My Dad’s Billionaire Enemy Read online

  My Dad’s Billionaire Enemy

  Bella Winters

  Copyright © 2019 by Bella Winters

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you are reading this book and book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Bella Winters 2019

  [email protected]

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Blurb

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Excerpt

  Author’s Note

  Stay connected with Bella Winters

  Also by Bella Winters

  Author’s Note

  My Dad’s Billionaire Enemy is a full-length standalone novel. At the end, I’ve included an excerpt from my Amazon TOP 100 Firefighter Romance Light Up My Life.

  My Dad’s Billionaire Enemy concludes at around 95% on your device.

  Happy Reading!

  XO, Bella Winters

  Blurb

  He’s more than just a criminal.

  He’s a merciless leader of two large gangs in LA.

  And he has me in his possession.

  What am I going to do?

  I’ve been kidnapped by a billionaire.

  And there’s no way out of this prison.

  He owns not just my body but also my heart.

  His mesmerizing touch makes me want to stay.

  I’ve been told that he kidnapped me for a reason.

  My father is out to kill him.

  Am I too crazy to believe him?

  Maybe.

  The truth will eventually come out.

  And then I’ll have a choice to make.

  Stay loyal to my father…

  Or fall deeper in love with this ruthless stranger.

  Chapter One

  Malcolm

  Perhaps I had waited too long to bring the whole thing up. The truth was, I wanted to keep them out of it for as long as possible, my closest friends, my greatest allies. I knew they wouldn’t take it well that someone was trying to kill me.

  Especially when that someone was Samuel Kline, the most notorious hitman in the business.

  But I was sure now, and there was no more time to waste.

  The five of us were having brunch at a little downtown cafe, the kind that you couldn’t find unless you knew it was there. The waiters here were like family, and so it felt like the safest place to begin to plan things—out on the patio under a large, sun-bleached umbrella.

  “There’s something I need to tell you, the reason I brought you all here today,” I said, my serious tone a stark juxtaposition to the teasing conversation we’d just been having.

  They all turned to look at me. Misha’s face, as usual, was hard as a rock and difficult to read. I trusted the Russian man’s judgment though, and I knew he would be the first to protect me.

  “What? You mean you don’t just want to spend time with us?” Leroi jokes, earning him a stern look from Noah. At thirty-one he was the youngest of the group, and this tended to show through his playful demeanor.

  Noah, on the other hand, was always serious. Not unreadable like Misha, but instead like a calm and sturdy boulder that I always knew I could count on.

  “Now is not the time, Leroi,” Gilles said, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. He was the only one who I had told beforehand. I needed him to be able to gather intel so we could properly plan things out. The information we had been able to find on Samuel was scarce, but it was better than nothing.

  “What is it?” Noah asked, leaning towards me looking expectant. He probably had some idea of what was going on, he was intuitive like that.

  He had known me for the longest, too, and I was sure that had something to do with it. After all, I didn’t think of myself as a man that’s easy to read, even if I am more emotive than Misha.

  “I just got it confirmed yesterday, so we still have time,” I began, looking at each of them individually. “But I’m definitely being targeted.”

  “By who?” Misha asked, his voice gruff and deep.

  “Samuel Kline.”

  There was a collective groan all around the table.

  “Shit, that sucks,” Leroi said. “Liam, that dirty bastard.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions yet,” Gilles said. He always liked to reason things through, and not cause unnecessary conflict. “We’re not sure it’s Liam sending him.”

  “But who else would?”

  “It’s true that Liam has the means and the motive to send Samuel after Malcolm,” Noah said. He looked deep in thought, his forehead wrinkling with lines of determination and contemplation.

  Liam Hawthorne could be called my rival in the business. There were two large gangs that ran the streets of Los Angeles when it came to drugs. He led one of them, and I led the other.

  I had known for a while that Liam was tired of the competition, and of the ways that I kept his gang in check, but I hadn’t thought he would resort to hiring a hitman this quickly. After all, I had my Four, the friends that were with me now, and they wouldn’t just let the gang go to ruins if I was shot and killed.

  No, I’d reckon if I was, Liam would have more to contend with than he had bargained for.

  “The issue right now is not if it’s Liam sending Kline after me,” I said. “The issue is that Samuel is going to try to kill me. Unfortunately for him, we know what’s going on, so we have the advantage. So right now, we need to figure out what we want to do about it.”

