Ruthless Mr. Ricco (Brutal Billionaire Bosses #1)

Chapter 1

Brook Simons

One week. One fucking goddamn week.

I grit my teeth and slip the last of my personal items into my briefcase as I fight the fury rising in my veins.

Heat creeps up from my toes, infecting every inch of me and damning my attempts at remaining stoic as my chest and face flush.

Eleven years’ worth of blood, sweat, and tears circle the drain as I fit the strap of my briefcase onto my shoulder.

I turn and face the balding man standing in the doorway.

He wasn’t present during my interviews or visible during any of the onboarding process, but with his tailored suit and air of importance, I don’t doubt his authority.

The signature at the bottom of my termination paperwork must be his, but I don’t waste my time looking for his name.

“Thank you for the opportunity, and I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I’ll review the documents and get back to you. Excuse me,” I manage through my clenched teeth.

He doesn’t move out of the doorway.

As if being fired barely a week after being hired isn’t mortifying enough, the man adds insult to injury when he lifts his round chin and looks down his pompous nose at me. The clerks and administrative staff lean over their desks and crane their necks around corners to watch the spectacle.

“If you had been truthful from the start, Miss Prescott, we would’ve known you weren’t a proper fit for our law firm before it came to this,” he says.

My heart leaps into my throat and a red haze settles over the world. Hearing him call me by my father’s last name fills me with rage. I take a deep breath to calm my anger, but his cologne clogs my nostrils and sours my tongue. My words emerge clipped and hard.

“You may call me Attorney Simons, as is my proper title and legal name. If you continue this discussion as you’ve begun, I’ll note it toward a wrongful termination lawsuit and sue the company. Step aside, please.”

I’d much rather slam my briefcase into his face and stomp on his protruding gut as I step over him, but violence won’t get me the justice I seek.

Eighteen-year-old me would gasp in horror if she knew the train of my thoughts. Twenty-nine-year-old me yearns to see it through.

The man’s face purples with outrage. I tighten my grip on my bag’s strap but relax my shoulders and raise my voice so it carries throughout the office.

“You gave me termination paperwork but are preventing me from leaving. False imprisonment is both a criminal offense and a civil tort. Please step out of the doorway and allow me to exit.”

High heels click on the polished floor as Attorney Riley rushes down the hall. Older than me by almost two decades, the woman wears her skirt suit a little too tight and cakes her face with makeup. Her perfume arrives several seconds before she rests her hand on the man’s shoulder.

Disgust rolls down my spine as she bats her fake lashes and simpers out an excuse.

I understand the profession of law is a hard place for a woman to survive, but I will never placate a man when he’s wrong. Life is too short to waste my time stroking some jerk’s ego.

With what’s probably meant as a threatening glare, the man scoffs and stomps down the hall. I quirk an unimpressed brow as I swallow the nasty words building in my throat and leave the room without a backward glance.

I had no plans to decorate my first official desk, but sadness tightens my chest as I realize how fleeting my time here was. Part of me knew it was too good to be true, but to have my hopes dashed so mercilessly is cruel.

Which is precisely what I should expect from my father. It isn’t the first time he’s thrown his clout around to destroy my future since he kicked my mom and me to the curb eleven years ago, but it hurts all the same.

Men are pigs. The world would be a better place without them.

I stride through the halls, ride the elevator down to the lobby, and exit the building with my head held high and my anger wrapped tightly around my heart.

The sunlight gleaming off the high rises and pounding down on the busy streets does nothing to lighten my mood.

Chad Prescott, the man who stole my mom’s inheritance, divorced her because she was sick, and kicked me out of the house so his new family could move in, knows I changed my last name.

He’ll make it nearly impossible for me to get a decent job in New York City now that he’s aware.

I grit my teeth and drop my stoic mask as I turn and stomp down the sidewalk.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out and check the caller ID.

Dread and hope war within me. I detour into the nearest coffee shop and answer my mother’s call.

“Hi, Mama, how’d it go?”

“Oh! Brook, honey, I didn’t expect you to answer. Aren’t you at work?”

The air thins. She didn’t answer my question.

I squeeze my phone so hard my fingers ache.

Bile burns the back of my throat, but I swallow and shove my emotions down deep.

There may be tears in her voice, but she isn’t crying.

