Table of Contents
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
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
HOLT - Her Ruthless Billionaire
50 Loving States, Connecticut
Theodora Taylor
Contents
I. New Haven
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
II. Ixtapa
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
III. Greenwich
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
IV. Arkansas
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
V. Stamford
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
New Haven
Chapter One
SYLVIE
Good girls…perfect daughters…do not attend parties in skyscrapers.
I am not sure how I know this, but I can sense the truth of it as I walk through the revolving door of Holt Calson’s towering building. The bottom floor is fancier than anyplace I have ever been with its shiny checkered floors, sleek ivory columns, and elegant black marble walls inlaid with gold. This lobby is, like, stupid lux and the only thing that stops me from ogling the place is my best friend Prin’s thick Jersey accent hissing, “Girl, stop looking so impressed! We belong here, so we gotta act like it.”
I glance sideways at Prin. Maybe she belongs here. But as for me, well…I cast another look around the lobby with its spotless everything overlaid with the crisp smell of “nothing even remotely ethnic has ever been cooked here.”
I am not supposed to be here. Like, at all. And I’m feeling less and less comfortable within myself by the second—especially when I think about how my parents would react if they knew where I really was. Not at Yale, listening to a lecture, but in some rich boy’s skyscraper.
“Are you sure you can’t meet him somewhere else?” I ask Prin, keeping my voice low because I can tell this lobby will echo and bounce any spoken word off the walls like a basketball. “Maybe someplace that isn’t technically a graveyard?”
“It’s not a graveyard,” Prin insists, rolling her eyes. “That was, like, a million years ago!”
No, not a million years, I think to myself. Prin hasn’t lived in Connecticut as long as I have. I was only a child, newly arrived from Jamaica, when Christina Worthing-Calson jumped from her penthouse balcony. But I remember how the story dominated the local paper for a long time after her death, and a shiver runs down my back at the mere thought of going to a party in the very same penthouse where she died. There is no doubt about it, I am really, really not supposed to be here.
Yet, here I am wearing a borrowed party dress and way too small kitten heels, trying to act as if Asir Zaman didn’t just throw me a plus one to seal the deal with Prin.
And Prin must sense how I am feeling because she suddenly stops and says, “C’mon, Sylvie, don’t chicken out on me, girl!”
“I’m not,” I answer, but even I can hear how unconvincing my voice sounds.
“Sylvie, this is Asir Zaman.” Prin grabs my hand and repeats, “Asir Zaman,” pronouncing each syllable of his name as if it can be found in the Bible. “I mean, look at us!”
I do, and this only makes the, “Nah, girl, you ain’t got nunna the business being here” feeling way worse. Because yesterday, Prin was a nerd, like me. But today, she looks like one of those 90s makeover montages come to life.
Turns out, all Prin needed to go from slumming to stunning was a couple of YouTube makeup tutorials and a vintage outfit from her dead mother’s closet. Her sequined jumpsuit shows off her long legs and arms, and her face has been bronzed, highlighted, and contoured to such perfection that Prin finally looks like who she is: the grown-up daughter of a hip-hop mogul.
But as for me…? I am basically the anti-She’s All That. I don’t have a small chest and slender everything like Prin. So, instead of elegantly hanging off my body like it should, the beaded midi-dress Prin loaned me clings to my overly abundant curves as if it is holding on for dear life. There has been no glittery face transformation for me because even M.A.C doesn’t carry a foundation dark enough to work on my ebony skin. And though Prin did the best she could with my hair, a jeweled comb isn’t going to make the crown braids my mother puts in every Sunday before church look fashionable.
Let’s not even discuss my Costco glasses. Sure, glasses are on trend, but mine do not exactly scream hipster. More like, “Check out the poor Jamaican girl in the borrowed dress! Look how hard she’s trying—and failing—to look cool!”
I don’t belong here, I think to myself. Not like Prin does. Unlike me, she didn’t attend Beaumont on super-reduced tuition, because her dad used to be one of the groundskeepers at the prestigious private school. She lived in the dorms with the other rich kids, while I took the bus home to our two-bedroom rental in Blue Hills every afternoon that I didn’t have a babysitting job or an extra shift at the school’s onsite childcare center. Prin was one of the privileged few, while I w
as just a few steps up from staff. And as far as I’m concerned, nothing illustrates that point more than the way we look tonight.
