Boss of the Year (Belmont Billionaires #1)

Prologue Champagne Cocktail

*To elevate, make your own bitters.

“Are you a dirty girl? Are you a dirty little whore who wants to come out and play?”

“ Yes, I’m your dirty little slut. Give it to me hard, just like I want it.”

Flesh met flesh with loud, wet slaps, like elephant ears at a water park.

There was a squelch. Then another one. Followed by a lot of grunting, and some sloppy, sopping noises that might have been kissing or possibly a mouth on some other body part.

Could you call it kissing if it wasn’t on the mouth?

I was embarrassed to admit I didn’t know.

No one was fighting it, though. In fact, by the sounds coming out of the bedroom, at least one of them was feeling pretty good. Maybe even in heaven.

Which, good for them. Especially since I, Marie Annetta Zola, was almost certainly in hell.

“Fuck, yeah, that feels amazing.”

I had heard Daniel Lyons’s voice many different ways over the ten years I’d worked for his family.

Snarling with frustration when he lost money on a horse race.

Shouting for joy when his father presented him with a new Aston Martin on his twenty-first birthday.

Droning with boredom when he met with his tutors.

Sly when he planned a new party. Sweet when he spoke to his mother. Sultry when he greeted a friend’s daughter.

I’d never heard this particular timbre, though. One where he was apparently lost in the throes of passion.

It…wasn’t what I imagined.

And I had imagined it. More than I would ever admit.

In my fantasies, I was on the receiving end of those efforts.

Daniel would stare deeply into my eyes and confess that he’d secretly loved me for the last ten years, ever since I’d first started working for his family at just fifteen years old.

His kiss would be sweet and full of promise, and he’d ever-so-tenderly press into me, taking my virginity in the most perfect way.

Maybe under the stars somewhere, or on a bed of roses.

Gentle piano chords would line the moment like butter, and we would melt into each other like perfectly blended chocolate ganache.

I had not, however, envisioned myself sweaty and squealing while the object of my affections pounded away like a jackhammer and shouted obscenities until he was hoarse.

Nor had I ever thought of hearing Daniel Lyons’s sex voice while crouched in his closet like a cat burglar, waiting for him and his conquest to finish so I could make my escape.

Like I said, absolute hell.

“Give it to me, Daddy,” the girl squealed. “Give it to me so deep. Just do it !”

“You want it deep, baby? Here it comes.”

The girl gave an excellent impression of a Kardashian who swallowed a dog toy. Then there was rustling, followed by a succession of loud, quick bangs, as if a piece of wood were hitting the wall.

Headboard was my best guess.

I pressed my forehead into the wall beneath a row of Daniel’s suits. Torture had a new name.

My last night on the Lyons estate wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was meant to be bidding farewell to the staff before leaving to attend culinary school in Paris, courtesy of the family who wanted me to replace my mentor, Ondine, when she retired.

That’s the type of wealth the Lyons family had: the “send our kitchen maid to attend the most elite cooking school in the world” kind of dough.

A life-changing opportunity for me, but for them, it was no different from a Saturday night shopping spree.

The only difference was that after I finished my training, I’d be expected to repay their generous gift for years to come.

Tonight, I’d had the night off after preparing food for one of the many parties the Lyonses threw every summer. My plan was to hug Ondine goodbye, pack my things from the staff quarters, and then allow Lawrence, the Lyonses’ driver, to take me to LaGuardia for my midnight flight.

I would do all of that. There was just one more goodbye I needed to say.

I’d summoned just enough courage to sneak upstairs to the family’s private quarters while the rest of the Lyons were entertaining guests under the tent on the back lawn and dancing to the standards played by a full big band.

Daniel had slipped out of the party after making his customary moves on some models.

Or maybe a politician’s daughter. Or an up-and-coming actress.

It didn’t really matter. They always looked the same: tall and sleek with immovable foreheads, eyes pulled tight like freshly licked cats, bodies surgically altered to conform to the golden ratio.

They laughed when he laughed, pouted when he didn’t, and seemed to know exactly what to say and do to make his bright blue eyes spark with intent.

Now, as the bedsprings gave particularly violent squeaks through the door, I glanced across the closet, where, in the full-length mirror, my reflection peered back at me with bewilderment.

I was everything his partner (I was loath to call her a date) was not.

