His Heart's Revenge (49th Floor Novels)

by Jenny Holiday

  May the best man win…

  Twenty years ago, I was too smart and too poor to be cool. Now I’m laughing my way to the bank—the bank I’m CEO of. Nothing can touch me.

  Except maybe him.

  We met at summer camp. We made out under the stars. Then he stabbed me in the back.

  They say revenge is a dish best served cold. But I’m gonna go with hot.

  Alexander Evangelista is a millionaire with all the trappings: houses all over the world and hot guys lined up whenever he’s in need of some no-strings-attached company. He’s on his way to world domination.

  A CEO in his own right, Cary Bell is competing for a major client with his boyhood crush. He’s never forgiven himself for betraying Alex. But with his professional reputation on the line, he’s going to have to find his inner cutthroat if he wants his new company to succeed.

  Alex isn’t about to let his nemesis steal a client out from under him. It’s time to break Cary’s company—and his heart.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover the 49th Floor series… Saving the CEO

  Sleeping with Her Enemy

  The Engagement Game

  The Miss Mirren Mission

  The Likelihood of Lucy

  Viscountess of Vice

  Discover more category romance titles from Entangled Indulgence… Sleeping with the Opposition

  Revenge Best Served Hot

  A Man of Honor

  Sweet Southern Betrayal

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Jenny Holiday. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Indulgence is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Tracy Montoya

  Cover design by Tamara Jarvis

  Cover art from Dollar Photo Club

  ISBN 978-1-63375-658-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition June 2016

  For Aly. I told you the next one would be for you!

  Chapter One

  Cary Bell woke with a start when an alarm went off in his head.

  No, wait, it was just his cell ringing. And seeing as how he’d fallen asleep at his desk with his face resting on the phone, it felt like the ringing was coming from inside his skull. He fumbled for it. It was a FaceTime from Rose, his cousin Marcus’s fiancée. He sighed and accepted the video call, bracing himself for Hurricane Rosie.

  “Happy New Year!” she shouted. Then she squinted at him. “Why do you have a dent in your forehead? Wait. I see a printer in the background. Are you still at work?”

  He rubbed his head. “I fell asleep on top of my phone.” He didn’t answer her second question.

  She furrowed her brow. “I was going to yell at you for not coming to meet us like you promised. But maybe I should yell at you to go home to bed, instead.”

  “I meant to come.” He really had. He’d begged off dinner with his cousin and Rose and their friends, but had planned on meeting them before midnight at Edward’s, their regular watering hole. He’d been working flat-out the past couple of weeks nurturing his fledgling business, but even so, he hadn’t planned to stay past midnight because the turn of this particular year was symbolic, and he had wanted to mark it.

  This was going to be the year he got out from under his uncle’s thumb, took his skills, and parlayed them into something new. Something his. Following the footsteps of his older cousin, Marcus, Cary was in the process of extracting the silver spoon from his mouth and getting on with life on his own terms. He was going to be successful, and this time it would be because he deserved it, not because he was a lucky kid who had everything handed to him.

  It was going to be a great year.

  If he could just get this dent out of his forehead.

  Twenty minutes later, Cary was hoisting a Manhattan and clinking glasses with Marcus and Rose and their friends. Better late than never.

  “I got you a client,” Marcus said, pulling him into a corner after everyone had exchanged New Year’s greetings.

  “I have clients,” Cary said. It was true. He’d walked away from his job as manager of the investment firm his great grandfather had founded three generations ago, but he left with a handful of loyal clients who had followed him. He had a staff of two and a small, swish office in a corner of his cousin’s ad agency in Toronto’s prestigious Lakefront Centre. He wasn’t playing in the big leagues yet, but he had a nice pool of capital invested already, and his returns, so far, were stellar. The question was, could he keep it up? Could he truly start over and make something of himself without the Rosemann family name behind him? Could he succeed without the backing of his powerful uncle? He sure as hell hoped so.

  But whether he succeeded or lost everything—he’d sold his house and poured all of his personal wealth into his funds—he was going to do it on his own. He was already letting Marcus give him free office space, and that was enough. He didn’t need his successful cousin handing him clients on a silver platter, too.

  “You have clients, sure,” said Marcus, “but you don’t have Eleanor Southam.”

  Cary fought back against the impulse to press Marcus for more information. Eleanor Southam was the heir to a mining magnate and was a local tastemaker who could probably bring others in with her. Southam would be a coup.

  When he didn’t say anything, Marcus said, “Listen, I of all people support your decision to go out on your own, but no one does everything themselves. Success in business is about networking, leveraging connections. If you don’t realize that, you might as well give up now.”

  “I’m not going to take a huge client because you just hand her to me,” Cary protested, as much as it pained him to do so. But he had to. If this all went belly-up and he lost everything, he needed to make sure he still had his pride to cushion his fall. Because nothing else was going to.