  “Now, we don’t have much information about him,” Gilles said. “We know he started as a hitman to provide for his family. He had a wife, dead now, and still has a daughter. As far as I know, she has no idea what her father does for a living.”

  “Let’s keep her out of it then,” Noah said. “I would hate to drag an innocent person into this, even if she is his daughter.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Can we kill him?” Misha asked.

  “That would seem like the most logical solution,” Noah responded.

  “Or we could get him shipped out somewhere overseas,” Ler
oi suggested.

  “How in the hell would you make that happen?” Noah asked.

  Leroi shrugged in response. “I don’t know. That’s for you to figure out.”

  “So we kill him.” Misha took a long drink of his coffee.

  I nodded. “It seems like our only option.”

  “Hey!” Leroi said at the same time that Gilles tapped my arm, fear in his dark brown eyes.

  “Gilles, what is it?” I asked in a whisper.

  “He’s here, right now,” he said, pointing to a pair of figures walking up the street towards us.

  It was Samuel, and his daughter Aurora.

  They were talking together and laughing. The two of them were clearly close, from the way Aurora leaned in. The trusting look in her eyes killed me. She had no idea how bad of a man her father was. It made me want to tell her the truth.

  Fuck.

  I hadn’t been counting on this. I was terribly attracted to her. She was the kind of beautiful that people wrote poems and songs about. She had dark wavy hair that went to her collar bone, and the most enchanting green eyes I had ever seen. Her figure was short and curvy, and she was built in a way that reminded me of the muses of ancient Rome.

  Truly a woman to inspire art. Or war.

  “We should take care of it now, while we have the chance,” Misha said, interrupting my thoughts as the pair were seated by one of the wait staff.

  They hadn’t seemed to notice us, and I couldn’t help but agree that now could very well be the most opportune time.

  “I can make it quick, quiet, just like you like it,” Misha added, eyeing the pair as if he was already calculating the shot he would take to finish it.

  “No, we can’t do this now,” Noah said. “Not with his daughter here. She’s innocent.”

  “I’m not going to shoot her,” Misha said with a shrug as if that was the problem.

  Noah glared at him. “That’s not what I’m worried about. Can you imagine how traumatizing it would be, to have her father die in front of her?”

  “He will die either way.” Misha wasn’t getting it, but I could see where he was coming from. Now was our chance, and we had ourselves to worry about first.

  “She’s getting up,” Gilles said. If we want to do it now, we should do it while she’s away.

  Noah looked visibly torn. I knew he wanted to protect me, but it was likely he was thinking of his own trauma right now. I knew he didn’t want to inflict that on anyone else either.

  “You guys can do what you want, just do it soon,” Leroi said. “There’ll be more people on this street the later it gets, and you guys know how much I hate damage control.”

  Thoughts were spinning around in my mind as I took one last look at Samuel Kline, sitting there alone, waiting for his daughter to come back.

  “Want me to do it now?” Misha asked, as serious as ever.

  “No,” I said, knowing my answer would surprise all of them. I was a fan of getting things done quick and tidy-like, but in this situation, I knew that there was another way, a better way in fact.

  “We’re not doing anything yet,” I said. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to let Kline get the better of me. I have an idea, one that will stop him from killing me without any bloodshed.”

  “And how do you intend to do that?” Gilles asked.

  “You’ll see, in time,” I said, watching as Aurora took her place back at the table with her father. “You’ll see.”

  Chapter Two

  Aurora

  “And then, this asshole thinks it’s perfectly alright to ask if I’ll blow him, can you believe that?”

  “No, not at all.”

  I was sitting in the front room of my workplace—The Humane Society—while my best friend graced me with tales of her man-scapades from the weekend.

  I loved Hailey, with her short blonde bob that was currently styled into two spiky pigtails. She knew how to fill the silence when I didn’t want to talk. And even though we were supposed to be talking about both of our adventures with men, she knew I didn’t have much to add.

  I was perpetually single, and I liked it that way. I didn’t exactly trust men at the moment, couldn’t after my boyfriend of six years cheated on me. We had started dating in high school, and I had thought he was the one until I walked in on him and another chick.

  Then it was over, and I hadn’t exactly recovered enough to want to get back into the dating sphere anytime soon.