Small and pale, with waist-length black-brown hair that had spent its life in a bunch at the base of my neck.

A slightly snubbed nose, an annoyingly asymmetrical mouth where the top lip was bigger than the bottom, and the green eyes I shared with my five siblings, muted by the wire-rimmed glasses I’d worn since grade school.

I pulled at the neck of my oversized black sweater, too warm for this time of year, but which kept me securely covered along with my ankle-length black skirt.

I wasn’t stylish. Wasn’t pretty. Wasn’t any of the things the woman on the bed or Daniel’s other paramours were.

And yet, that had never stopped me from coming up with a million different versions of what he would whisper with impossibly fresh breath had I been the target of his seduction. From planning exactly what I would say to him the next day, if and when we ran into each other.

Or from scuttling in the opposite direction whenever I actually saw him.

My problem was simple. While Daniel Lyons was and had always been a romcom hero come to life, I, Marie Zola, was nowhere near a leading lady.

More like the extra who wandered in off the street.

But I knew, I just knew that if he had the chance to truly know me, Daniel would feel the same way I did.

There was a connection between us, a lightning bolt that had struck me dumb the first time I’d ever seen him in the kitchen, asking for a grilled cheese sandwich (and every other time after that).

This was my moment. Fate had let me here.

I had watched as he danced with tonight’s quarry to his preferred seduction song (“The Way You Look Tonight”), twisted his arm around hers so they could drink wedding-style out of each other’s champagne glasses (she was delighted), and nuzzled her ear while he whispered secret, delicious nothings (her giggles echoed across the party).

Eventually, with his signature devilish grin, he had pointed her in the direction of the conservatory.

And then… he didn’t follow her.

Instead, he turned toward the main house. And that’s when I knew I had my chance.

I was leaving tomorrow for a year.

It was now or never.

So, I had sprinted across the grounds with a plan quickly forming: I’d wait for Daniel in his bedroom and confess everything I’d been holding inside for ten long years.

But when the door had opened, and I’d heard the distinct sound of kissing along with a woman’s voice, I’d done what any logical person would do.

I’d dropped to my hands and knees, crawled into the closet, and hid.

“Give me that dick, Daddy. I want to taste the rainbow.”

I frowned. Did she just quote a Skittles commercial?

There was more of something that sounded a lot like my brother’s dog slurping from its water bowl. The bedsprings were a like the strings in a horror movie. What were they even doing?

“Take it,” Daniel kept saying through what I imagined was a clenched jaw. “Take that dick. That giant fucking dick.”

Giant, huh? How big were we talking? Granted, I didn’t have much (all right, any ) first-hand experience of that part of a man’s anatomy, but my younger sister, Joni, occasionally sent me dirty videos to mess with me.

Seriously, nothing will scare a girl off sex faster than ten inches coming at you through your phone screen while you’re standing in line for coffee.

The baristas at New Rochelle roasters haven’t looked at me the same since.

Mostly, thought, I found those videos confusing. The men had absurdly large anatomy, and the women were always perfectly smooth, almost prepubescent. They whimpered like kittens or shrieked like sirens while their partners huffed and grunted, pumping into them like machines.

How could that feel good? Even a little bit?

I told myself that my Daniel wouldn’t lay waste to a woman’s body that way. He’d make sure she was okay. He’d take care of her.

The woman of the night squawked again like a dying parakeet, and Daniel let out a loud “fuuuuuuuck!” that reminded me of the B60 bus when it heaved to the curb less than a block from my bedroom window in the Bronx. I was pretty sure something in the bed broke permanently.

This was what sex was like? Demeaning talk interspersed with bad TV jingles and bodily fluids? Impressions of wounded animals while testing the limits of the furniture?

I didn’t feel like I’d was missing out.

Maybe that’s just what sex was like with her , I told myself as the thumping and grunting went on.

It had to be different with someone you had a real connection with.

Someone that maybe you could love. Daniel had a deeper side to him, a side no one else saw but me (albeit, from afar). It wouldn’t be like that between us.

Would it?

“Snap!” squealed—oinked?—the woman. “Crackle! POP, baby!”

I frowned. Daniel’s guest had moved on to cereal slogans.

“Fuck!” Daniel seemed to have forgotten the rest of his vocabulary.

I took it as a good sign. If he felt something for this woman, he’d be capable of saying more. Right?