Billionaire's Ruin (THE RECKONING SERIES #3)

Prologue

ALEX

The tour is on its fifth room, and she hasn’t said a single word.

“Kitchen,” I say. “A cleaning service comes on Fridays for the floors and the glass. Everything else in here is yours now.”

I get a nod in response.

“Have coffee ready at six.”

I continue down the hall without looking back. I’d probably catch another nod if I do.

“The laundry room is the third door on the left. Sheets are changed on Mondays and Thursdays, towels every day, and anything requiring dry cleaning goes in the garment bag inside my closet. Hank collects it before nine.”

My vision catches her in my periphery; she is nodding again, and I am searching for patience I do not have.

She nodded her way through the living room, the linen closet, the hall of doors she isn’t allowed to open.

Belle follows half a step behind me. The air-conditioning runs cold enough to raise a fine ripple across her forearms while the Texas glare beats against the floor-to-ceiling glass.

Beyond it, Dallas lies flat and bright, divided into concrete, traffic, and steel.

Vanilla and roses cut through the cold and clouds my senses. My body goes rigid at her presence, as if she caught me off guard, which is absurd. I planned every part of this mess. I just never expected it to hit me like this.

“Hank takes care of the rest of the laundry as well,” I say. “My shirts go out to a service. The ticket book is in the drawer by the sink. You don’t touch the study.”

“Understood.” Finally. One word.

“My schedule. I leave at seven. Most nights I’m back by eight. If that changes, my assistant will tell you by noon.”

“Fine.”

The damn cat she brought with her is more curious than its owner.

The calico prowls through every room, nose working at the corners, head disappearing through any doorway left open. It rubs against the furniture for reasons known only to cats, then jerks away from certain spots as though the place has offended it.

Every few minutes, it stops and stares at me, head tipped to one side.

Sizing me up.

Trying to decide what kind of man I am.

Smart cat.

I’m the nightmare that followed its owner home.

Down the hall, her only bag sits beside the bed in the guest room.

Her room now. Everything she owns is crammed into one worn piece of canvas, the seams fraying, the strap repaired with uneven black stitches.

It looks wrong against the marble floor.

Too battered and small. Proof of how little she brought with her.

I drag a hand over my face, but the image stays.

I focus on her instead. Her shoulders remain square, and her hands stay open at her sides.

Each step is measured. She checks the windows, the hall, and the elevator before returning her attention to me.

Is she already planning her escape? It will not be easy this time.

Close to impossible, and I have made damn sure of it.

“There’s a supermarket two blocks east,” I say.

There’s that damn nod again. “Frank will take you. A car remains downstairs whenever you need to leave.”

“I can walk,” she says.

“You’ll use the car.”

“It’s two blocks.”

“The temperature will break a hundred by noon.” I hold her gaze until her shoulders tensed. “Use the car.”

She stops beside the island and faces me. “Do I need permission?”

“No. But wherever you want to go, whenever you want to go there, the driver takes you.”

Her shoulders ease.

That is the point.

His instructions took less than four minutes. Every trip. Every stop. Every bag she carries in and out of this house. I want a full report by the end of the day.

I reach into my jacket. My knuckles brush a small weight in the inside pocket on the way to the card, and I ignore it.

Her attention drops to my hand. The collar shifts when she lowers her chin, exposing the hollow at the base of her throat.

Vanilla and the faint floral scent that’s been messing with my head ever since she walked in assaults me again.

Blood drives into my cock until the wool tightens across it.

Ten years have passed, and she can still turn my body against me with one look.

“Household expenses go on this.” I set the card on the island between us. Matte black. Her name is printed across the bottom, the new one she hides behind these days. “Groceries, supplies, whatever the house needs. Whatever keeps the place running.”

“What’s the limit?”

“There isn’t one.”

She leaves it between us.

I push it across the marble. “Take it, Belle.”

She picks it up. There’s a fine tremor in her hand, gone by the time her fingers close around the card. I wonder why a small piece of plastic makes her react this way.

“I’m sure you’re used to an arrangement like this,” I say.

She looks up.

“Mark kept you on one of his cards when you were younger. For expenses. Didn’t he?”

Her lips part. The line between her brows pinches, and her eyes fix somewhere past my shoulder.

She does not answer. Her hand rises to her collarbone, catches the fabric over whatever she wears beneath it, and holds until her knuckles pale.

Then she lowers it, squares her shoulders, and looks at me again.

“Only this time try not to put a bullet in me like you did him.”

I keep my voice flat and watch for the flinch.

Hurt flashes across her eyes.

Then anger.

She buries both before I can get a proper look, her face going blank as she stares back at me with her chin raised.

There she is.

Stubborn. Defiant. Determined to give me nothing.

It does not matter. I will get the truth out of her one way or another. I will strip away every defense she has built, tear down every wall between us, and keep digging until I reach whatever she is trying so hard to hide.

Even if it is the last thing I do.

Softness killed your father.

My grandfather’s voice reminds me of why I am here.

I press my index finger against the marble edge until the joint aches. Then I move to the next instruction.

“Meals can be prepared ahead and left in the refrigerator. My former housekeeper did that. I can heat them when I come home.”

“What time do you come home?”

“When I’m finished.”

“That narrows it down.”

“You don’t need to wait for me.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“I remember when you promised you’d wait for me every day.” I keep my voice even, though something twists beneath my ribs. “No matter how late I was.”

Her fingers curl against the edge of the island.

“Guess that was another lie.”

Pain slips through before she can hide it. Then her chin rises, and her face turns to stone.

She will not give me the satisfaction.

I want to dig my hands into that cold composure and tear it apart. I want to shake her until she stops standing there like nothing I say can reach her. Until she screams at me. Strikes me. Claws deep enough to draw blood.

