Dark Masquerade: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance

by Michelle Love

  She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes and smiled. For a second, Aldo stared at her as if trying to work out if she was playing him. Elli stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, lingering over the kiss. Aldo smiled and touched the worst of the bruises on her neck, his expression contrite.

  “Does this mean I’m forgiven?”

  Elli chuckled softly. “Oh, you’re forgiven.” She pressed her breasts against his chest and cupped his cock through his pants, shoving down her revulsion. “And, later, I’ll show you just how much.”

  He tipped her chin up for another kiss. “Then you have a deal, little one. Scotch or vodka?”

  Either, asshole, I’m not drinking it. “You choose. I won’t be long.”

  Elli gave him a minute before silently following him to the drawing room. She heard the clink of the crystal decanter against the glass, and edging the door open a crack, looked in. Sure enough, Aldo was pulling something from his pocket, a vial of white powder, and adding it to one of the glasses.

  Elli gritted her teeth. Motherfucker. She slipped back down to the kitchen, tidying up the dinner things, and then went up, forcing a smile on her face. She pushed open the door to see he had lit candles. Good. Dim light was what she needed now. Occam’s Razor, Elli thought to herself as she went to him and curled up on his lap. Or a version of it. The simplest way is the best way. She kissed Aldo, pretending for a moment that it was Indio, and, seemingly delighted, he kissed her back, his hands running over her body.

  “Fuck me in front of the fire,” Elli said, and tumbling them to the floor, Aldo proceeded to strip her. The side table was just to the side of them, and as Aldo worked his way down her body, Elli reached up and switched the glasses. She took what she hoped was the non-drugged one and downed it, making a big deal of smacking her lips after. She gave Aldo a smile as he looked up. “Just getting relaxed, baby.”

  Aldo laughed, and Elli held her breath to see if he would notice the switch in glasses. From the way he drained the other glass, she guessed not, and a surge of victory swept through her. She played her part like an Oscar winner as they had sex, then led him back to bed. She had to put up with him fucking her again before he fell into a deep sleep. She waited a half hour, then shook him.

  “Aldo?”

  Nothing. She shook him harder. “Aldo?” Louder. “Aldo?” She leaned in and screamed in his ear. “ALDO! You absolute fucking monster, can you hear me?”

  Nothing. Her heart thumping and adrenaline rushing through her system, Elli sprang out of bed and pulled her robe over her shoulder before padded silently to Aldo’s office. She went to his filing cabinets first—locked, of course, but Elli hadn’t had Enzo and Indio as partners-in-crime for nothing. She grabbed a paperclip and picked the locks. She flicked through every file quickly—most of it she didn’t understand—but there was nothing incriminating that she could see. Frustrated, she managed to lock the cabinet, then scooted to his desk, opening his laptop. It was password protected, but Elli, grinding her teeth, typed both her and Yvetta’s names and she was in. Stupid, stupid Aldo. Your arrogance and complacency will be your undoing.

  She had to search, but eventually she found a folder marked simply ‘girls’ and clicked on it. There were sub folders, two of which were marked ‘Elli’ and ‘Yvetta,’ and needing some courage, she clicked on Yvetta’s first. There were perhaps thousands of photographs of the woman, although in most of them she either looked unaware that she was being watched or looked uncomfortable. There was a haunted look in her eyes. Another sub folder was labeled videos, but when she clicked on it, there was only one. Elli checked the sound was turned down and listened for any noise in the house. Silence. She clicked on the video and had to stifle a scream. Yvetta, beautiful in her wedding dress, was backing away from the cameraman, terror in her eyes.

  Elli turned the sound up a little, trying not to be sick. “No, please, don’t …please, please don’t.” Then a sickening sound as the killer stabbed Yvetta, driving the knife into her, and Yvetta’s agonized gasp of pain. Elli watched in horror as the killer eviscerated the young woman, her cries dying down as she lost consciousness, until all Elli could hear was the attacker’s pants for air. The video ended with a close up of the knife embedded in Yvetta’s stomach, blood everywhere. Had Aldo kept it as ‘evidence’ or had he kept it as a memento …did he masturbate to it? Elli knew the answer.