  “We’re doing an ad campaign for her, and she was mentioning she was looking for some new investment avenues,” Marcus said. “So I’m not handing her to you. I just had a conversation with her. This is how rich people stay rich, Cary. They talk to each other.” He shook his head. “For an alleged financial genius, you can be kind of an idiot.”

  Cary sighed. Maybe he was cutting off his nose to spite his face here. “Who is Southam with now?”

  “Do
minion’s private wealth management arm.”

  Cary tried not to flinch, but every time he heard Dominion Bank referenced, it was like an invisible hand probing at a wound that never quite healed.

  “So you wouldn’t be taking her from me,” Marcus went on. “You’d be taking her from Dominion—the Goliath to your David, if you like.”

  No, I’d be taking her from Alex.

  And he liked to think that he’d screwed over Alexander Evangelista enough for one lifetime.

  But that was stupid. Alex was the CEO of Dominion Bank, Canada’s largest, oldest, and most prestigious. He wasn’t worried about individual clients on the private wealth side. There were probably half a dozen layers of management between Alex and Eleanor Southam. And in the two decades that had elapsed since Cary and Alex had gone to summer camp together, Alex had become one of the richest, most successful people in the country. There was no way he even remembered what Cary had done to him back then.

  Except Cary knew that was a lie.

  He thought back to all the times he’d seen Alex from afar at parties or industry events in recent years. They never spoke, but Cary felt the freeze. The disdain. Alex was known for being a cool customer, a smooth operator, but his attitude toward Cary was more than that.

  The man was holding a grudge.

  And Cary didn’t blame him.

  Marcus handed him a business card. “I don’t know what your problem is, but here’s Southam’s info. Call her. You’d be an idiot not to.”

  Marcus’s fiancée Rose bounded up dressed to the nines in a yellow sequined mini-dress. He tried to muster a smile. She would be expecting his usual bantering, pain-in-the-butt persona, which, unlike other members of his conservative family, Rose actually seemed to delight in. Everyone else was always telling him to grow up, but not Rose. Or maybe she was just as immature as he was.

  “Who’s an idiot?” Rose asked, slipping her hand into Marcus’s.

  “Cary,” said Marcus without hesitating. “He’s being stubborn for no reason.”

  “I must have learned from the best, cuz,” Cary said, flashing a grin he hoped looked less hollow than it felt and trying to play his role. He turned to Rose. “You look stunning as always. You’d better be careful, or you’ll lure me over to the breeder team.” He pretended to shudder.

  Rose, who normally would have gotten right into it with him, tilted her head. “Don’t be an idiot, Cary.”

  “You don’t even know what this is about,” he argued, feeling petulant—feeling a little like the teenager he had been at Camp Blue Lake, in fact. Maybe his family was right, and he was immature. God knew, he certainly spent enough time reliving the summer he was fifteen years old.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Rose. “You’re not an idiot, so don’t act like one.”

  Then she smiled her great big smile that practically lit up the room. Cary generally made a point of razzing Rose—she was so very razz-able. But he had no doubt that when she’d exploded into his cousin’s life last summer, Marcus had hit the jackpot.

  So he mustered a smile—a genuine one this time as he kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll try not to.”

  “Happy New Year, Cary,” she said. “It’s gonna be a great one for you. I can just tell.”

  Chapter Two

  Four months later

  “You’re going to have to be quick. I have a flight to catch,” Alexander Evangelista said as his assistant ushered Sara Gable, the head of Dominion’s private banking group, into his office for their bi-weekly catch up.

  “I have good news, and I have bad news,” Sara said. “Which do you want first?”

  Alexander did not give a shit which came first.

  Sara must have sensed his impatience, because she sighed and sat down on the other side of his desk. “We lost Eleanor Southam.”

  “It happens,” Alexander said tightly. It did. Clients went elsewhere for all kinds of reasons. It didn’t mean it didn’t irritate the hell out of him, though. And God knew he paid Sara enough to make sure millionaires like Southam stayed happy at Dominion. “Do you know why?” He stood and started loading his briefcase as she spoke. He was hopping a flight to New York for a Knicks game. David, his latest arm-candy, was on a shoot there, and somehow, Alexander had succumbed to the “all work and no play” argument.

  “Apparently she started throwing some cash at a new firm just after the new year,” Sara said. “Now she says she’s moving everything over by the end of the month.”

  Alexander sighed. This wasn’t the way he wanted to start the weekend. “And who’s won her?”

  “Some upstart. Bell Capital. I don’t know it, do you?”

  His briefcase clattered to the floor. Bell Capital? His jaw locked. “Cary Bell?”

  “Oh, that must be it!” Sara exclaimed. “I heard he left Rosemann Investments at the end of last year. He must have started his own company. Well, good for him. To hear it told, he was always the brains behind his uncle’s—”

  “Cary Bell left Rosemann?” Alexander ground out through clenched teeth. “Months ago? Why the hell didn’t anyone tell me?”

