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  Dangerous Billionaire

  Luma Rose

  Copyright © 2020 by Luma Rose

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Designer: Devoted Pages

  Contents

  About Dangerous Billionaire

  1. Ford

  2. Naomi

  3. Ford

  4. Naomi

  5. Ford

  6. Naomi

  7. Ford

  8. Naomi

  9. Ford

  10. Naomi

  11. Ford

  12. Naomi

  13. Ford

  14. Naomi

  15. Ford

  16. Naomi

  17. Ford

  18. Naomi

  19. Ford

  20. Naomi

  21. Ford

  22. Naomi

  23. Ford

  24. Naomi

  25. Ford

  26. Naomi

  27. Ford

  28. Naomi

  29. Ford

  30. Naomi

  31. Ford

  32. Naomi

  33. Ford

  34. Naomi

  Epilogue

  About Me

  Also by Luma Rose

  ABOUT DANGEROUS BILLIONAIRE

  I’ve finally escaped from under my father’s political shadow—I’m no longer the political prince—I’m mayor now. It might not be a Senator but it’s the first step of my well-orchestrated plan to one day dethrone my father.

  True to form, my dad comes demanding his due. Asking something from me I can’t give him unless I want to hand him more leverage to use against me.

  Still, the pieces are coming together until Naomi Beneton shows up in my office. At first, she’s my savior—the best assistant a guy could ask for. But then I start to appreciate her quick wit and clingy dresses more than her administrative skills and things become complicated.

  I realize too late that Naomi isn’t who she says she is. She holds the power to destroy everything, including the wall I’ve built around my heart. It would be easy to give into my desire for her, but she has no idea how much of a danger I am to her.

  1

  Ford

  It smells like feet and sweat as I move through the crowd with my hands tucked into the pockets of my sweater. People are jam-packed down here, and the single bulbs hanging from long chains in the ceiling cast eerie pockets of light on the tops of heads, painting strange shadows on faces and playing to my favor.

  It would be inappropriate for anyone to recognize me in a place like this.

  My world consists of office meetings, press conferences, interviews, and all-around professionalism. And this? This is so far from that.

  But the blood coursing through my veins calls me down here on Friday nights like a coyote calling others to the kill. A dull pounding at the base of my skull promises that tonight will be a good fight. My hands are clenched into fists in my pockets, my wrists are already wrapped, and the stink on the air smells like therapy to me.

  I clip a man’s shoulder, and he turns with an arched eyebrow and snarling mouth, but as soon as we lock eyes, he dips his chin and mumbles something along the lines of “Sorry, mate, didn’t see you there.” It’s a sign that I’ve been spending too much time here. He recognized me, and there was a time where I could pass through the Underground without anyone batting an eye. He doesn’t know I’m the mayor of Denver, but he knows who I am from last Friday night.

  And he knows what I can do with my fists.

  A young woman hanging off the shoulder of a bare-chested fighter bats her lashes at me as I pass. Her companion, a guy I’ve never fought who’s in an entirely different weight class than me, watches me pass from beneath a heavy brooding brow. But he doesn’t say a word.

  I step up close to the ring, peer through the diamond-cut cage fence, and watch the two opponents square off.

  One of them is a regular in the Underground. He calls himself Dueling Daniel, a name most of us found rather comical when he first hit the scene four months ago, and he can throw a mean punch. His main advantage is his speed. He’s a quick, catlike creature in the ring, and he opts for sharp jabs with his hands and the tips of his fingers that bring men to their knees quicker than a punch does. As I watch, Daniel drives the side of his hand into his opponent’s ribs. In a quick flurry of jabs and a twist around behind the other man’s back, Daniel has his arm around his neck, and the other fighter begins to turn purple until he inevitably taps out. Tap tap. Two finger touches on Daniel’s elbow.

  Daniel releases, steps back, and basks in the glory of the crowd chanting his name. Some pass bills amongst each other; people are catching on that it’s unwise to bet against Dueling Daniel. He may have hit the scene as an underdog, but he proves himself with every fight in the Underground.

  The tips of my fingers are tingling in my pockets as I watch the fighters leave the ring. The emcee of the evening, and every evening down in this place, Morty Michigan, hops up onto the mat with his microphone gripped in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He raises his drink over his head and speaks into the mic. “Ladies and gentlemen. Are you entertained?”

  The crowd cheers.

  I shift my weight from left foot to right and resist the urge to scratch my nose. I have to wear a bandana over my mouth and nose down here for safe measure. Tonight, I’m wearing a black one with the open jaws of a monster printed on the fabric where my mouth would be. The effect was better than I could hope for, especially with my hood up.

  “Well, prepare yourselves, my friends,” Morty continues. He turns in a slow, dramatic circle in the ring, eyes wide, his face a mask of anticipation. “I have a treat for you this evening. You know what night it is, don’t you?”

  A wild chant ripples through the crowd.

