My Ex’s Father (Ruthless Billionaire Mafia Kings #7)

Prologue

AMELIA

New York City

“Brandy, double.”

The guy scans the nightclub as if he’s searching for someone, then finally remembers that he sat down at the bar to order a drink. I haven’t moved. Where I come from, manners are generally considered the norm.

He stares at me and then down at the empty space between his hands before repeating his order. “Brandy, double. With ice.”

There are plenty of us working tonight, and it isn’t so busy that a line of irate thirsty customers is forming behind him. I can stand here all night if that’s what it takes. Carol, my supervisor, and best friend, will back me up all the way.

And besides, this guy is hot.

I mean, he isn’t my usual type. He’s pale, with red hair that has glints of gold in it when he moves, freckles across his nose, and blue eyes that… Okay, so maybe I’m paying a little too much attention when I should be working. But goddammit he’s cute.

“Everything okay here?” Carol comes up behind me and squares her shoulders the way she does when she thinks she needs to come across all intimidating.

“Just trying to order a drink.” The guy looks at her as if she might rescue him from the dumb bartender who clearly doesn’t understand his accent.

His accent!

“Are you Irish?” I lean closer.

I hear Carol’s snort as she moves on to serve someone else.

“Are you serving?” he counters, an eyebrow quirking upward.

Cute but arrogant. A definite no-no.

“Most customers say please.”

He blinks at me like I’m speaking a different language, and I curse my luck that the hottest Irishman in history walked into the nightclub where I work and turned out to be an asshole.

I could’ve spent the rest of the evening plying him with extra-large shots and finding out everything there is to know about his home country before I fly to Dublin in three days.

But no. I’ve seen his type before. They’re regulars here.

The personal trainers, the wannabe movie stars, the realtors, and the billionaire players.

He’s probably going to take his drink when, or if, I finally serve him and chat up a model with long pale hair and breasts that disappear when she turns sideways.

I stopped letting the disappointment get to me a long while ago.

Then he smiles, and I find my lips reciprocating the gesture without my permission.

Boy, does he know what he’s doing. He probably practiced the smile on every girl in Ireland before starting on New York.

Perfect white teeth. Ever so slightly lopsided, attractive without a hint of sleaze.

And my body forgets every lesson it ever learned in high school from the jocks who practiced their future player-status on the popular girls.

“Please,” he adds.

“With ice?”

The smile becomes a mischievous glint in his cool-blue eyes like he already knows that he won the first round. “Always.”

I toss ice cubes into a brandy glass without noticing the satisfying chink or the familiar crack when I add the liquor.

I’m trapped in limbo with a disarming smile and the soft lyrical please.

I’ve heard Irish accents before, it isn’t an alien concept to me, but when it rolls off this guy’s tongue, it does something to my insides that I generally associate with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Half-Baked ice cream and Gary Oldman as Dracula on the TV screen.

I place the drink in front of him on a paper coaster and walk away.

“Do I get a running tab?”

Jeez, how does he make it sound like, Do I get inside your panties later?

“Sure.” Because, you know, I don’t make a habit of serving free drinks, but my pussy already made an exception for this guy. And doesn’t he know it.

I need to get a grip.

I need a double shot of something that will jolt my brain back into work mode and out of the Irish clouds. With ice.

I start a running tab on the register. It doesn’t escape my notice that my fingers are trembling.

It’s a contagious condition affecting my knees too.

Maybe I’m getting a fever. I glance across at Carol, who is chatting to a George Clooney lookalike with hints of silver in his luscious black hair, and prominent brows.

More my type than Carol’s. Experienced, but in a good way.

“Ryan.”

It takes a moment for me to register that the Irish dude is talking to me.

“Amelia.” Because my voice has also become detached from my brain. I look around for another customer to serve, but it’s early in the evening, and everyone has been taken care of. “Are you in the city on business?”

It’s good customer service, I tell myself. Keep the customers talking, smile at them a lot, and they’ll spend more money on drinks and tips.

“Aye. At least I thought I was.”

“What does that mean?”

If I lean any closer, my breasts will practically be sitting on top of his brandy, but he’s either deliberately keeping his voice low to lure me in, or I’m more of a sucker for the accent than I realized.

“Long story, Amelia.”

What the fuck is going on with my pussy right now?

“Can I get you a drink?” He pauses. “Please.”