  But I enjoyed hearing Hailey’s stories, especially on slow days like this. It was the middle of the workday, in the middle of the workweek, so we didn’t exactly have anyone coming in at the moment.

  She was working at the front desk, and she would always complain of boredom until I agreed to join her for a bit. I would do my morning tasks, and then I would take out some of the younger animals to help socialize them.

  Kittens were my absolute favorite, and I would let several of them roam around at a time, keeping a close eye on them and picking them up and playing with their paws every so often so they got used to being handled.

  Sometimes I would bring out a puppy. A lot of the puppies at our shelter needed to be trained to walk on a leash so that they would be more adoptable, and playtime was always good for them too.

  At the moment my animal of choice was a little sheepdog mix named Trixie. She was fluffy and so affectionate, but right now she was stumbling over herself as she tried to adjust to the harness. I righted her and continued to listen as Hailey told more tales.

  “So obviously that was a no-go, but I was drunk and needed a ride home, so he offered to drive me. But of course, he takes me back to his apartment instead of mine. And guess who’s this asshole’s roommate?”

  “Who?” I asked, attention on Trixie as she tugged at her leash with her mouth. I gently corrected her with a soft, “No Trixie,” and she stopped immediately.

  “Aurora, I swear, you have such a way with these animals. You know she wouldn’t listen if I tried to tell her no.”

  I smiled. “That’s why you work at the front desk.”

  “Isn’t that the truth. Now, where were we? Ah yes, his roommate. It’s that hot guy I matched with who just never responded to me. And we just kind of have an awkward staring contest until he steps forward, glares at that asshole, and is like ‘I guess I should give you a ride home.’ And then guess what happens next?”

  “What?”

  “We totally hooked up, and honestly, he wasn’t bad.” She gives me a sidelong grin and a wink. “We’ve been texting too.”

  I laughed. “I’m happy for you Hailey, just be careful.”

  “Of course, you know me, always careful,” she joked in a sing-song voice. Then it was quiet for a few moments. “Aurora, are you alright?”

  “Hmm?” I looked up, realizing I’d been spacing out. “Why do you ask?”

  “You just seem like you have something on your mind. You know I’m always here for you if you need to talk about something.”

  “I know.” I was trying to figure out if it was even worth talking to her about. Nothing had really happened. But still… that feeling.

  “I was at brunch with my dad a couple of days ago,” I said, feeling a rush of relief as I started to talk about it. “It felt a bit like someone was watching me.”

  “What you find arousing is your business Aurora, but that does not sound healthy.”

  “I hadn’t finished yet,” I said, my cheeks growing red. “I turned around and saw probably the most handsome man I’ve ever seen, though he was older than I usually go for. He had the most piercing blue eyes, and his hair was the prettiest silver color—not like old silver, though there was some of that in it as well. Like dark grey silver, the kind everybody is trying to achieve but can never quite get, you know?”

  “Anything else about this man you discovered?” Hailey teased, her eyebrows raised.

  I ducked my head in shame, burying my face into Trixie’s fur as I brought her up to my face. “No.”

 
; “Come on Aurora, don’t tell me you didn’t even talk to the guy? It’s been forever since you’ve actually been interested in someone.”

  “I guess if it’s meant to be I’ll see him again. It’s not like I’m really remembering him that well anyway.” Trixie yipped from my arms, and I let her down to the floor again.

  Hailey crossed her arms across her chest. “Don’t give me that romantic bullcrap. You need to promise me that next time you feel interested in someone you’ll actually talk to them!”

  I was saved from having to answer her by the bell above our door ringing as someone walked in. Hailey immediately put on her best customer-greeting smile as I tried my best not to look terribly awkward.

  “Welcome to the Humane Society, what can I do for you today?”

  The stranger didn’t answer her immediately. Instead, he scanned the building, perhaps interested in the architecture. We were situated in one of the older buildings in the city, after all.

  Then he made direct eye contact with me. His eyes were a deep, cold blue, and he had a smile that seemed so familiar, it was just nagging at the back of my brain. But I couldn’t quite seem to remember where I might have seen him before.

  “Uh, can I help you, sir?” Hailey asked, clearly growing impatient.

  “Not at the moment, just looking,” he said with a smile, his eyes never leaving mine.