  “Friday.”

  “Friday.”

  “Friday.”

  The first time I came down here, they’d called me Romeo. I’d stood out like a sore thumb, and they could probably still smell the office on me. Now they call me Friday. I’m the guy who shows up once a week and wipes the mat clean with the face of whichever opponent they have lined up for me. Sure, I lose every now and then, and that’s half the fun.

  I don’t come here to win all the time.

  I come here to use my fists and get rid of the anger I carry around all week, day after day, minute after minute.

  Without the fighting, I doubt I’d have kept my ass out of jail. Some day or another, I would have snapped. And I owe it all to one man. But this place is my sanctuary, and I refuse to think about him as I remove my socks and shoes, leave them outside the ring, and hop up the steps to duck through the gated door into the cage.

  The chanting is louder now.

  “Friday.”

  “Friday.”

  “Friday.”

  I greet my fans with a hand over my head and a closed fist.

  Morty flashes me a big smile and a single gold tooth before turning around and inviting my opponent up into the ring. “May I present a new soul who has never been here on Friday nights. He calls himself Wrath.”

  The crowd isn’t as enamored with Wrath as they are with me, but they clap for him anyway as he lumbers up the stairs and joins me in the ring. He has all the telltale signs of a seasoned fighter: crooked nose, cauliflower ears, puffy mouth from a mouth guard, a split lip from a recent fight. He’s dressed in gray sweats and a white ribbed beater shirt. There is a silver chain around his neck that Morty tells him to remove, and everyone waits as Wrath does as
he’s asked and passes the chain through the diamond fence to a pretty girl with short hair, thick hips, and hoop earrings. She coils the chain in her palm and then puts it in the pocket of her leather jacket. Her big brown eyes slide to me, and she licks her lips.

  She’s nervous, I think to myself. Maybe I should take it easy on this guy.

  “Prepare yourselves,” Morty says.

  Wrath begins to bounce back and forth on the balls of his feet. He throws a couple of practice punches at the air while I slide the hood of my sweater off my head and then shrug out of it. I toss it into one corner where Morty promptly kicks it out under the chain ring. Someone will probably pick it up for me.

  I roll my shoulders and my neck and flex my fingers. Then I move to the middle of the mat. Wrath joins me there with Morty, who looks back and forth between us with eager eyes. “Are you ready, fighters?”

  I nod.

  “You don’t look like much,” Wrath says. He has a deep, gravelly voice, and he smells like cheap cologne.

  I keep my mouth shut.

  Morty chuckles and shakes his head. “I’ll blow the whistle to commence the fight. Bump knuckles. Take three paces back. And then begin. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” I say. My voice is only slightly muffled by the bandana over my mouth.

  Wrath chuckles and cracks his knuckles. “Definitely.”

  The cheering outside the cage is wild now. There are more than a handful of female voices screaming “Friday” and not a single person cheering for Wrath. He doesn’t seem to care. His attention is focused on me, as it should be.

  Morty lifts the whistle to his lips and blows.

  I lift my fists. Wrath bumps his knuckles against mine. Then we step back.

  One.

  Two.

  Three paces.

  Wrath takes the initiative. He comes in quick, sweeping to his left and then his right to throw me off before he ducks and kicks out with his right leg, sending it in a sweeping arc about an inch over the mat, intending to cut me down at the ankles.

  I hop over his kick and plant my feet on the landing. Wrath is up from his crouch, but he’s off-balance; his right foot hasn’t yet touched the mat, and he’s pulling it in when I move on him, hitting him with two jabs to the face. He deflects with his forearms and tries to gain his footing. I’m not giving him room to breathe. Not right now. Not as my blood and my muscles and my skin screams to hit him harder.

  Faster.

  Wrath takes three hurried steps back in an attempt to buy himself some space and time. I don’t give it to him. I follow, lunge with a raised knee that I land in the middle of his chest, and knock him against the cage.

  The crowd is going wild, but it’s all white noise in my ears.

  Wrath pushes my knee down. He uses the cage to push off with extra momentum, but he only propels himself into my next hit. My knuckles meet his jaw and he reels, eyes rolling up to the ceiling, mouth going slack as the hit scrambles his brain. His fingers grip the chain at his back, but he’s losing his footing.

  I wait for Morty to blow the whistle.

  He doesn’t.

  So I give in to the anger I’ve been holding at bay since the beginning of the week. I let it cloud my vision with red smoke, and I reach down, haul Wrath up by the front of his beater, and strike him again, knocking him against the cage. He spits blood on the mat. I hit him again.

  Wrath topples over and lands heavily on the mat face-first. He stays there, motionless, with his arms by his sides. The girl he gave his chain to rushes up beside him on the other side of the cage and reaches through the chain, but she can’t get close enough. She glares darkly at me as the red leaves my vision, and I straighten and relax my fists.

  “Friday!”

  “Friday!”

  “Friday!”