  “Oh god …” Elli was shaking uncontrollably, but she had to know. She clicked on her own folder. Again, photographs, this time of her. Some she had seen already, sent to her by her ‘stalker.' “Cocksucking, motherfucking asshole,” she whispered. There was a video folder, but in this one, there were multiple videos, and as she looked through them, she realized that most of them were taken in her bedroom. Not the room she slept in here, in Aldo’s house, but the one in her tiny apartment in Venice. Others were taken in her bathroom, her living room, and even her office.

  “Fuck,” Elli growled and clicked on one that read, “Almost …but not yet.” She gasped when she realized it had been the night they had played the kinky game of ‘guess what?’ She was lying naked, bound, blindfolded, and Aldo was running various objects down her bare abdomen.

  Elli smiled grimly when she saw the knife in his hand. I fucking knew it, she thought. The sick, sick fuck. Aldo ran the tip down until it dipped into her navel, then she watched him turn to grin at the camera, raising the knife and making a stabbing motion repeatedly, only just stopping above her skin. She heard herself say, ‘A knife?’ and Aldo raised his finger to his lips to the camera, then made a shocked face. “Of course not, Elli. Who do you think I am? It was my watch.”

  So, he was planning to kill her to get back at Indio? Tough luck, you sick motherfucker, she thought as she dug around in his drawer and found a flash drive. She copied everything she could to it, then shut the computer down. She scrubbed her fingerprints from everything in the room and went back to the bedroom. Aldo was snoring loudly, and she stood over him for a moment, wondering if she had the courage to kill him. Because right now, she wanted to more than anything in the world. You. You are the reason Indio and I were apart. Your sick fantasies cost Yvetta her life—you won’t take mine.

  She tucked the flash drive into the lining of her jacket, then lay down, keeping as far away from Aldo as she could. Soon, she would be in Paris with Indio and away from this man.

  She fell into an uneasy sleep as dawn approached and woke a couple of hours later, feeling scratchy and queasy. Aldo was still asleep, and she had to smile—karma, bitch. She left him a note saying she had gone to work and, grabbing her jacket, she went to find Umberto to ask him to drive her to work.

  After he dropped her off, Elli walked around to the back of the office and called Indio, telling him everything.

  “You did what?” Indio was chuckling helplessly on the other end of the phone. “You drugged him? Elli … it’s funny, but if he’d figured it out …”

  “He didn’t. He’s too arrogant to believe anyone would ever see through his sick plans. And it worked effectively, too. Motherfucker had been doing it to me for months—I’m assuming to keep me pliable—so it was time he got a taste of his own medicine.”

  Indio wasn’t laughing five minutes later when Elli told him what he had found. “That does it,” he said. “You need to get out of that house now.”

  “I’m at work, silly.”

  Indio drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t care what you do, just …don’t got back there.”

  Elli sighed. “Okay. Oh, fuck …”

  “What?”

  “My passport is there. Look, one more night and I’m gone, I promise. I’ll get Viv to say I have to be in Paris tomorrow night for an interview.”

  “Good. I have an idea. A friend of mine, Benoit Vaux …I can arrange for him to be your ‘interviewee.’ You’ll interview him at his home, and I can come get you from there.”

  A thrill ran through her. “I can’t wait.”

  The day raced by and before lon
g she was back at Aldo’s place, the place she’d never been able to call home—and now she knew why. Besides the obvious fact that Aldo was a sick freak, Indio was home to Elli. No one and no other place could ever be.

  She got through dinner, giving a performance worthy of an Oscar, even as her nerves jittered. After dessert, Elli wrapped her arms around Aldo’s neck as he checked some emails and peeked over his shoulder. “Hey, baby.”

  Aldo turned his head to smile at her. “You’re in a good mood.”

  “I have good news …well, for me, anyway.”

  He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her. Elli went along with it, smiling at him and not even giving a hint at the fierce hatred inside her. She nipped at his bottom lip with her teeth playfully, and Aldo grinned. “Tell me.”

