Hard Drive: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance
Tech Titans Series Book 1
Marcella Swann
Copyright
© Copyright 2018 by Orléans Publishing. All rights reserved.
It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.
Contents
Reclaimed
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
Epilogue
Let’s Hang Out
About the Author
Reclaimed
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Elliot’s got a billion in the bank,
owns whatever he wants, and lives life on the edge.
But all he wants, all he needs is … her.
Download Reclaimed: A Billionaire Second Chance Romance by Marcella Swann here.
Chapter 1
Gigi
Gigi Stevens had never seen a party so over-the-top gonzo.
Palm trees, jungle vines swinging from the ceiling, and animatronic dinosaurs so large and lifelike they could be used in the next Jurassic Park film. If the DJ’s steady assault of concussive beats weren’t enough to elevate Gigi’s heart rate, then the sight of velociraptors and a roaming T-Rex most certainly were.
Granted, since moving to San Francisco she’d attended only a few of the tech industry’s notorious gatherings, thrown by nouveau riche code nerds who’d hit it big with apps or games or search engines, socially awkward guys who might chronologically be pushing thirty, but who were emotionally still scouring the pages of D&D monster manuals in their parents’ basements.
Tonight’s party was different, however. And the party was different because the man throwing the party was different.
Damian Black, she thought. Or should I call you by your full name, the one given to you by the tabloids? Damian Black, the Bad Boy Playboy of Silicon Valley.
“Georgina!”
Gigi whirled in the direction of the shout. Speaking of full names, she thought.
Judy Mixson was making her way through the throng, holding champagne flutes high in each hand, trying not to spill their golden contents. When she finally reached Gigi, she handed her a flute and said, loudly, over the music, “A bit of the bubbly, my dear.”
“Oh God, thank you,” said Gigi. “I need it.” She leaned her head back and downed the champagne in one gulp.
“Easy there, girl! The night is young and so are you.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” Gigi said. “It’s one reason why nobody here will take me seriously.” She peered thoughtfully into her empty flute. “Young, fresh out of college—”
“An Ivy League college,” Judy interjected.
“Yeah, but it was Brown, and for some damn reason everyone keeps forgetting it’s an Ivy League school. They know Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and that’s it.”
“Look here, Georgina: you’re the smartest person in this room and you know it. In the last half-hour, you’ve forgotten more about coding and techy stuff than everyone else in here will learn over the next ten years. And look at you, girl, you’re totally—”
“Don’t say ‘hot.’ You know I’m not even remotely.”
“Actually, I was going to say—”
“And don’t say ‘cute.’ You know how much I hate hearing that.”
Judy made an amusingly frustrated face. “But you are hot. You are cute. Just look at you in your smart little blazer and black jeans.”
“You’re not helping.”
“And those glasses! That beautiful brown hair!”
“I’m praying the Lord takes me right now,” Gigi said.
Judy laughed and sipped her champagne.
In fact, Gigi was brilliant and beautiful, and not wholly unaware of it. She wore her blessings with grace but not always with ease. Beautiful women, she knew, were seen not as equals, but as possessions, and smart women were threats to the established order. GameDesk, one of the more promising Silicon Valley startups, had taken remarkably little time in bringing her on board its research and development department, but Gigi sensed that she’d already plateaued at age 23 and could expect little more than a career of lateral promotions. She was a young, beautiful woman in an industry run by men with egos as big as California and as fragile as Christmas ornaments.
“By the way,” Gigi said, “you know you’re the only one who gets to use my actual name, right? Don’t go giving people ideas. I don’t want it to become a trend. I only allow you to do it because it’s a best friend privilege.”
Judy gave a look of melodramatic mock seriousness. “The dreadful secret of your first name will remain safe with me, Georgina.”
Gigi scanned the crowded floor of Club Terra, thick with sweaty partygoers dancing herky-jerky and not always to the beat. In the distance, over Judy’s shoulder, Gigi could see a T-Rex flashing in and out of view, the strobe effect of the DJ’s lighting setup rendering the dinosaur’s movements every bit as herky-jerky as the revelers.
“Dinosaurs, for God’s sake. You ever been to a party that had dinosaurs?” Gigi asked.
Judy thought for a moment. “Down in Bakersfield, I attended a party with a dinosaur.”
“Really”
“Yeah,” Judy said. “His name was Sidney Applebaum.”
Gigi laughed.
“Seriously, the guy was like 70 years old and had just married a girl our age.”
“Ew,” Gigi said, wrinkling her nose.
“You know what he gave her as a wedding gift?”
“No, what.”
“An antique organ.”
Gigi laughed out loud. “Oh, Judy, that’s terrible.”
