Ruthless Tycoons: The Complete Series (Ruthless Billionaires Book 3)

by Theodora Taylor

“But before we get started, we want to give a special thanks to our sponsor and let him come on stage to say a few words…” Sasha continues.

  I backspace on my email and then start asking who this new sponsor is because I don’t recall us assigning a big-spend sponsor to a new, not yet proven, act.

  But then Kasha says, “Everybody, give it up for Zahir Zaman!”

  Wait…what?

  This time, I don’t just stop typing, I drop the damn phone. It lands with muffled thunk on the carpet at my feet.

  But no…. my ears didn’t lie.

  Zahir walks onto the stage, dressed in a cashmere turtleneck, a dark wool blazer, and a pair of jeans I would never have guessed he owned. “Thank you, Kasha and Sasha for letting me have this time,” he says, smiling warmly at the twins after Sasha hands him her microphone.

  The girls take several steps back even though this is their show, and Zahir turns to face the audience. What the hell is going on? I wonder even as I take a few steps forward to get to the stage.

  And as if in answer, Zahir says, “I’ve come to know these two wonderful and talented young women, because I was once very happily married to their sister. But unfortunately, I let that happy marriage end in divorce a few months ago.”

  At that unexpected opener everyone in the audience, including me, falls into a shocked hush. But despite being in a public venue, Zahir continues, “She called me a coward once. At the time, I don’t think she realized how right she was. You see, I had been raised a certain way. I’ve known from since before I can remember what my destiny would be. However, when the twins’ sister, Prin, came along and kissed me, creating a scandal in my kingdom, my life changed. She became part of it, but only temporarily, I thought. And when tragedy fell, I left her behind, believing I had no other choice but to do as I was raised to do.”

  Zahir grimaces as if the memory brings him physical pain. “I left her behind in the States even though I could not imagine myself ever finding another who fit my nature…who challenged me…who took care of me in ways I’ve never been taken care of before. And I am a Jahwar royal, so you can imagine how pampered I’ve been all my life.”

  He chuckles along with the audience at that quip, but quickly gets serious again. “No one has ever compared to her. Letting her go felt like I ripped off my own arm, but I thought I had no choice. However, my brother has recently returned to our royal fold, excited to do so because Prin, in her generous nature, found a way to show him that he has a choice. He quoted something she said to him, that no person owns another person’s freedom. You are the owner of your life and no one else…” Zahir trails off for a long moment to let that sink in.

  When he starts talking again, his voice is much quieter but it resonates across the room. “Asir told me this and I said, ‘Brother, take my throne.’ He thought I was joking, but I was not. ‘Brother, take my throne,’ I said. ‘I do not want it anymore if I cannot have her.’”

  Behind him the twins wipe away tears, and my eyes blur, unable to believe. “The news that I’ve abdicated my throne to my brother and will be taking over my departed grandfather’s role as CEO of the Tourmaline Group will be released worldwide tomorrow. But now…now is where I am. And I want now to be forever with Prin.”

  Then, to my shock, he looks over his shoulder and nods to the full band who starts into “It Had To Be You” with a tinkle of piano keys.

  This is the most romantic moment ever…until Zahir starts to sing.

  As deep and resonant as his voice is when he speaks, he is an awful, awful singer. Off-key and somehow squawky and tone-deaf at the same time.

  I rush onstage and call out, “Z, baby, stop singing. You are a terrible singer.” And hello, Jersey. Just like my father, I have no problem being heard over the music.

  He immediately stops and turns to me, his eyes filling with the unexpectedly tender look I remember so well.

  I shake my head at him, because, “Seriously, you abdicated your throne?”

  “I chose happiness,” he answers, his voice calm and level.

  “I never would have asked you to give up so much for me. That’s crazy!”

  “I chose happiness,” he answers again, this time closing the space between us. “I chose you.”

  “But—”

  For the first time in my life, Zahir interrupts me. “Prin, I fell in love with you, too. I loved you then and love you now where were are. Will you marry me?” he asks, cutting off any further protest.

  I stare back at him. The woman too broken, too cynical to love and be loved back in return. The girl who was never meant to get a fairytale ending.

  I asked for a prince and received…a prince, actually…now that Zahir’s abdicated his throne.

  And you know, I’m trying to be cynical here. I’m trying to think of reasons that this will all turn to shit. But as he looks at me and I look at him, I can’t help but think this isn’t a happy ending.

  It’s the happiest beginning a girl could ever get.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  AMBER

  “Prin, will you marry me?” Zahir, one of Luca’s best men at our wedding, asks my former legal secretary after a lengthy speech.

  Lengthy but enthralling. One moment, I’d fully turned around and was counting the steps to the ballroom entrance so as to avoid another run-in with my ex-husband. And the next, I’m standing there with tears in my eyes, enraptured by his speech.

  Damn hormones…

  I don’t even realize I am still in the same place until Prin says, “Well, ya know, now is where we are…” and the audience bursts into the kind of ecstatic applause people only get when they’re kissing.

  But uncharacteristic romantic spell over. I’ll send Prin flowers with a, “Call me when you need a divorce lawyer” note tomorrow morning. Right now, I’ve got to get out of here.