  “I am interviewing Benoit Vaux tomorrow.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Vaux? Wow, that’s a coup. He doesn’t like publicity normally.”

  “Well, I’m a serious journalist, and he’s a serious man. So I’m flying to Paris for a few days to see how he works. He’s very kindly offered me one of his guest rooms to stay with him.”

  “Really?” Aldo sounded skeptical. “So he goes from uber-privacy to having a journalist live with him?”

  Elli thought quickly. “Okay, I admit, he’s a friend of Vivienne’s, and she’s calling in a favor. I have to pack …do you know where I left my passport?”

  “In the nightstand, next to mine. I put them in there when we came back from Seattle.”

  She kissed him and hopped off his lap. “Cool, thanks.”

  She was almost at the door of the study when he called her back. “I might come with you,” he said thoughtfully. “I have a few contacts I wouldn’t mind catching up with.”

  Fuck. Elli kept the dismay off her face and smiled. “Well, that would be lovely …except you should know, I’m grumpy when I’m trying to get a story down.”

  Aldo laughed. “So stay out of your way. I got it. You weren’t grumpy when you interviewed me.”

  She gave him a cheesy grin—god, they were almost like a loving couple in these moments. “You distracted me with sex.”

  “Which is what I’ll do in Paris.” He grinned wickedly. God, she could almost believe he wasn’t a psychopath when he was like this.

  Elli smiled. “Then it’s settled. I’ll go find our passports.”

  She went into the bedroom and pulled open the nightstand. A thought came to her and she very carefully pulled out both passports, making sure one covered the other, then made a big deal of trying to find something else in the drawer and those below it. She made her expression one of confusion and looked around the room, making her movements very deliberately.

  If he had put cameras in her apartment, he might have put them in here. He could be watching her right now. Shit, if he had put them in his study ...

  No. She would be dead right now if he knew she’d snooped in his study. She had to trust that only the bedroom—the bedroom where he had fucked her and where he had murdered Yvetta—was the only room he would feel he needed to watch her—and them. She hoped that was true. She carried the passports out and only when she was sure no one would see her, did she slip Aldo’s down her underwear, wincing at the cold, leather cover.

  “Honey? I found mine, but yours isn’t with it. I had a quick look around, but it’s not there. Did you put it somewhere else?”

  For the next hour, she helped Aldo search the bedroom for his passport. Eventually, Aldo stood, frustrated, and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, damn.”

  “It’s weird.” Elli was enjoying herself now. “I’m trying to retrace what we did when we got home.”

  Aldo sighed. “Look, let’s leave it. You’re only going to be gone for a few days, right?”

  She kissed him. “Right.”

  He put his arms around her and suddenly she was scared he would feel his passport hidden in her underwear. “I like your thinking, cowboy, but rather unromantically, I really have to pee.”

  Aldo laughed and released her, and she went to the bathroom and locked the door. Searching, her eye alighted on the back of one of the cabinets. She slipped Aldo’s passport into it, hoping he would never need to look there—at least until she could get it out of the house or, even better, lose it—he’d never be able to replace it by tomorrow, no matter how much money he had.

  Happy in that knowledge, she went back to the bedroom and didn’t even feel too badly when Aldo insisted on them making love before and after she packed, knowing that this time tomorrow night, it would be Indio’s arms she was in.

  Elli breathed in a lungful of Parisian air and smiled at the man opening the limousine door for her. In a few minutes, she would be whisked to Benoit Vaux’s left-bank apartment, where Indio would be waiting for her. As she traveled through the city, she was staggered at the beauty of the place, the manic traffic, and the speed of life there. Elli gazed out at the Eiffel Tower, lit now in the early evening twilight. In the world’s most romantic city, she would finally be able to love Indio freely and openly.

  He was waiting as she stepped out of the car and he whisked her inside and kissed her passionately, leaving her laughing and gasping for air. His arms were tight around her. They gazed at each other for a long moment, no need for words.

  There was a discreet cough behind them, and Indio turned and laughed. A tall, dark, handsome man gave them an amused smile. Indio chuckled.

  “Sorry, Ben.”