There was a loud metallic bang, like someone throwing a giant switch in a fuse box, and suddenly, without warning, the room was thrust into total darkness. No lights, no music, no nothing. A beat of silence, then people started screaming.
Then, just as suddenly, a single bright spotlight illuminated the DJ’s table onstage.
But instead of the DJ whose name Gigi never cared to learn, the figure now lit by the spotlight’s glare was someone whose name she knew quite well.
Damian Black.
The crowd’s terrified screaming quickly morphed into wild cheering and clapping, and Gigi felt her face go warm.
For God’s sake, get a grip, she told herself. You know what he’s about. You know he’s no good.
“Holy shit,” Judy said. “Just look at him, girl. It’s gotta be a mirage. He’s too damn good-looking to be real.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt he’s gorgeous,” Gigi nearly
shouted over the cheers. “And there’s definitely no doubt in his mind.”
“Be nice,” Judy said.
Damian raised his hands. “Greetings, Silicon Valley degenerates!”
The crowd laughed.
“I want to welcome you all here for this celebration of, well, me.”
More laughter, and from the crowd a female voice shouted, “You rock, Damian!”
He raised his hands higher to quell the cheering and said, grinning, “No need to point out the obvious, love.”
Everyone laughed.
Everyone, that is, except Gigi. She leaned toward Judy and said, “I just rolled my eyes so hard they fell out of my butt.”
Judy gave her a nudge. “You gotta get in the spirit of things. The guy’s not even 30 yet and already a friggin’ billionaire. Of course he’s a little full of himself. You gotta loosen up, girl.”
Gigi stared through the crowd at the sleek, glowing figure onstage. “According to the tabloids, he’s loose enough for both of us.”
Chapter 2
Damian
Damian had to admit it: Dude, you love this shit.
He looked out over the revelers and felt an unadorned mixture of pride and astonishment. Pride at having built, along with his three partners, the biggest, most successful music streaming platform on the planet, and astonishment that this was, in fact, his life. It often felt more like a dream: surreal, weightless, unspooling according to its own illogical logic.
He was the face of one of the world’s most used, most recognizable brands. SXz had taken the tech world, then the consumer world, by storm. It had all but shuttered Pandora and fought off vicious competitors like Spotify and Apple Music. SXz reigned supreme. Wall Street cheered and the public couldn’t get enough of the brash young tech titan, who moved through press conferences, IPOs, and Entertainment Tonight interviews with the easy swagger of a man twice his age.
Damian’s success may have been welcomed by SXz stockholders and a public grown bored with billionaire tech nerds wearing hoodies and Chuck Taylors, but Silicon Valley’s old guard were not so enamored. They resented not so much his success but his manner in living it. Damian was devilishly handsome and knew it, and parlayed his genetic lottery win into a seemingly endless string of dalliances with pop singers, starlets, and models. His enviably robust love life made him a staple of the tabloids and gossip columns, and bred resentment among the tech industry’s older, less sexually viable CEOs.
“We’re here to celebrate me, of course—because it’s always a good time to celebrate, well, me.”
Damian’s easygoing arrogance was half-shtick, half real. He knew he was handsome, he knew he was smart, he knew he was a ferocious negotiator who never felt cowed in the presence of powerful businessmen; but he also knew he had a deep-seated desire to be liked by the public at large. He would never sell out, but neither would he intentionally alienate the fan base that had, however improbably, grown up around him. His casual inclusion of “well”—“It’s always a good time to celebrate, well, me”—was no accident. He was savvy enough to recognize that a few well-placed, well-timed words could take the edge off his cockiness and even make it endearing.
“Yes, I’m always worth celebrating, but every now and then, something else is also worth celebrating. Not often, but…you know, every now and then.”
The crowd laughed.
“I have a little announcement to make. As you may have heard, I enjoy having a good time.” Cheers and whistles. “And I do. What is life if not to be enjoyed? Am I right?”
The partygoers whooped and clapped for a full minute.
Damian held up a hand to quiet them. “But to enjoy life, you have to first have life. Too many among us have their lives cut short by disease, and in particular, by cancer.”
Damian’s sudden seriousness had surprised the crowd into silence.
“That’s why I’m announcing tonight that SXz is partnering with SamiriGen, one of the leading medical research firms in the world, to raise half a billion dollars for experimental cancer treatments. These treatments will be made available free of charge to those without access to health insurance. I’m kicking things off by personally donating 100 million dollars”—an audible gasp from the crowd—“to make cancer every bit as extinct as those dinosaurs over there.”
A split second of absolute silence. There was the sudden awareness of history being made. Then the crowd erupted into frenzied applause and cheers. The revelers chanted, “Da-mi-AN! Da-mi-AN!”