But Prin continues to plead with me, “You know I can’t do this without you, so please, please, just be cool and come on.”
Actually, Prin could easily do this without me and that is the only reason I agreed to come with her. I want to keep her from doing something idiotic with the handsome lacrosse player who invited her to this graveyard party in the sky. I already lost my sister to the kind of stupidity star athletes inspire in otherwise smart girls. I don’t want to lose my best friend, too.
I will not lose Prin.
With that thought, I’m able to re-find my nerve. “Okay, c’mon,” I say, reversing the hold on our hands and tugging her forward. But not for the reasons Prin thinks. I did not lie to my parents about what we would be doing tonight so my best friend could finally hook up with the boy she’s been crushing on since freshman year.
I’m here because I don’t want Prin to end up like my sister. And if I have to go to some crazy party in the penthouse where the host’s mother killed herself, then that’s what I will do. Because Prin is a true sister-friend. She’s rich, but unlike the other kids at Beaumont, she never made me feel like I was nothing more than dirt beneath her three-figure sneakers. So, for her, I will do this. For her, I must do this.
However, all my new-found bravery goes sliding right out of me when we spot a huge black guy dressed in a suit on the other side of the lobby. He is standing beside a very old-fashioned open elevator paneled in dark wood and rich velvet, and he does not look like he is in the mood to let just anyone in.
Oh wow...this party has a guard standing at the door?? I slow my forward progress but Prin charges right ahead, leaving me to hover in the background as she tells the guard, “We’re here for the Holt Calson event,” in a confident voice.
The guard eyes her up and down. He does not seem nearly as impressed with Prin’s makeover as I am. “You on the list?” he asks, his voice aggressive like he only needs the smallest of excuses to toss us right out of Holt Calson’s skyscraper.
Honestly, I do not know where Prin finds the saliva to answer him, because my throat has gone completely dry.
“Prin Love,” she answers haughtily, like she is slapping him in the face with her name glove. “Asir Zaman put me on the list.”
The guard hits Prin with a hard look, then picks up a clipboard from the stool directly behind him and scans it with a pen held sideways.
“Princess Love,” he reads. “That you?”
A little crack appears in Prin’s tough Jersey girl façade. She hates her full name to the point that she used to email her teachers before the start of each new school year, warning them not to use it. Honestly, if not for her father’s Wikipedia page entry, I might not even have known her legal name before we leveled up to best friends during our first year at Beaumont.
“Yes,” she answers in a thin voice as if she is sacrificing a good portion of her dignity to get herself into this party.
“And you’re the plus one?” He barely glances over Prin’s shoulder at me.
“Yes, I am,” I answer, feeling like a liar and a fraud even though my answer is completely true.
He hits us with another hard look as if checking to see if we will break beneath it. We don’t. Prin raises her chin, and I hunker down behind her until, with an irritated sigh, the guard steps aside and waves us into the elevator.
An elevator that will go directly to the top floor of this very tall building.
Before tonight, my life experiences were limited to three places: Jamaica, the Blue Hills neighborhood of Hartford, and Beaumont Academy. And even Beaumont, the prestigious boarding school Prin and I just graduated from, doesn’t remotely compare to this.
Yeah, Beaumont had impossibly rich boys—a few who came to school with bodyguards. But I cannot imagine any of those guys posting a bodyguard outside a party with a guest list. Or even having a guest list to begin with.
This might be why I feel like I am being caged in when the guard pulls an old-fashioned brass accordion door across the open elevator door. Dread pools inside my stomach but I try not show it. Instead, I fake a smile for Prin who looks so beautiful and delighted to be in this cage with me.
With an angry buzz and a jerk, the elevator slowly begins to ferry us up to the graveyard party in the sky. From what I understand, this place used to be the headquarters of Worthing Electric. The Worthing family lived above their many floors of offices until the company was acquired by an energy conglomerate in the early eighties. I vaguely remember a news story about how Christina’s father gifted her the building as a wedding present when she married Jack Calson, son of Hank Calson, the founder of Cal-Mart. She and Jack only had one son, which I guess is how Holt Calson ended up with his very own skyscraper before he was even old enough to drink.