  Benoit Vaux, grinning, kissed her cheek. “It’s wonderful to see you again, Elli. Please come upstairs and meet my family. I warn you, our daughter is still awake and causing trouble.”

  He led them upstairs, where he introduced Elli to Shiloh, a tall, willowy blonde with a friendly smile, and their daughter, Lily.

  “Hi, Lily,” Elli said. “That’s a beautiful name. My friend has a daughter called Lily too.”

  Lily, unlike her namesake, Lily Storm, wasn’t shy at all. She nodded. “It’s a popular name,” she said wisely and her mother laughed.

  “Precocious nine-year-old,” she said with a smile. “Please, Elli, come on in. Indio’s made himself at home already.”

  She said this with a fond glance at Indio, and he grinned back. Elli could see the friendship between them all and it made her heart warm all the way through the delicious dinner with Benoit and Shiloh. Then, after midnight, Indio and Elli left by the back entrance and were driven to Indio’s place across town. Elli’s eyes widened at the beauty of the apartment. “Wow. And you just moved in?”

  Indio grinned. “Yesterday, but I’ve had my eye on this place for a long time.”

  The walls of the high-ceilinged rooms were painted a delicate lilac, and Elli grinned. “God, it’s lovely.”

  “Nothing compared to what I’m looking at right now.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “Hello again, Elli Bella. It’s so good to hold you when we have no fear of discovery or any anger between us.”

  Elli relaxed into his arms. “God, Indio, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.” He smiled, and taking her hand, they walked to his bedroom. Elli leaned against him.

  “You know, I could do with a bath. To get the journey off me.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  In the bathroom, he ran hot water into a vast tub. Elli eyed it with a grin. “Big enough for two. You know, I’ve never had sex in a bathtub.”

  Indio pretended to be serious, stroking his beard. “Really? Well, scientific studies show that sex in a tub in Paris, specifically with a man whose name begins with an ‘I,' means beautiful woman called Elli are guaranteed an orgasm.”

  Elli giggled. “Oh, is that what they say?”

  “They do.” He grinned, looking ever more like the boyish hero of her youth. Elli kissed him.

  “Silly man. I love you so much.”

  “As I love you, Elli Bella. God, when this is all over, we’re going to be as silly as we like. More fun and more jokes. I’ve laughed more in the time we’ve been reunited tha
n in the eight years we’ve been apart. I’m looking forward to getting back there.”

  “Adventures.”

  “Hell, yes.”

  They lay in the warm water, Elli leaning back against his chest. Indio’s fingers trailed bubbles up and down her belly. Elli felt more relaxed and content than she had in years, turning so she could look at him. He cupped her breasts in his hands, stroking a rhythm over her nipples with his thumbs. She swept his damp curls away from his face and studied his swarthy, tanned skin and his bright green eyes gazing at hers, soft with love.

  “Have you any idea how beautiful you are, Indio Navaro?” Her voice was awestruck. “Inside and out. There could never be any other man for me. Not ever. I was dumb to think there could be.”

  Indio smiled at her. “Then I’m just as dumb, Elli. I spent eight years trying to fight what I felt and what I knew in my bones was our destiny.”

  Elli’s eyes were sad. “Why? Why fight so hard? Enzo …he would have come around. He wasn’t my keeper.”

  Indio shook his head. “Right now, I don’t know why. When his girlfriend accused me of assaulting her, it was such a visceral shock. In a way, I don’t blame Enzo for banishing me. I didn’t feel good enough for you …in my mind, no one was good enough for you, Elli.”

  She leaned in and pressed her lips to his. “You were and you still are my hero in every way. I love you so much, Indio. So, so much.”

  Indio slid his hands into her hair and gazed at her. “Marry me.”

  “Yes,” she said simply, but he shook his head, smiling.

  “No, I mean, while we’re in Paris. Marry me. Don’t go back to him. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe, I promise. I can’t bear that he touches you.”

  Elli smiled through her tears. “Yes, yes, god, yes, Indio …”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her body against his. Indio reached between her legs and spread her labia, and she guided his cock inside her. They made love slowly and intensely until they were both gasping for air and laughing, telling each other how much they loved each other.

  ***