by Lili Valente
Table of Contents
Title Page
All Rights Reserved
About The Book
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
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Tell Lili your favorite part!
About the Author
Also By Lili Valente
Divine Domination
Bought by the Billionaire
Book Four
By Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright Divine Domination © 2015 Lili Valente
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring Dominant alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Leone Editorial.
About The Book
WARNING: It’s Book Four. You know what you’re in for by now—more heat, more suspense, more head games, and more Jackson f*cking Hawke.
When Jackson gets his hands on the men who kidnapped Hannah, he’s going to rip their hearts, still beating, from their chests.
Or worse.
No amount of pain or desecration seems sufficient punishment for the sin of taking Hannah away from him.
He won’t stop until he has the woman he loves back in his arms and in his bed. But as the ugly truth behind his and Hannah’s intertwined pasts is revealed, their love will face its greatest challenge yet.
Divine Domination is the 4th and final installment in the Bought by the Billionaire romance series. For maximum enjoyment it should be read after books 1, 2, and 3.
CHAPTER ONE
Ian Hawke
The kid didn’t stand a chance.
That’s what people said about Ian when he was a little boy, growing up in the projects of inner-city Chicago, hiding under the bed while his mother turned tricks to keep the heat turned on and a needle in her arm.
That’s what they said when he came to school wearing the same dirty sweater for months. When the lice infestations got so bad the school nurse was forced to shave his head. When he grew more and more withdrawn until most of his classmates couldn’t remember his name.
But what no one realized was that Ian was different than the other lost and forgotten children. He was special, the one in a million person who could live without love or kindness and who bounced back stronger every time the world knocked him down.
Later on in his life, the words “sociopath” and “psychopathic tendencies” would be bandied about by social workers and one of his more astute commanding officers, but Ian only accepted one label—survivor. He was a survivor and he was going to come out on top or die trying.
When he was still too young to go to school, Ian lay on the filthy floor beneath his mother’s bed while she entertained her clients. He studied the delicate legs of the dead bugs littering the ground beneath the ancient four-poster, tuning out the sound of the squeaking mattress as he imagined the house he’d have when he grew up. It would be a mansion with a hundred rooms and a flock of servants to clean them. And if he discovered dust under a bed or a dead bug curled in a corner, he would punish the housekeeper responsible until she understood that Ian required excellence from everyone and everything associated with Hawke Manor.
His mansion would be like Wayne Manor, Batman’s house, but even bigger, without any stuffy butlers bossing him around or bat caves hidden beneath it.
Ian didn’t want to save humanity or even Gotham City. He just wanted to be bigger, meaner, and richer than anyone else and he wanted the entire world to know it. Once he was grown and richer than Batman, no one would look at him with pity in their eyes. They would look at him with respect or fear or they wouldn’t look at him at all.
He didn’t mind being invisible. There were times when he preferred to fade into the background, becoming part of the shadows until the moment he chose to make his presence known. It was an art he’d mastered before he learned to walk, a necessary survival technique growing up in a home with a short-tempered mother and an endless stream of johns who were never happy to see a kid hanging around.
By age three, Ian was a master of camouflage. By age six, he’d learned to use his ability to blend in with a crowd to hunt for the things he needed. At first he hunted food—stealing from the local bodegas and then the fancy grocery stores downtown, acquiring a taste for the finer things he wouldn’t have known existed without his swift, clever hands.
As he grew older, his criminal proclivities expanded. He learned to hunt for wallets and expensive clothes and pretty girls, the kind who wouldn’t give him the time of day if they knew where he’d come from and all the terrible things he’d done. He hunted drugs to sell, weapons to defend himself, and enough money to escape the neighborhood and make his dreams come true.
But then, days after his eighteenth birthday, Uncle Sam stepped in and changed the course of his life, drafting him into his first tour of duty in Vietnam. Uncle Sam put an even bigger, better gun in Ian’s hand, money in his pocket, and, most wonderful of all, gave him free rein to kill.
And kill he did.
Ian slaughtered the enemy with impunity and was happier in the dark, bloody jungle than he had ever been before. He was finally at home, in a place where monsters like him could run free. He loved war the way some men loved women or booze and by the time Stewart Mason was drafted into his platoon, Ian had served two tours of duty and advanced to the rank of Sergeant of his own squadron.
Mason was the softest of the new recruits, the son of a billionaire. He’d never held a gun before basic, let alone had to defend himself against the horrors of the world. His daddy’s money had always done that for him.