The elevator stops on a long hallway lined with intricate gold foil wallpaper. It is completely empty of people, but dense with the heavy bass of American rap music--the kind I am not allowed to listen to but vaguely recognize from the times I’ve heard it pouring out of the open windows of neighborhood drug dealers’ cars. I swallow hard before following Prin out of the elevator.
“Is the plan to find Asir and talk to him for just a little while, before we leave to get me home on time?” I ask Prin as we walk down the golden hallway, me trailing slightly behind her. I am asking as a reminder to my best friend, but also to calm my own nerves.
“Yep,” Prin answers. “One hour and we’re out of here. Your mom won’t suspect a thing.”
Guilt rolls over me twofold. I love Prin, but I do not like how she acts as if lying to my parents is just fun and games. Or the way she only refers to my mother. My father is not dead. Yet.
“And the way Daddy looked at me. He can’t talk, but Sylvie it felt like he was screaming at me as loud as Mommy.”
My sister’s sob-filled words float into my mind as we walk down the hallway. Guilt hangs over me, heavy and uncomfortable as a wet dish rag. I told Lydia it would be okay because I believed our happy family could withstand anything without falling apart. But it wasn’t okay. My parents—not just my mother—sent her away. Now Lydia is back in Jamaica while I am here trying to prevent my best friend from making the same mistake she did.
We stop in front of a double set of black doors overlaid with a geometric design etched in gold foil. Small knobs are embedded smack in the middle of each door. I wince, surprised to find them closed. Because if the music is this loud in the hallway, I can only imagine what it is going to sound like inside.
I tense with anxious hesitation, but Prin pulls open the door with the boldness of hip-hop royalty. It is as obvious as the sequins on her dress that she is ready to live up to the potential of her full name and get her happy ending with the charming Arabian prince who finally noticed she was alive a week ago.
The music is as bad as I suspected it would be. It hits my ears with an aggressive blast, and for a moment, everything is drowned out: my guilt, my hidden mission, and all sense of equilibrium.
“One hour, I swear!” Prin’s voice yells directly into my right ear.
And then she’s pulling away. Leaving, I realize a second too late. “Prin, wait, hold up!” I call after her.
But of course, she can’t hear me over the music. She disappears into the thick crowd before I can stop her, leaving me with no choice but to follow her retreating back into the den of iniquity.
And it’s a literal den. I discover this when my eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The front room is a sunken square filled with beautiful people highlighted by swirling purple and blue lights. It is dark, but I can see this is not the kind of party I am normally invited to by family members and church friends.
Music plays, but nobody is dancing. Several men and women laugh uproariously like they can actually hear one another, but none of them look truly happy. Everyone is dressed beautifully, but they don’t seem to noti
ce anyone but themselves. And absolutely no one else is wearing a borrowed sparkle dress from the early nineties.
I am half afraid someone will take it upon themselves to throw me out because I so obviously do not belong here. But nobody seems to pay me any attention as I push my way through the thick crowd, head bobbing and eyes straining as I look for Prin. I feel silly for dressing up at all and I wonder if Prin will even find her Arabian prince in this chaotic mess of people.
When I still cannot find Prin anywhere, I follow a set of steps up to a hallway lined with doors. Without thinking, I open the first door and call out, “Prin?”
It is much brighter in this room, and my eyes need a few seconds to adjust. This turns out to be a few seconds too long because when I stop blinking, I see a guy with dark hair perched on the edge of the bed. He is wearing a polo and khakis, and I might have thought he was fully clothed if not for the naked girl bouncing up and down on his lap.
“Yeah, Luca, fuck me. Just like that! Just like that!” Naked Girl says, her voice grateful even though from where I stand, it looks like she is the one doing all the work.
The boy she is bouncing on looks up at me. And despite the crude tableau, I cannot help but notice how gorgeous he is. Dark hair, olive skin, pale green eyes. He regards me with a lazy smile over the bouncing girl’s shoulder.
“Heya, what’s what?” he says as if I’ve walked in on him sharing a glass of tea with a friend. He has an accent, American but like the men who come into my aunt’s beauty salon once a month to collect a white envelope with “protection” money inside.
Holt, Her Ruthless Billionaire: 50 Loving States-Connecticut (Ruthless Tycoons Book 1) Page 1
