by Anna Zaires
Titan’s Addiction
Wall Street Titan: Book 2
Anna Zaires
♠ Mozaika Publications ♠
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Excerpt from Tormentor Mine
Excerpt from The Girl Who Sees by Dima Zales
About the Author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 Anna Zaires and Dima Zales
www.annazaires.com
All rights reserved.
Except for use in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
Published by Mozaika Publications, an imprint of Mozaika LLC.
www.mozaikallc.com
Cover by Najla Qamber Designs
www.najlaqamberdesigns.com
Photography by Wander Aguiar
www.wanderbookclub.com
ISBN: 978-1-63142-531-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-63142-532-5
1
Emma
I cry for the first hour of the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Orlando. I can’t help it. My heart isn’t just broken; it feels like it’s been ripped out of my chest.
And I did it to myself.
I told Marcus I can’t move in with him.
I told him it was over.
My seatmates—a balding fifty-something man by the window and a blond teenage girl in the aisle seat—try to scoot away as I blow my nose for the fifth time. Only there’s nowhere to go. Well, the blond girl can technically get up and go to the bathroom, but she’s already done it three times to get away from me, so she stays put, giving me the occasional side-eye.
I don’t blame her. The only thing worse than a crying baby on a plane is a crying adult.
“You, um… okay?” the balding man finally ventures, and I bob my head, forcing out a watery smile.
“Yes, sorry. Just a…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “A bad breakup.”
“Oh, cool,” the teenager says, visibly brightening. “I thought you’d just learned you had cancer or something.”
I wince, feeling like an asshole. Because she’s right: it could be so much worse. People have real tragedies, bad things they can’t avoid. Whereas the pain I’m feeling is entirely self-inflicted.
I hooked up with Marcus Carelli, a hedge fund billionaire who’s so far out of my league as to reside on a different planet.
I fell for him, knowing we have no future, and now I’m paying the price.
“I once had a bad breakup too,” the teenager confides, chewing on her green, sparkly thumbnail. “The asshole cheated on me with my best friend in middle school. Kissed her behind the bleachers, can you believe that?”
“Oh, wow, that’s terrible. I’m sorry,” I say sincerely. Middle school or not, that had to have hurt. At least Marcus never cheated on me. He disappeared for three days after an amazing weekend together, but as far as I know, no other women were involved.
Well, except Emmeline.
She—or her equally perfect clone—was always there between us.
“Yeah, well, happens,” the girl says, shrugging philosophically. “What about you? What did the jerk do?”
“He…” I swallow again. “He chased me down at the airport and asked me to move in.”
Both the girl and the man stare at me like a jellyfish just sprouted from my head, so I rush to explain. “He didn’t mean it. Not the way people normally do. It’s just a convenience thing for him. He’s going to marry someone else. He told me so when we first met and—”
“He’s engaged?” the girl exclaims in horror, and I shake my head.
“No, no. They haven’t started dating yet. It might not even be her, necessarily. It’s just that he has a very particular criteria, you see, and I don’t fit it. At all. We have chemistry, but that’s not enough for a long-term relationship. I’m not the type of girl he’d want to introduce to his friends or clients. At best, I’m just a diversion for him, and sooner or later, he’s going to get bored and walk away. And then”—I drag in a shaky breath—“then it’ll be so much worse.”
“So you, what… sent this fellow packing preemptively?” The man looks fascinated, like he’s getting special insight into the female psyche. “Kind of like striking first in battle to minimize your losses?”
I nod and blow my nose again. “Something like that.”
Except if the goal was to win said battle, I’ve already lost. My heart belongs to the man I walked away from, and it’s hard to imagine it hurting more than it does now. Still, I’m sure I made the right choice when I broke it off with him.
If I feel this way after a weekend together, how much worse would it be if I’d actually been with Marcus for some time?
No, this is the only way. Rip off the Band-Aid—along with a chunk of my heart, in this case—and move on.
The wound is bound to heal over time.
Isn’t it?
2
Emma
By the time we land, I know way too much about my seatmates, as they seem to have jointly decided that the best way to keep me from crying over my breakup is to entertain me with detailed stories about themselves. As a result, I’ve learned that Donny—the fifty-something man—is originally from Pennsylvania but resides in Florida, has been divorced twice, owns a car dealership in Winter Park, and can’t eat anything green, while Ayla—the teenager—is a rare Florida native, has a sister who’s been divorced three times, and is graduating from high school next year. Ayla, not the sister, that is. The sister dropped out of high school. Oh, and Ayla’s allergic to tree nuts but has no issues with green stuff.