  Some men might like the glory that comes at the end of a won fight, but that isn’t why I came. Hell, victory isn’t even why I came.

  Morty rushes forward and takes my wrist to lift my arm in the air. The crowd goes wild, and Wrath stirs at my feet and gives his head a shake. His girl calls his name, and he nods to her that he is all right.

  Even though this is an illegal underground club, there’s still respect here. He’d lost fair and square. He’ll have the aches and pains to prove it. He made it to his feet, and I shook his hand.

  “Good fight,” he said.

  I’d have said “you too,” but I’m not a liar. He takes his leave of the ring and meets his girl on the other side. She slides under his arm and puts a hand on his chest as she gazes up at him. She says something to him I can’t hear, and I wonder for a passing moment what it might be like to have someone out there cheering for me that I actually care about.

  But I’m not that man. And for good reason.

  Morty pats me in the stomach with the back of his hand as the crowd exchanges the bets they placed on the fight. “You hanging around for a little while tonight, man?”

  I shrug. “Is it a decent lineup?”

  “There’s two or three guys who would give you a good challenge.”

  “Define a good challenge,” I say, smiling wryly behind the monster mouth bandana.

  2

  Naomi

  I drum my fingers on the conference room table as I glare steadfastly at the image of a man taped to the middle of the glass whiteboard on the wall. His face is printed on a regular sheet of paper, high gloss, quarter-inch white trim. He wears a smile that screams untrustworthy, and the collar of a dark gray suit is visible at the base of his throat before the picture cuts off. He is clean-shaven with salt-and-pepper hair, and I can’t deny that he’s handsome in an aging frat-boy sort of way. His eyes are dark blue, and he has crow’s feet forming at the edges. I know he is sixty years old, but he looks fifty.

  Senator Charles Masterson.

  Denver would be much better off without you, I think, ceasing the drumming of my fingers on the table and getting to my feet. I move to the board and stand before his picture, where I cross my arms and rest my weight on my left foot. I’m wearing heels today. Not very high. Just high enough to be considered professional for a day’s worth of meetings.

  My wide-leg black pants make my legs look longer than they really are, and I hope the ensemble has captured the essence of my capabilities. Today is a big day for me. The future of my career with the FBI depends on the case I’ve been working on for the past three months, and it all centers around him.

  The senator.

  I trace the edges of the photograph with the tips of my fingers as my stomach swarms with butterflies. How many times have I looked at this man’s face and felt true hatred pouring through me? How many times have I overheard strangers on restaurant patios singing his praises and had to excuse myself so I didn’t make a scene and scream at them for being so ignorant and blind? How many times have I lain in bed awake, staring at my ceiling, waiting and praying for my chance to get even?

  “Thousands,” I whisper. “Tens of thousands.”

  “Did you say something?”

  I turn to the doorway of the conference room. Jonathan, my lead on this assignment and the special agent in charge, is standing there with two coffee mugs in hand. One is a dark blue pottery mug—his mug. His wife made it for him when she first took up pottery. It’s a hideous thing. He even said so himself. But he never uses anything other than that damn mug.

  “Sorry, I was talking to myself,” I say.

  Jonathan joins me in the coffee room and hands me the other mug: it’s white with the letters FBI on it. I sip at the edge, appreciating how he always gets my coffee right. No cream. A sprinkle of cinnamon and a dollop of honey. The same way my dad used to drink it.

  “Take a breath, Agent Bennett,” Jonathan says. “You have nothing to be stressed about today. I want to run through a few things together so you’re prepared for Monday morning.”

  I follow his advice and take a deep breath. I hold it for three seconds at the top, feeling the strain in my lungs and the fulln
ess in the capillaries, and then I release.

  “Better?” he asks.

  I nod. “Much. Thank you.”

  Jonathan steps around me and goes to the table, where he takes a seat. He has not so much as glanced at the picture of the senator taped to the glass board, and I doubt he will. He doesn’t share the same hatred as me. Maybe that’s because Jonathan is a seasoned pro and he settled his debts over a decade ago. Now he hunts regular bad guys every day. He doesn’t have personal motives anymore.

  Unlike me.

  “Sit, Bennett,” he says.

  I sit beside him, and he flips open the folder that was waiting for him on the table. Another picture rests at the top of the file, but it isn’t of the senator, but rather Mayor Ford Masterson. The senator’s son.

  “Your interview with Ford Masterson is tomorrow at three o’clock. You will arrive fifteen minutes early.” Jonathan looks up at me. “Tell me what you’re wearing.”

  In any other situation, being asked by a male superior to describe an outfit you plan on wearing on the job would be inappropriate. But here it’s commonplace. Here it is important intel, a crucial step when it comes to going undercover and checking all your boxes. “Something feminine,” I tell him. “A tight dress. Not too short. Classy but a little sexy, too. Six-inch pumps. A glossy lip. I’ll leave my hair down and wear big earrings.”