to her smile but I keep my music drumming and move straight to the gym room off the lounge.

Jackson halts his reps on the leg press and stands behind the punch bag.

He holds the bag ready whilst I peel my soaked jumper from my torso and let it pool on the floor.

Then I start nailing the bag, blow after blow, not missing a beat of the track playing into my ears.

‘Greg, enough.’

‘Hold it still,’ I growl.

My fists land again, a hook with my right, an uppercut with my left, then Jackson lets go and steps away. I pummel every bit of temper and frustration into the blow as my shin impacts with the bag and sends it swinging hard left.

As my back slides down the gym wall and my legs give out in front of me, Jackson hands me a bottle of water and I finally take the buds from my ears.

‘This’s gotta stop,’ he tells me.

My teeth clamp down on the rim of the bottle, jaw clenching, as I glare at Jackson in an attempt to deflect the speech I’ve received at least once in each of the last five weeks.

‘What’s done is done. You made the choice.’ He hovers over me.

‘It was the right thing to do.’

‘If that’s true, why do you feel like shit?’

I take another swig of water and wish it was an acceptable hour to replace it with Scotch. ‘It’s what she would’ve done. She would’ve done the right thing. Maybe I learned something from someone for a change.’

Jackson shakes his head and flicks a towel over his shoulder. ‘So quit beating yourself up over it.’

With that, he leaves the gym. This is what he’s started doing. Dropping a statement like that then pissing off, leaving me to dwell on it. What’s more fucking annoying is that he’s ruined those only ten minutes in my day when my body is too drained to think.

* * *

‘Pop your bottom down on that stool. I’ve made scrambled eggs and smoked salmon.’

It’s hard to be a dick with Amy, no matter how foul my temper is. I mumble thanks and try to crack something close to a smile. Try but fail.

Christ, I need to get a grip. It’s the group’s Annual General Meeting today and I need to put on a show. The group is doing well; I’ve seen the results. Something concrete I can rely on.

I’m arrogant about business because I’m good at it.

Corporations, investments, innovations, markets.

I just get it. I’m always ten steps ahead so even if I get set back two paces, I’m still better than the next guy.

Regardless, my board and my shareholders expect to hear from their CEO today, the other Gregory, the version of myself I rely on to mask everything else.

‘These are good, Amy.’

She blushes at the compliment. I envy her. She cooks and cleans for me, looks after her children – I’d stake money on the fact she’s a good mother – takes care of a husband. She doesn’t want anything more than she needs and she’s happy.

After placing my cutlery at six o’clock and scrolling the three emails that have landed on my phone in the time it took me to eat scrambled eggs and drain my coffee, I nudge my plate towards Amy and lift a foot to the rim of my breakfast stool.

Laces tied, grey trousers adjusted, white shirt cuffs tweaked to lie just lower than the cuff of my blazer, I’m ready to perform.

‘Hold the phone, mister. What would you like for dinner?’ Amy calls.

Hold the phone. For the first time in days, I genuinely smile.

It was the night of the hunt, Opening Meet of the season: another thing I got wrong.

Scarlett was pissed at me for ignoring her all night, for buttering up Adriana to get to her husband, a private equity investor.

Then Williams’s sister, Charlotte, nearly went to bed with some arsehole and I swear I could’ve killed him, would have, if Scarlett hadn’t put those damn beautiful eyes in front of me.

She was reeling from everything that happened when I found her sitting on the four-post bed in our room.

It killed me seeing her like that again, a mess because of me.

But just like every time I screwed up a saying, she couldn’t resist giggling when I said, ‘Hold the fort.’

‘You mean hold the phone,’ she said. I knew it was but after the first time I got one of her English sayings wrong and she laughed like an angel, I just kept doing it.

And she laughed every time, the sweetest sound.

Even when she was angry, I could break her by being goofy.

It became a sort of addiction. As much as it wasn’t like me, that sound could melt me, so I guess she found a side to me I hadn’t known myself before her.

‘Whatever you like,’ I tell Amy. ‘Surprise me.’ I really couldn’t care less.

‘Oh. Err, I’ll go for one of your favourites in that case.’

* * *

Lawrence, as chairman of the AGM, declares the meeting quorate.

Leaning over his tan leather document folder – designed for him by my mother – he wiggles those goddamn varifocals that he really ought to have given up on by now and draws a tick next to item number one on his agenda.

He has a slightly larger information pack than the other twelve directors around the table, including me.

Christ knows what extra stuff he has in there, it’s probably packed out with blank pages, but the AGM is his big event.

Batman has a cape, Spiderman shoots webbing, Lawrence has stacks of wasted trees.

God help any man who stands in the way of Lawrence and his agenda – or who asks him to go paperless.

‘Agenda item number one, previous year’s performance and financials, one January 2025 to thirty-one December 2025.

Gregory?’ He lifts his specs to rest on top of his head and looks up at me.

I’ll never understand why people do that, like they’re standing on the deck of a yacht, Monaco sun blazing down, and the varifocals are a shaded pair of Tom Fords.

Lawrence is in the boardroom of GJR Enterprises in the middle of London City and it’s raining outside.

Sipping coffee is a good tool. It creates a pause, short enough and legitimate enough to not appear rude but long enough to let every other man – and one woman – at the table know that this is my show, agenda or no agenda.

Coffee cup slowly and purposefully back in its place, I sit taller in my leather chair and undo the middle button of my suit jacket.