“And if I can give a hundred million, then surely you slackers can pony up, like, ten bucks or something, right?” As the crowd laughed, he added, “We have some very attractive ladies manning the doors. When you leave tonight, how ’bout digging deep in those pockets and donating a little cheddar for the cause. Cash, credit, postage stamps—we’ll take anything you got. But that’s later. Right now—” Damian stopped and flashed his gigawatt smile. “Right now, I want you people to party your fuckin’ asses off.”
On cue, the spotlight extinguished as the DJ let loose a tsunami of bass. The dance floor throbbed with bodies and music and a sense of wild abandonment.
Damian made his way largely unnoticed through the dancing crowd. As a boy, Damian had watched a David Copperfield TV special and had suddenly obsessed over learning every aspect of magic. One of the first lessons he learned was that the most obvious move is usually the one that’s least expected. And since no one would have expected Damian Black—the Damian Black—to pass right through the dance floor throng, that’s precisely what he did.
Chapter 3
Encounter
“Sorry,” Gigi said. “Ain’t buyin’ it.”
Judy shouted over the music. “Ain’t buyin’ what?”
“It’s a PR move. He’s trying to clean up that man-whore image of his with a little do-goodism.”
Judy looked incredulous. “Oh my God—cynical much?”
No, not being cynical, Gigi thought. Just trying not to lose myself completely here.
“You could use some more champagne,” Judy said. “Maybe if we get enough alcohol in you, you’ll remember it’s a party.” She opened her mouth to say something more, then froze. “Holy shit, it’s him.”
“It’s who?” asked Gigi.
“Him, for God’s sake. Damian Black. Mr. Yum-Yum.”
Gigi looked around but saw only bodies. Judy cupped her hand underneath Gigi’s jaw and swiveled her head to the right. “There. Coming right toward us.”
It was him.
Gigi felt her heartbeat go irregular for a second. Oh, you’re not ready for this at all, she thought. Not at all.
Damian, head slightly down, sidestepped a dancing couple and began to pass between Gigi and Judy. From Gigi’s perspective, Damian seemed to move in slow motion—a living, breathing special effect.
As he stepped between them, Damian looked up at Gigi, who stood straight as a Marine amid a backdrop of swaying bodies. Ratatat’s “Wildcat” pulsed from the sound system.
Damian stopped, stood still. He looked at Gigi, his back to Judy.
Oh, balls, Gigi thought. You’re gonna dissolve into a puddle of sweat right here and now.
To the extent that Gigi could think at all, she thought it odd that he didn’t smile at her. His movie star smile was perhaps his best-known method of disarmament—yet he wasn’t using it on her.
He probably sees my sweating and assumes I have some kind of wretched glandular condition.
From behind Damian, Judy chirped, “Hi! I’m Judy!”
Damian extended his hand to Gigi, his gaze never breaking. “I’m Damian Black,” he said.
Oh shit, I think my glasses are fogging up. Gigi took his hand and gave it a prim shake. “Gigi Stevens.” If your hands are that smooth, she thought, I can only imagine the rest of your body.
“I’m Judy!” said Judy.
Fighting a mighty battle to gain some semblance of interior control, Gigi looked at Damian and said, “It’s very impressi
ve.”
“The party?” Damian asked.
“Your self-regard,” said Gigi.
What on God’s green earth are you doing, Gigi? Are you insane?
Damian looked slightly taken aback. But then: The Smile.
Judy walked from behind Damian and stood next to Gigi. “Champagne makes her loopy, so please forgive her rudeness. I’m Judy. Hold me.”
Damian’s gaze never left Gigi’s. “Oh, I’m not conceited,” he said, smiling. “I’m convinced.”
“Let me guess,” Gigi said. “'It’s not bragging if you can back it up.’”
What’s wrong with you? she thought. What are you afraid of? Why can’t you just be normal?
Judy put her arm around Gigi’s shoulders and affected a look of maternal concern. “She’s off her meds. She won’t listen to me—me: her kind, loving, sexually carnivorous friend. I’m Judy.”
Damian asked, “What brought you here tonight, Gigi Stevens?”
For God’s sake, she thought, whatever you do, don’t say you came for the dinosaurs.
“I came for the dinosaurs,” Gigi said.
“They’re not as impressive as my self-regard, but they’re still pretty cool.”
By now, some of the partygoers nearby had recognized Damian and were pressing in for handshakes and selfies. He obliged. The current of human bodies began moving Damian away from Gigi and Judy, and every so often, he would glance back at Gigi and smile. And each time, Gigi would purse her lips and raise an eyebrow.
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