“Bye! Nice meeting you!” I wave to them as they hurry past me with their bags, and they wave back, obviously relieved to be done with the flight and the crazy redhead crying over a man who asked her to move in.
I’m relieved too. Not because I didn’t enjoy hearing their stories—they did succeed in distracting me from my heartache—but because I’m eager to see my grandparents and feel the warm Florida air on my skin.
The humidity here is murder on my curly hair, but it’ll feel amazing after that brutal snowstorm in New York
.
Gramps is waiting for me inside the terminal, right by the shuttle exit, and I pick up my pace until I’m running toward him, the suitcase bouncing behind me. Though we frequently Skype, I haven’t seen him in person in a year, and my chest feels like it’ll burst from joy as I let go of the suitcase handle and tackle-hug him, grinning like a loon.
Despite nearing eighty, my grandfather is still sturdy, his shoulders unbowed and his chest thick with muscle. He also smells exactly as I remember—like Grandma’s cookies and starched linen. Pulling away, I study him, and I’m pleased to see that despite a few deeper wrinkles, he looks pretty much the same as last year.
He’s studying me right back, and I see the exact moment he notices my red-rimmed eyes.
“What happened?” he demands, his bushy eyebrows snapping together. “Were you crying?”
“No, of course not. Just got some lemon juice in my eyes,” I lie, grabbing the handle of my suitcase. “I was squeezing a slice into my water on the plane, and it squirted right into my face.”
“Lemon, huh?” Gramps takes the suitcase from me as we start walking to the exit. “I thought it might have something to do with that Wall Street boyfriend of yours.”
“What, Marcus? Oh no, it’s nothing like that. Besides, I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”
He’s not my anything any longer, but I’m not going to delve into that now. Maybe later, once I’ve had a chance to settle in and have some of Grandma’s cookies, I’ll find the strength to crush my grandparents’ hopes, but right now, I’m too drained for that.
Besides, I’d rather break the bad news to both of them at once.
“Well, whatever he may be, we’re happy for you,” Gramps says. “Unless, of course, he’s the lemon in question.” He glances at me as we step on the escalator, and I force out a chuckle.
“Very funny, Gramps. How about you tell me how you and Grandma are doing?”
“Oh, same old, you know—which is old.” He winks at me, and my laugh is genuine this time. “How about you, princess? How was the flight? It looked like it was going to be on time, and then, bam, delay.”
“Oh, no. Were you already on the way to the airport when you learned about the delay?”
“I was, but don’t worry. I just circled around for a bit, listened to some audiobooks. Your grandmother was worried, though, so you might want to call her as soon as we get to the car. Did they say what the reason for the delay was? Was it because of the snowstorm?”
I shrug. “They didn’t say, but they probably had to de-ice the wings or something. I was lucky the plane took off at all.”
“That’s true. Your grandmother has been glued to the Weather Channel since Monday, tracking the damn storm. You’d think it was one of her Netflix shows.” He snorts, shaking his head, and I conceal a grin. Gramps watches Netflix right alongside Grandma, but for some reason, he keeps insisting they’re her shows and he’s not into them at all.
We continue chatting as we step out into the parking lot, and I learn that Gramps got a new fishing rod and Grandma’s already prepped most of the food for tomorrow. “It’s too bad your young man couldn’t make it,” Gramps comments when we get into the car, and my smile stiffens as I reiterate the excuse I gave them on Skype—that Marcus is crazy busy at work this week.
It’s true, actually—an investment gone bad is what stole him from my side on Sunday—but I didn’t know that on Saturday, when Marcus met my grandparents over Skype and they invited him to Florida for Thanksgiving. I just knew it was insane to bring him with me so early in the relationship, so I blurted out that excuse—and thank God I did.
If my grandparents had been expecting him to come with me, it would’ve been infinitely worse.
Once we pull out of the parking lot, I call my landlady, Mrs. Metz, to check on my cats. “All fed and snug on your bed,” she informs me cheerfully, and I thank her again for taking care of my fur babies while I’m gone.
Next, I call Grandma and assure her that my flight was fine and that I’m looking forward to seeing her soon. She describes all the dishes she’s making for tomorrow in drool-inducing detail, and by the time I hang up, I’m ready to eat my own foot.
“She packed a little something for you,” Gramps says, apparently reading my mind. “It’s in the cooler in the backseat. She figured you’d be hungry after the flight.”