  Just as I’m close to reaching the ballroom door’s entrance, a voice behind me says, “What’s what, Mrs. Ferraro?”

  Mrs. Ferraro…even though I never took his name. Ugh!

  But I won’t take the bait. I can’t take the bait like I did at Holt and Sylvie’s baby shower.

  I speed up my step and walk even faster toward the door, hoping he won’t follow me—

  But there’s a sudden quickening of feet, and the next thing I know, his voice is in front of me. “Hold up, where are you going so fast? I need to talk to—” he starts to say, only to stop.

  And I still can’t see him. Nothing’s changed about that.

  But I know why he’s stopped. Know he’s gaping in shock.

  Not at my face, which he used to always tell me was so fucking gorgeous. But much lower down…namely my large baby bump.

  Dearest You,

  Oh, my gosh. Zahir and Prin, man…what a couple! What a story. My very best friend in the whole wide world is from Jersey, and I’ve always wanted to set a book in her state.

  Prin has been kicking around in my head for years now. I even outlined a whole novel with her, but it just didn’t work. Then Zahir showed up and shocked the s-word out of me, by saying, her… yes, her.

  I’m so glad he did. It was such a kick to find out why these two had to be together no matter the cultural differences and the external and internal obstacles keeping them apart. In real life, I love couples that make real weird sense, and these two have become a new fave.

  So much love,

  Theodora Taylor

  LUCA

  Her Ruthless Don….

  AMBER: Everyone knows me as Amber Reynolds, the fierce and determined law student, who won’t let her blindness hold her back. My friends and colleagues encourage and applaud me, but I never feel clean.

  Because they don’t know who I really am… or the true reason I’m blind. You see, my father used to hurt people, until one day he kidnapped and brutalized the wrong boy. And the men who came to get him destroyed our lives.

  I’ve been given a new identity, but deep down inside, I know I will never be clean…

 
An unexpected romance has made me start to believe that maybe happily ever after is possible. Can I trust this guy enough to unlock my heart and finally let somebody in. Should I?

  LUCA: I’m the guy pretending to be Amber’s Prince Charming. But I’m really the boy in her father’s basement… and ruthlessly obsessed with her.

  My methods for obtaining her ain’t exactly honorable. But hey, I’m not the kind of guy who gives two birds about honor. Now, I’m the future head of the Ferraro Crime family, and she’s the only cure for the pain in my soul.

  She can’t see me, but all I see is her. And I won’t stop until she’s mine. Body, mind, and everything in between.

  I

  Dancing In The Dark

  Strangers In The Night

  The guy locked up in our basement is bad. He has to be.

  The only men who end up in our basement are the bad ones. That’s what my father tells me.

  I only didn’t believe him once—after one of his half-deads begged me to help him while I was delivering his daily meal. I’d burst into the living room where Daddy and Mama were snuggled up on the couch, drinking whiskey and guffawing over an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and I’d actually dared to challenge him. Because the half-dead had a family. Teenage daughters and a wife and a mother with cancer, who all depended on him.

  “C’mere, Bel,” Daddy had said, turning off the TV and patting the seat beside him on the couch. Then he’d told Mama to bring him his laptop.

  “Danny, that’s too much. She’s too young to be looking at all that,” Mama kept saying as he showed me pictures and news stories about what the man had done to other people. But Mama never told him not to do it. That wasn’t how their relationship worked.

  So, I got shown while snuggled up under my father’s arm: pictures of dead men lying in pools of their own blood, little old ladies who’d had their life savings swindled, and girls even younger than his daughters forced into prostitution—all to line the pockets of the guy in our basement. All of this was explained to me by Daddy who smelled like Lava soap and Acqua Di Parma, while the man downstairs smelled like blood and misery. And I stopped believing the prisoners didn’t deserve everything my father did to them after that.

  Until now.

  I grab my light winter coat, shrug it on, and open the door to descend into our freezing unfinished basement. No matter how high Mama and I turn up the heat, we can’t ever get it warm in the basement. Even in the dead of summer. And it’s only the beginning of spring now. It’s been raining since early this morning, and Mama fretted about driving in it, before sending me downstairs to take the prisoner’s meal order.

  The guy Daddy’s been keeping downstairs doesn’t look like a man. I thought that back when Daddy dragged him through our house, unconscious. And I think it now as I walk down the stairs into the strong metallic smell of stale blood and the even grosser stench of other bodily fluids.

  I come to a stop outside the cell Daddy installed. Steel bars hang from the ceiling with a small gap left beneath. Just high enough to pass a plate under without me needing to open the door, but not high enough for the men to have any hope of escaping.

  He’s going to die today. Or as Daddy calls it, “take a walk in the woods.”

  I know because Daddy left the house with a shovel earlier this afternoon, grumbling about having to “do this shit in the rain.” And Mama told me to take the man’s order. She only makes special meals for the men Daddy puts in this cage when it’s going to be their last.

