The Billionaire Beast(35)

Ah, so that’s why she hadn’t been able to find anything on him. He’d deleted everything or at least hidden it.

She stared at him, at the hard glitter in his eyes, the muscle leaping in the side of his jaw. The tension that was virtually screaming off him.

He was still hiding from it. Even now.

Phoebe pushed away from the desk and walked slowly toward him, emotion a massive rock sitting on her chest. Because it was obvious what she had to do. He’d pushed her to confront her own demons and now she had to push him. Or else, a few rooms in his house would be all he’d ever see.

Perhaps some part of him knew exactly what she was going to do, because he took a step away from her, his shoulders going back, his nostrils flaring like a bull before a red flag.

But she ignored the warning signs, going straight up to him and reaching out, taking his face between her palms and holding on tight. Then she looked straight into his night-dark eyes. “It’s been fifteen years, Nero,” she said. “There are no press outside. Not anymore. Is that what happened? Did you walk into the house your father bought you and never came out again?”

He stiffened, his mouth going hard. He tried to pull away, but she held on tight to him. “That is what happened,” she went on, not giving an inch. “You did close that front door. And look at you . . . You can’t even go to the dining room without breaking into a sweat. You’ve stayed behind that door ever since.”

His big body shuddered, the look in his eyes full of something raw and hot and terrifying. But she didn’t let him go, and she didn’t look away. “You’re lying to yourself, Nero. You don’t stay here because of the press or because you don’t need to go outside or any of those other excuses. You stay because you can’t actually leave.”

His lips peeled back in a snarl. “I can leave whenever I fucking want to!”

“Then, why don’t you?” She moved in closer, her body inches from his. “Why don’t you walk out that front door right now? You can, you know. No one’s stopping you.”

He made a growing noise in his throat, jerking his head from her hands. “Don’t tell me what to fucking do.”

She could feel the warmth of his skin against her palms, the pain of his past in her heart. He was desperately holding onto his delusion, she could see that, and it broke her heart a little more. “You’re lying to yourself,” she said quietly. “And I think you know that. The truth is there. You just don’t want to see it.”

His head went back as if she’d slapped him, and he took a sharp step away from her, denial in every inch of him.

Then, jarringly, his phone buzzed.

Nero reached for it, dragging it from his pocket and answering, his gaze never leaving hers. Then he frowned and slowly held out the phone to her. “It’s for you.”

She blinked, not quite processing it for a second. A phone call for her? But how? And why were they calling Nero?

Taking the phone, she lifted it to her ear. “Hello? This is Phoebe.”

“Miss Taylor? It’s Dr. Jenkins. I’m sorry I had to call your employer. You weren’t answering your phone. You need to get to the hospital as quick as you can.”

Shock reverberated through her. “Charles?”

“Yes.” Dr. Jenkins’s voice was calm yet gentle. “He’s not able to fight this infection the way we’d hoped, and I’m afraid it’s not looking good.”

Her throat was aching, tears in her eyes yet again, crying for another broken man. “Okay,” she forced out. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Nero’s gaze had narrowed, sharpened. “What’s happening, Phoebe?” he demanded as she disconnected the call and handed the phone back to him.

“It’s Charles.” She swallowed, turning to the door. “I have to go.”

Nero’s arm shot out, curling around her waist. “No. I told you. You’re mine and—”

“Charles is dying!” she said, her voice rising. She pulled against his grip, suddenly shaking. “I have to go, Nero. I have to.”

And there was a moment where she didn’t think he would let her.

Then something in his face shifted, his arm dropping from around her waist, setting her free. “You will come back, Phoebe.” He said it like a king issuing an order. “You will come back to me.”

She didn’t reply. She merely turned on her heel and went straight out the door.

* * *

She didn’t come back.

The whole day passed, and she didn’t come back.

Night fell and she didn’t come back then either, and he stayed up in his control room, searching the security feeds from the city, trying to find her.

But he couldn’t. So he sat there staring at his screens, his heart feeling like it wanted to claw its way out of his chest, like it wanted to tear apart the entire world just to find her.

He sent her text after text, then he called her, but there was no reply.

It was as if she’d dropped off the face of the world.

At three in the morning he eventually got up from his desk and forced himself out into the grand entranceway of his house, with the front door ahead of him. It was strangely harder than it had been even a couple of days ago. Like the early days, when the press had hammered on that very same front door and he’d retreated into his office to get away from the sound.

He turned away from it, pacing around the massive, marble flagged space, going around and around for a good fifteen minutes, trying to ignore the pressure of the open space above his head, telling himself he was being ridiculous, that nothing had happened to her, that she was at the hospital with her fiancé.

Yet all he could see was her face, white and shocked, her beautiful brown eyes gone dark, her cheeks tear stained. “Charles is dying!” she’d yelled at him, pulling away from him, pain in every line of her.

And he, beast that he was, hadn’t wanted to let her go. Because he didn’t care what Charles was doing. Phoebe was what mattered, and she had to stay here with him.

Except he’d let her go, and he still didn’t know why he had, when every instinct he had was telling him to keep her.

No, he knew why. He’d gotten used to reading the emotions that played over her face, and he’d seen her pain. Someone she cared about was dying, and she needed to go be with them, and that stopping her would only cause her more anguish. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t hurt her any more than he had already, shoving the truth of his past at her, standing with his back to her while she cried. For him.

She didn’t need to cry, though. That past was over. It had been terrible, but now it was done.

“It’s not done . . . Not when you’re still trapped in that room.”

He found himself in front of the door, staring at it. If he really wanted to find her, he could walk out that door, couldn’t he? He could just turn the handle and step outside, get his driver to take him to the hospital. Easy.

She was wrong. He wasn’t trapped. He’d left that room behind years and years ago. He was on track to finding his stepfather and then he’d punish the guy and everything would be fine, and the past would truly be done.

In fact, yes, he’d go out right now. He’d find her. He wouldn’t drag her back here, no, he’d sit beside her. Hold her hand. Be there for her in the way she was always there for other people. Because if her fiancé was dying, then who would hold her hand? Who would put their arms around her to comfort her? She didn’t have anyone. She didn’t have anyone but him.

Certainty settled down inside him and he strode to the door, putting out his hand to turn the knob, to stride outside.

And something made him stop, freezing him solid. A sense of foreboding, of doom. It was so strong it stole his breath, made him feel as if his chest was in a vice and it was being wound slowly tighter and tighter.

“You have to stay inside, Nero,” his mother whispered outside the door. “You can’t come out, not yet. It’s not safe.”

He couldn’t make his fingers work to turn the knob. They’d gone numb, and all the air in the entire room was rushing out. The pressure around his chest made him feel as if he couldn’t inhale, as if his ribs were unable to expand. This was worse than the night he’d first left his control room and gone to Phoebe’s bedroom. Far worse. Holy fuck, he was going to choke . . .

“Please stay inside.” His mother’s voice this time was desperate. “You know he can’t know you’re here and I’m afraid of what he might do to me if he finds out. Please stay there. For me.”

His hand dropped from the door knob and he took a couple of stumbling steps back, and the air rushed back into his lungs, the sound of his gasping breaths loud in the silence.

After he’d gotten out of that room, the attention had overwhelmed him. There had been cameras in his face, people calling him, following him wherever he went. Crowds of people all pushing into his space, suffocating him, and the only way he’d managed to keep them out was by staying home. By closing his front door and shutting them all out.

And why not? There was silence in his house. And space. He could breathe. There weren’t people everywhere, shoving things in his face and asking him how he felt. Asking him how he’d survived. What he thought about having a father like Cesare de Santis. Asking questions about his mother, questions he didn’t know how to answer.