I can’t help smiling. “Soda. Thanks.”

His eyes follow me and they never once lower to the view beneath my neck. This guy is good. “Have you ever been to Ireland?”

“No. But I will be in three days.”

Every piece of security advice that exists online will warn against telling a stranger that you’re going away. But it’s okay, I tell myself. He has no idea where I live, or my circumstances. He doesn’t even know my last name.

“My dad was Irish. Is Irish. I never met him. Not that I’m going to find him, knock on his door, and say, ‘Surprise! I’m the daughter you never knew you had’.”

I’m in full-on runaway-mouth mode. Carol is too distracted by George Clooney to come and rescue me, and Irish is grinning at me like I’m one of those chimps in the zoo who pick their bums in front of wide-eyed children.

“So, what will you do? If you find him?”

He seems genuinely curious, and I relax my shoulders a little. Sip my soda. Pretend I’m a perfectly normal twenty-something New Yorker of Irish African American descent.

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I haven’t thought that far ahead. “Maybe just watch him from a distance. I don’t want him in my life.”

The grin fades. He watches me coolly like he’s trying to figure out who I’m kidding. Then, “His loss. Why now, Amelia? Why didn’t you search for him before?”

He isn’t probing. Okay, so maybe he is probing, but he makes it sound as if he’s invested. Maybe he’s a psychoanalyst or something, and he’s using me for research purposes.

“My mom didn’t tell me about him until I graduated from college.

Then circumstances got in the way.” By circumstances I mean money, but I’m not going to spell it out for the guy in the designer suit that probably costs more than I earn in a month.

“I’ll work while I’m there. This trip is more about exploring the country and my roots than about finding him. ”

Ryan nods. Maybe he buys the story, maybe he doesn’t. I won’t sweat it either way. It’s not like I’ll ever see him again after tonight.

“What time does your shift finish?”

“Why?” My knees are trembling again. I can’t remember the last time anyone had this effect on me and I’m out of practice dealing with it.

The smile is back, lighting up his face and giving off a glow that sets him apart from every other guy sitting at the bar. “I like your company.”

And that’s all it takes for me to be all in.

He’s staying at the Wraith.

The Wraith! Only one of the swankiest, most exclusive hotels in Manhattan.

I’ve never been inside the place before, and it doesn’t disappoint. It’s as glossy and sleek and expensive on the inside as it looks on the outside.

“Good evening, Mr. Connor.” The concierge greets Ryan with a polite nod and a discreet glance at the clock on his tablet.

I’m too busy soaking up my surroundings to care what he thinks. Ryan is a paying guest. I’m sure the price of his hotel room buys him the privilege of bringing someone back with him, as long as we don’t trash the place or disturb the neighbors.

I was brought up to respect the property of others. I can’t guarantee the second point though. Ryan’s hand is warm in mine. He talked about Ireland all evening, his accent getting thicker the more inebriated he became, but one thing was blatantly obvious. Well, two things really.

Firstly, he loves his home country.

Secondly, I was going back to his hotel room with him when my shift ended.

Carol let me finish early. She didn’t say it out loud, but I think she was a little jealous that Ryan barely even glanced her way.

“Ask him if he has a brother,” she whispered in my ear while I was serving another customer.

“You have George Clooney.” I glanced along the bar at the customer she’d been chatting up all night. “Don’t be greedy.”

“You can be such a spoilsport sometimes, Amelia York.”

We’ve been friends since we were little kids. She knows me better than I know myself a lot of the time. I’ll miss her when I’m in Ireland.

Ryan and I cross the black and chrome lobby of the Wraith, the thick pile carpet bouncing under my feet, and take the elevator up to his room.

The corridors are all dark walls and low lights, gleaming chrome numbers on doors, and deep black carpet, with the heavy silence that suggests the guests do not want to be disturbed even without the sign on the door.

Ryan holds my hand all the way. It doesn’t feel controlling. I could change my mind, and he might be disappointed, but he wouldn’t drag me into his room, lock the door, and accuse me of leading him on. It’s protective, like we both know what’s going to happen and he wants me to feel safe.

Strangely, I do.

It has nothing to do with the accent, and everything to do with how he spoke to me. He listened to what I had to say. He didn’t eye up other women all night, measuring his options. He saw me, and he seemed to like what he saw.