  Sara looked at him strangely and said, “I’m not sure. I guess we thought it wasn’t really relevant because…” She trailed off, and he knew what she was thinking. Rosemann Investments, though respected, was more of a boutique firm. Technically, it competed with Dominion’s private wealth management division, but Dominion was a behemoth. What Sara wasn’t saying was that as its CEO, Alexander shouldn’t care about personnel changes at a firm like Rosemann Investments.

  But he cared very much about Cary Bell, as much as he tried not to.

  He sat, mind churning. He’d spent two decades trying not to let Cary Bell affect him. Maddeningly, it never got any easier. “What’s the good news?”

  Sara, clearly a bit thrown by his intensity, swallowed. “Don Liu is moving to Canada. Moving over the management of everything—his private accounts and all his companies.”

  That was good news. Don Liu was the world’s twentieth-richest man, head of a Hong Kong-based empire that included diverse holdings in several different sectors. He had sent his kids to college in Toronto, and word on the street had been that he was thinking of relocating the entire clan. So far, Alexander had put it all down to rumor, but if it was true, and if Dominion could snag even a fraction of Liu’s business, it would be a huge victory.

  “He wants to meet tomorrow,” Sara said. “I’m driving up to his house, but probably at some point you’ll have to wine and dine him.”

  “Who else is he meeting with?”

  “I spoke to his son on the phone, and I tried to probe a bit,” Sara said. “They’re meeting with us and First Canadian, but he also said his father was considering a few smaller outfits.” She paged through her notes. “He mentioned Evergreen and…” She looked up, and he knew.

  To her credit, she gazed at him evenly, showing the balls that reminded him why he had hired her. “Bell Capital.”

  He pressed the intercom button on his phone. “Derek, change of plans. I’m not going to New York.”

  “All right,” his assistant said. “Do you want me to order dinner in, then?”

  “No,” he said. “But call David, will you? Tell him something came up. Maybe send something to his hotel room.” He returned his attention to loading his briefcase. “We’re done here,” he said to Sara. “I’m doing the Liu meeting myself.”

  “Oh, he won’t expect you at this point,” she started, but fell silent when he held up a palm.

  “Send me everything you have as soon as you can. If you need to courier anything, I’ll be at my place.” He left Sara sitting in his office, which was probably a little rude, but, hell, he hadn’t gotten where he was today by worrying about people’s feelings.

  Cary Fucking Bell. He hadn’t been able to avoid seeing him all these years, of course. Avoidance was impossible given that Alexander had risen above his former station so dramatically that he now ran in the same circles as Cary�
��s old-money family. And they worked in the same industry, though Alexander had more occasion to run into Bart Rosemann, Cary’s uncle and the Rosemann family patriarch. Bart’s father had founded Rosemann Investments, and Bart had been grooming Cary to take over—though word on the street was that although Bart was technically in charge at Rosemann, Cary had always been the actual brains of the operation. Alexander didn’t doubt it. Cary had always been smart.

  The point was, Cary was around. So Alexander had just made sure the bastard knew the score. They didn’t speak, limiting themselves to curt nods when forced into proximity. And, to be honest, Alexander also made sure Cary knew the score in other ways. If he flashed his Rolex a little too overtly—or flashed whatever hot guy was his flavor of the month a little too overtly, or flashed the bank’s last quarter’s financials a little too overtly—it was just to remind Cary of what Alexander had become.

  And, more importantly, to remind himself. Money really could buy happiness. And it could buy other, more important things: respect, security, freedom. Power.

  Alexander Evangelista had made himself into a titan.

  And a titan could tolerate a man like Cary Bell.

  Correction: A titan could tolerate a man like Cary Bell as long as he stayed where he belonged, in his box. In his box that was beneath Alexander’s notice.

  But if that fucking upstart thought he was going to steal clients out from under Dominion? If he thought he was going to use that honeyed mouth of his to sweet talk the twentieth-richest man in the world out from under Alexander?

  Alexander rolled his wrists like he was warming up for a sparring session with his jujitsu master.

  Bring it.

  …

  Cary tried to calm his out-of-control heart as he sat alone in an antique-stuffed, vaulted-ceilinged sitting room in Don Liu’s sprawling mansion in King City north of Toronto. It wasn’t the house that had him wiping sweaty palms on his suit pants, though. He had grown up with wealth and privilege, so he wasn’t intimidated by pools, butlers, and millions of dollars of original art hanging on the wall, although the Liu compound was lavish even by Cary’s standards. No, his unease was rooted in the knowledge that scoring Don Liu as a client would make Bell Capital. Cary wasn’t deluded. He knew it was a long shot to expect the multibillionaire to choose his fledgling wealth management firm over established, big-name banks offering the same services. He had been prepared for it to be tough going when he struck out on his own, to have to painstakingly and gruelingly build his client list, proving himself over and over. But if Liu came on board so early—Cary was only four months in—the success of Bell Capital would be guaranteed.