  But the thing is, the guy inside the cage looks like a boy—a teenager. Maybe even the same age as me. Whip thin under all the blood from the cuts. And though his face is a mangled mess, I remember thinking the first day I came down to give him food that he was way too young to be here.

  Also, way too pretty. That was the other thing I thought on that first day when I slipped the one meal a day Daddy allows under the bars—that he was one of those boys. Pretty like you see on TV, even as he accepted the hot plate of food with chattering teeth.

  He took the food, but he didn’t say anything else. Didn’t try to bribe me or bargain with me like some of the other guys had after their first beatings. Maybe that’s why I lingered outside the cage a little longer than I should have. Daddy hadn’t touched the new guy’s face, I noticed. Yet… I pre-mourned the end of his perfect looks as I watched the play of shadow over his high cheekbones and strong jaw and marveled at how sharply his crystal blue eyes contrasted with his dark wavy hair.

  I guess looks are something we have in common. Mama’s always saying I’m pretty like the girls on TV. Daddy says that’s why he told her to name me Bella, because I was the cutest baby he’d ever seen, even more beautiful than his real kids when they came out—and not just because I’m a girl and they’re boys.

  But today, while I stand outside the cage, still pretty and upright, the boy just lies on the concrete floor, a pile of blood covered bones. Teeth no longer chattering, even though the basement remains the same bitter cold. Face no longer like the boys on TV.

  “What do you want to eat for today’s meal. I’m here to take your order,” I tell him.

  He doesn’t answer. But I know he’s awake, because the one bright blue eye that isn’t swollen shut stares back at me, angry and electric. Still fighting, even after his body’s given out.

  I have to get him out of here. The words materialize in my head—not as a thought, but as a decision already made. My breath catches, as a previously unseen line between right and wrong appears in the sand of my soul, and I take my first step out of the shady grey area where I’d lived my entire life.

  Up until now.

  Because I know what I have to do. I have to get him out of here, away from Daddy’s grave. Even though, unlike a lot of the full-grown men I’ve brought food to down here, the boy hadn’t begged me to help him escape. Not even once.

  Maybe that’s why I feel so compelled to get him out of Daddy’s cage.

  “You can have anything you want,” I tell the boy, loud enough for Mama to hear up in the kitchen beyond the open basement door. “Anything. Mama’s going to the store special for you, and she’s a really good cook.”

  It’s been a week. And a week is usually enough time for the men to become desperate for my father’s beatings to end with a meal made especially for them. But the boy only stares at me through the one eye. Like he’s imagining busting out of the cage and wrapping his long fingers around my neck.

  “Please say something,” I whisper. “We need her to leave the house if I’m going to help you escape.”

  The one eye wavers, confusion taking over his formerly unblinking stare.

  “You don’t have his order yet?”

  I look up. Mama’s at the top of the stairs. Just far enough down that I can see her heeled black boots and some dark brown leg beneath her wool midi skirt. But not far enough that she can see into the cell.

  She always gets dressed up to go out—even if she’s only going to the grocery store. But she never comes down here when there’s someone in the cage. Daddy says she’s not as strong as me.

  I agree, which is why I don’t say what I’m really thinking. That this boy is too young to be taken for a walk in the woods. That we should let him go before Daddy gets home from digging the boy’s muddy grave.

  But of course, if Mama were capable of going against Daddy on anything, we wouldn’t be living in the woods a good fifty miles away from any major town or city in Massachusetts.

  So instead, I say, “Spaghetti and meatballs. That’s what he wants.”

  “For real?” Mama asks, still just a third of a body at the top of the stairs. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all,” I confirm. Hoping she believes me.

  Eventually, her boots turn, and I let out a held breath as she picks her way back up the steps. Part of me thinks about waiting until I hear the front door close. But I don’t have much time. Daddy could be back any minute.

  As soon as she clears t
he basement door I ask the boy, “Can you walk? I can drive you to a hospital in Daddy’s car. But I can’t get you up those stairs by myself.”

  Moments tick by, and I begin to fear he’s too broken to get up.

  But then with what looks like considerable effort, he raises himself to his forearms. And a few moments later, he’s on his feet. Swaying, but standing.

  I let out a small breath of relief and run to the wall to retrieve the extra set of cell keys. They’ve been there for as long as I’ve been bringing food down to the bad men. But this is the first time in those ten years that I’ve ever touched them.

  Trying not to think too hard about what I’m about to do, I grab the keys off the hook and return to the cage. “We have to wait until Mama leaves the house,” I say as I push the key into the lock. “But then we can go—”

  A loud bang halts me, followed by the stomping of shoes—a lot of them. And then someone’s talking in the kitchen. The voice isn’t high-pitched and breathy, like my mother’s, but deep and clipped. And menacing.

  “What are you doing here?” My mother’s voice is loud but trembling.

  The menacing guy’s voice doesn’t carry as far as hers. I can only hear bits and pieces of what he says. “Where…that fuck…tell me…bitch!”

  But those words are more than enough. My father would never call my mother a bitch, much less allow other men to do it. Nor had he ever brought other men here—not even ones from his own crew. Mama and me are what he hides from his real family and his crime family.

  But we’re not hidden anymore.