She sounds happy. I force myself to smile, ignoring the trembling of my lips.

“I’m running an errand,” I lie. “How was your appointment?”

“I’m cancer free! Complete remission. No signs at all.”

Relief spears through me. My head spins and hands shake, and for a moment, I wish I smoked just so I could lean back against the wall and exhale a visible cloud to represent the misery expelling from my lungs as I blow out my pent-up breath.

“Oh my god, Mom, that’s awesome! I knew you’d beat it. You’re amazing,” I say.

“I know! I’m so happy,” she half sobs, half giggles.

I step forward as the line moves.

“We’re celebrating my eight-year cancerversary tonight. Wear the dress I bought you last year and bring your appetite! Gary made reservations for us at that new fancy restaurant,” she says.

Bittersweet joy buoys my heart, and a genuine smile ghosts across my lips. Gary Simons, my mom’s second husband, is a godsend.

After her surgeries, my mother was frail and miserable, but Gary, a gentle and sweet newly certified physical therapist who was only four years older than me, fell in love with her at first sight and stayed by her side as she went through chemo. He mended her broken heart.

Less than eight months after they met, they got married.

I was skeptical and worried he had ulterior motives, but my mother was so happy I couldn’t argue.

It turns out I was right, but not in a way I would have ever expected.

My biological dirtbag of a father sabotaged my scholarship halfway through my first semester of college. A few weeks later, I found out he blacklisted me from studying at all the major universities.

I felt so trapped and powerless.

Gary Simons fixed it by marrying my mother in Pennsylvania at his ancestral home and secretly appealing to adopt me—a twenty-year-old woman by the time the process was complete. Since another state handled the legalities, I could change my name without alerting my biological father.

Because of Gary, I could start fresh in a community college in New York City and hide in plain sight until today.

Now here I stand, in a coffee shop with the barista looking at me expectantly, my mom chattering happily on the phone, and my professional dreams crushed yet again. My need for vengeance burns like the coals of hell in my soul.

I want to destroy Chad Prescott. I want to watch the asshole who betrayed my mother when she was at her lowest scramble to save himself as his life crumbles around him.

At first, I only wanted to avenge my mother and retrieve the inheritance he stole from her.

Now I want to take everything from him.

I want to crush him no matter what it takes.

Maybe becoming a lawyer was a mistake, but the lure of defeating him at his own game was too much.

“Brook, are you listening?” my mom asks through the phone.

I loosen my death grip on my phone and pull my wallet out of my pocket so the barista doesn’t skip me.

“Sorry, Mama. It’s my turn to order coffee. I’ll be there tonight,” I say.

“Promise you’ll wear the dress I bought you,” she demands.

My thoughts flash to the ridiculous swath of fabric she gifted me when she returned from her trip last year. I put it on so she could ooh and ahh at her ‘gorgeous daughter’, but I’ve never worn it out of the house.

Fuck it. My pride means nothing compared to her happiness.

“Of course, Mama. See you soon,” I promise.

With a gleeful chirp, she says goodbye and ends the call.

I order my usual—a large cold brew with an added espresso shot—and hand the barista the last ten from my wallet. Besides the five remaining in the billfold, a few coins in the zipper pouch, and the emergency twenty at the bottom of my briefcase, I’m out of cash.

Refusing to let my father’s betrayal outshine my mother’s health, I push aside my anger and the feeling of defeat and plop down at a corner table.

After pulling out my laptop, I update my resume, browse a few job listing sites, submit to several smaller law firms with online application forms, and network with the group of people I graduated law school with before packing up and joining the grind of the city streets.

When I push open the door of the building where I rent a studio apartment, the smells of bleach, old sweat, and rubber invade my nose.

Weights clink together from the back room and music pulses out from under one of the small studios, but I smile as an old man’s voice echoes clearly from the office.

The old building may not have a fancy security system, but I’ve never felt safer than I do living above the gym.

My landlord and part-time employer rules his space with an iron fist and is an excellent judge of character.

Some people may look at him and scoff, but the scruffy old man is way stronger than he looks.

“It’s just me, Mr. Carter. I’m heading upstairs,” I call back to him.

He rounds the corner and gestures toward the boxes built into the wall.

“You got mail,” he grunts.