I wasn’t, until Grandma made me hungry with all those cookbook-worthy descriptions, but what are you going to do? Twisting around, I grab the cooler and start munching on cut fruit and cheese sticks as Gramps launches into a story about a new couple he and Grandma have befriended, along with random goings-on in their community.
Flagler Beach, their little town on the northeast coast of Florida, is about a ninety-minute drive from Orlando, but Gramps hates I-4, the most direct route that goes through downtown Orlando, so we end up taking the longer way. According to Gramps, it’s worth it, as the extra twenty minutes buys him peace of mind.
“Won’t get stuck in traffic this way,” he informs me, and I refrain from pointing out that by taking the longer route each time—even in the off hours, when the probability of a traffic jam is low—he spends more time on the road overall than by always taking the I-4 and occasionally getting stuck.
In any case, it’s almost midnight by the time we pull up to their house. To my surprise, Grandma, who normally goes to sleep around ten, is wide awake and nicely dressed as she greets us in the driveway, where a sleek white Mercedes is parked next to Grandma’s ancient Beetle—likely as a favor to some neighbor.
“You should’ve gone to bed,” I chide, embracing her, and she laughs, her gray eyes gleaming with barely suppressed excitement as she pulls away, leaving behind a cloud of her favorite jasmine perfume.
“To bed? When my favorite granddaughter is coming home? I’m not so old that I can’t stay up for a couple of hours past my bedtime. Besides, I couldn’t go to sleep with such a big surprise waiting for you,” she says, beaming, and I realize that in addition to wearing perfume and going-out clothes, she still has her daytime makeup on.
“What surprise?” Gramps, who’s coming up behind me with the suitcase, sounds as puzzled as I feel. “And whose car is that?” He glances over his shoulder at the Mercedes.
Grandma grins. “Come inside and see.” She hurries ahead, and Gramps and I exchange confused looks before following her in.
I enter first, with Gramps wheeling the suitcase behind me, but I only make it two steps before my feet grow roots and I freeze in place, gaping at the sight in front of me.
In the middle of my grandparents’ living room, standing next to their gently worn couch, is a tall, powerfully built man with hard, strikingly masculine features. Thick dark eyebrows, a sharply cut jaw, high cheekbones above lean cheeks darkened by a hint of stubble—everything about the bold lines of his face heats my blood and sends my pulse into overdrive. Instead of his usual perfectly tailored suit, he’s dressed in a pair of designer jeans and a casual white button-up shirt—the same outfit I saw him in at the JFK airport in New York less than five hours ago.
When he kissed me.
And asked me to move in.
And looked at me like I stabbed him in the heart when I refused and got on the plane.
Marcus Carelli, the Wall Street billionaire I fell in love with despite my better judgment, is here, in my grandparents’ house, his cool blue gaze trained on me with the intensity of a hawk tracking his favorite prey.
3
Marcus
Emma’s gray eyes are so huge I could drown in them, her freckles standing out in stark relief as all color leaves her already-pale face. Her curls are wilder than usual, floating around her head like a halo of fire, and her small, curvy body is stiff with shock as she stares at me from across the room, her equally stunned grandfather behind her.
“Hi, kitten,” I say calmly, even as dark anticipation boils in my blood, mixing with lingering fury and hurt. “Guess what? I wrapped up my work ea
rly and decided to surprise you.”
“He flew into the Daytona Beach airport and got here a half hour ago, can you believe it?” Mary Walsh exclaims, all but bursting from excitement. “I wanted to call you, but Marcus thought it might be more fun to greet you when you got here. We’ve been having tea and cookies and—”
“Excuse me,” Emma says tightly. Recovering from her paralysis, she marches toward me, grabs my arm, and faces her grandparents. “Marcus and I need to talk.”
Mary’s face drops as she realizes her excitement isn’t shared. “Of course, I’m sure you two need to…” I don’t hear the rest of what she says because Emma drags me out of the house. Not literally, of course—she’s tiny compared to me—but by tugging on my arm with enough force that I wouldn’t be able to resist without her grandparents catching on that my presence isn’t exactly welcome.
They must already suspect that as is.
Delicate fingers digging violently into my forearm, Emma tows me down the street until we’re two houses over and hidden from her grandparents’ eyes by the neighbors’ lush landscaping. Then and only then, she releases my arm and steps back, glaring up at me with so much fury each curl on her head seems to be dancing a jig.