The other higher-ups gave the kid two months, tops, but Ian saw something in Mason. The boy was soft and inexperienced, true, but behind his pale blue eyes lurked a devil waiting to be born.
In the humid jungles of Vietnam, Ian helped to birth Mason’s darkness, awakening a blood lust in the other man that confirmed they were similar creatures. He taught Mason to hide, to hunt, and to kill with a ruthless efficiency that left entire villages decimated in the blink of an eye.
For the first time in his life, Ian had a true friend, a brother-in-arms and a brother of the soul. Mason understood what it was like to look out at the world and realize there was nothing to be afraid of. They were the predators
, the top of the food chain, the masters of their blood-soaked kingdom.
But nothing beautiful lasts forever.
Children grow, love dies, and wars end.
Mason was pulled out in 1973, near the official end of the war. Ian followed two years later, escaping in one of the last helicopters during the fall of Saigon. He’d served six tours of duty without serious injury, but as the helicopter lurched into the sky he took two bullets in the leg, the shots fired by someone in the mass of South Vietnamese crowding around the embassy, desperate to be evacuated before the North took over.
He was recuperating in a military hospital in D.C., mourning the loss of the life he’d known and wondering if he would ever find a place as perfect as his terrible, wonderful jungle, when Stewart Mason walked into his hospital room.
Mason’s father was dying and soon the family’s estate would pass to the next generation. Stewart had three older brothers—Aaron, Ezra, and Matthew—as well as a much younger sister, Sybil. Each of the boys was slated to inherit one-fourth of their father’s fortune while Sybil would inherit the summer house on the lake and a smaller trust fund.
“She isn’t Dad’s.” Stewart’s lips curved in a wry smile as he re-crossed his legs for the fifth time. He seemed to find the hard wooden chair beside Ian’s bed as uncomfortable as his lone other visitor, the hospital psychologist. “But she’s never been well and he’s too soft to cut her out of the will.”
Ian grunted. “I would have cut her out the moment I knew she wasn’t mine. Right after I kicked her mother out of the house without a penny.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Stewart laughed. “You’ve got too much pride. You would have found another way to deal with the problem.” His smile faded and a new tension crept into his voice, signaling that they were getting down to business. “And that’s why I’m here. I have a proposition for you.”
Ian searched Mason’s face, not surprised to see the devil dancing behind his friend’s eyes. “I’m listening.”
“You know my brothers hate me,” Mason said, keeping his voice low so as not to be overhead by the patients on either side of Ian’s tiny partition. “If they inherit three-fourths of the estate, they’ll stick together and shut me out. They’ll ignore my advice and squander everything Dad fought so hard to build. If I don’t do something now, in fifty years there won’t be anything left. I’ve seen it happen before. No one is too rich to lose it all, not even us.”
“So you want to find a way to have them written out of the will?” Ian feigned ignorance, resisting the urge to smile when Mason shot him an incredulous look.
“No, I don’t want them written out of the will,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I want them out of the picture. Permanently. And I want you to be the one to do it.”
“Why me?” Ian asked, keeping his expression neutral. “Why not keep it in the family? We both know you’re capable.”
“I’ll also be the first person the authorities will suspect. My alibi has to be airtight. While you’re getting the job done, I’ll be attending parties in the city, skiing upstate, and making sure I’m never near my brothers and never alone.”
“But if I’m caught, it could still lead back to you,” Ian said, his mind already clicking through possible assassination methods. “I wouldn’t say who hired me, but we served together. There are records.”
“You won’t be caught. That’s why I’m here. Because you’re the best.” Warmth softened Stewart’s usually cool blue eyes. “You’re my real brother. And if you help me, I’ll make sure you never want for anything for the rest of your life.”
Ian studied his friend, his brother, a part of him wanting to take the job with no more questions asked. But he knew Mason as well as he knew himself and realized the other man didn’t appreciate anything that came too easily.
“I’ll think about it.” He relaxed back onto the too-thin pillows propped beneath his shoulders. “Come see me next week and bring your best offer.”
“I’ll give you my best offer now,” Mason said, leaning closer. “I said you’re my brother and I meant it. Do this for me and you’ll have fifty percent.”
Even Ian, a master at controlling his emotions, couldn’t hide his surprise. “Half. Of everything?”
“Half of everything,” Mason confirmed. “Half of three billion is a lot more than the twenty-five percent I’ll be getting if my brothers inherit. I’ll still be coming out on top, and I’ll have a partner who understands that sometimes we have to make hard choices to make the most of our lives.”