Anything would be better than this silence.

“Or did you make that promise to every other fool who believed you?”

Her throat moves.

“There was no one else.”

The words are quiet, but they do not shake.

For one reckless second, I believe her.

I crush the thought before it can take root.

“One more thing.” I hold her gaze. “I don’t entertain guests here. Neither will you. No visitors. None.”

I let the sentence sit between us.

She doesn’t look away. When she answers, her voice is level and unhurried, the voice of a woman reading a column of text out aloud.

“You don’t need to worry. I have no friends in Dallas.

At the rate you’re working through the rest of my life, you’ll make sure I don’t have any friends anywhere else either.

I’m not saying this to be argumentative.

I’m saying it so you know I get it. The card, the driver, the supermarket I’m not permitted to walk to.

I understand the rules you’ve laid out. I signed your contract, Alex. I understand it better than you think."

I say nothing.

I spent ten years planning this, and she sees through me in less than an hour.

The irritation is easier to deal with than what sits beneath it. That old, dangerous pull of being known by her. Ten years, and she can still look at me like she sees everything.

I grip the edge of the island until the feeling passes. The refrigerated air hums against the glass. I let the silence fester. I just hold her gaze until she is the one who looks away.

A tendon shifts beside her ear before she walks past me.

Her sleeve passes an inch above my hand, close enough for me to feel the heat from her arm across my knuckles.

My jaw clamps as the ache in my cock sharpens.

I move one foot back and keep the distance between us.

She crosses to the pantry, close enough that her warmth cuts through the cold air between us, and I hold still until the island separates us again.

Bare cupboards. The refrigerator gives her a bottle of water, a jar of ketchup, and a shelf of nothing.

She turns away from it and checks the nearly empty shelves.

“There’s no food in this house,” she turns to face me and keeps her voice level. “I’ll go pick a few things up and start dinner. Is there anything you won’t eat? I remember the shellfish allergy.”

“You remember a great deal when it suits you.”

Her mouth tightens.

“Ten years, and you still remember what I can’t eat.” I look at her. “Just not the people you left behind.”

She absorbs the blow without blinking.

“I’ll go now.” She slides the card into her pocket, takes a folded canvas tote from the pantry, and calls the elevator. She doesn’t look back while she waits for it. The doors close behind her, leaving me alone in the silence.

I watch the floor indicator reach the lobby. Frustration locks me in place for a moment. Then I drag it back under control and walk to the guest room.

The door does not lock. That is why I chose this room.

Her bag sits open at the foot of the bed, half its contents already put away. I pull open the dresser drawers. Her clothes are folded into neat, tight stacks, some rolled to make more room. She packs as if she expects to leave in a hurry.

I check beneath the clothes and under the drawer liners. Nothing.

The room already smells of her. The scent that once meant home.

My body tightens before I can stop it.

Ten years, and it still remembers her.

I keep checking.

The black bag is so faded you cannot call the color black anymore; gray at best. The outer pockets hold papers, ID, a pen, and a folded bus schedule of Dallas. Then the interior lining, and there, flat along the base, a zip I would have missed if I was the old Alex.

I find an envelope tucked inside the lining.

Cash. Small bills. I count it without moving it.

One thousand dollars, even. I have seen every transaction from her account, and I do not remember a withdrawal anywhere near this amount.

Maybe she saved it from her tips. But why not deposit it?

Why keep so much cash hidden in her room?

Because she is planning to run.

My jaw tightens as I put the envelope back exactly where I found it.

Underneath the cash, there is a photograph.

My thumb brushes the scar through my eyebrow before I understand what I’m looking at.

My mother’s kitchen. December. My father stands with one arm around her while a fifteen-year-old Danny glares at the camera wearing the sweater she forced on him.

A faint rust mark runs along the top where the horseshoe magnet once held it to the refrigerator. The colors have faded, and one corner has been rubbed smooth.

Someone has held this photograph. Often.

I look away first.

When I look back, I hold it at arm’s length, a relic from my past. One I didn’t even realize was missing. There’s a crease through the center that has been pressed flat again. Ten years of handling, of being taken out and put back.

She took it. Off my mother’s refrigerator, before she ran or while she was planning it all, and I stop myself before I decide which would be worse.

A keepsake, then. A trophy from the family she took apart, carried across a decade the way other people carry pictures of their children.

She carried it through false names and strange towns.

During those years, Danny relearned how to close his left hand, and I took Edward’s money to pay for the surgery.

A fucking trophy! It’s obscene. I don’t have a better word for it and I don’t want one.

My hands remain steady. That’s how I know how bad it is.

Edward’s command arrives in his clipped cadence.

Control the exits, and you control the outcome.

So she’s planning to run. A thousand dollars, a bus schedule, and a souvenir, packed before the ink dried on my contract.

Here is what she doesn’t know yet. The account she keeps at the bank in Pinehaven froze today.

A compliance hold, paperwork, nothing with my name within a mile of it.

She hasn’t tried her own card since she got here, or I’d have heard about it in that level voice of hers.

She signed an employment contract, and she expects wages, and she can go on expecting them.

Not one dime of it will land anywhere she can reach.

I want her here, under my hand, every door she tries opening into a wall.

I put the photograph back where she hid it, face down, square against the seam. The cash I leave untouched. Bait keeps best where the animal buried it, and that’s the reason I give myself as I zip the lining shut and close her door on my way out.

In an hour she’ll ride the elevator up with groceries bought on my card, cook in my kitchen, and sleep in a room I chose, three feet from escape money she doesn’t know I’ve counted.

All of it is mine. I stand in the hallway and wait for that to feel the way winning is supposed to feel.

It will, once she runs out of places to hide.

I’ve waited ten years. I can wait out the rest.