Ian concentrated on his breathing, drawing in long slow breaths and letting them out to the count of five. It was everything he’d ever wanted, handed to him on a silver platter, but he couldn’t start counting the money or building his mansion yet.
He had to stay calm, stay smart, and make sure this went off without a hitch.
“I’ll need time to heal,” he said. “I can’t start something like this with a bum leg. And I’ll need information on all the targets. Everything you can get me.”
“I’m already working on that.” Mason cast a glance over his shoulder as one of the floor nurses bustled by with a tray of water glasses. “We have some time. Dad should have a few months left, maybe more. The disease is progressing rapidly, but he has the best doctors money can buy.”
The best that money can buy.
Ian had never had the best that money could buy. He’d had the best that he could steal, snatching riches away from the people who hoarded them and running like hell before they could snatch them back. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know he had all the money he would ever need, all the power he’d ever dreamt of.
And all he had to do was snuff out a few lights.
He’d already snuffed out hundreds, maybe thousands. He’d lost track of his tally by this third tour of duty, but he was undoubtedly an efficient killing machine unimpeded by remorse or regret. There wasn’t a man or woman alive who was truly innocent. Innocence was for very small children and even they were simply seeds waiting to open, holding their potential for evil tight inside of them until it grew large enough to burst free.
Ian didn’t believe in the sanctity of life. He believed in his own survival and his right to do as he pleased. He spared no one and he trusted no one…not even his best and only friend.
“All right,” he said after a long moment. “But I’ll need half of the money up front.”
Mason’s eyes flicked to the right, gazing over Ian’s shoulder through the filmy window that overlooked the parking lot below. “I can’t do half, but I can have an untraceable, fully laundered two million in the account of your choice by tomorrow morning. The rest will have to wait until I inherit. I won’t have access to that kind of capital until then.”
Ian cocked his head. “Most people look to the left when they’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.” Mason shifted his gaze back to Ian, his face an expressionless mask. “And I won’t be back next week. Take the deal now, or I’ll find someone else. I’d rather be partners in this, but I don’t have time to waste. I’m not going to let everything I deserve slip through my fingers because you aren’t sure you can trust me.”
And why should I trust you? Ian thought.
Mason was planning to have his family members murdered so that he wouldn’t have to learn how to share. No matter how much Ian admired Mason’s predatory instincts or how many times they’d saved each other’s skins in combat, he would be a fool to jump into this without some serious thought.
Mason was dangerous. But he also wasn’t the kind to make idle threats. If he said this was Ian’s one shot, it was his one shot, and he wasn’t about to piss away his chance to have everything he’d ever wanted.
“I’ll call you with the bank account information this afternoon,” Ian said, not missing the way Mason’s shoulders relaxed away from his ears at the news.
Maybe his friend was sincere about wanting a partner. Or maybe he was simply relieved not to have t
o seek out another monster to get the job done. Truly excellent monsters—the kind who are crazy enough not to care about society’s rules, but sane enough to cover their tracks—are few and far between.
Mason rose from his chair, reaching out to clasp Ian’s hand tight. “Thank you, brother. You won’t regret this.”
Ian nodded. “And neither will you, as long as you keep your word.”
Mason smiled, a hard curve of his mouth. “I’m ambitious, but I’m not a fool. You’ll get everything you’ve been promised and more.”
“I don’t need more,” Ian said. “Half is enough.”
And it would have been. One point five billion dollars would have made his wildest dreams come true.
But on the cold December morning when Mason was named the sole heir to his father’s vast fortune, the money never came. Ian’s bank balance remained steady—not a penny more, not a penny less.
At three o’clock, he called Mason, but there was no answer, only a busy signal that droned in his ear, summoning the rage bubbling inside of him closer to the surface. At five o’clock, he drove by the row house in the elite part of D.C. where Mason had lived since he began his work as a lobbyist, but the house was empty. A glance in the windows revealed that the furniture was gone and the floors bare.
Even before Ian returned home to find an envelope slipped beneath his door, he knew he’d been cheated.
The message the missive conveyed confirmed it—
If you talk, you’ll go to jail, and you’ll go alone.
There is no paper trail, no money trail, nothing to prove you weren’t acting on your own. This is your chance to walk away. Take what you’ve been given, make a life for yourself, and don’t attempt to contact me again.
If you do, you die. I’ve hired security and they’ve been instructed to shoot on sight.
