The Billionaire Beast(36)

No, in his house the world was his to control, utterly and completely.

The press had kept hounding him though, knocking on his door and filming through the windows. So he’d retreated even farther, into his office, into his control room, and there he’d stayed. Until eventually they’d given up and left him alone.

Those rooms, they were his refuge. His safety. His haven.

Nero stared at the door. His hands were shaking, so he curled his fingers into his palms, his nails pressing into his skin.

“The truth is there. You just don’t want to see it.”

He shut his eyes, because even now, even when he could feel the illusion under which he’d kept himself safe shatter around him, he didn’t want to see it.

But she had. Phoebe knew. She’d been the one to confront him with it. Then she’d left him.

She’d gone, and she wasn’t coming back.

And you can’t go after her.

He cursed aloud, forcing himself to walk to the door, to take that door handle again. But the sense of doom was back, crushing him, stealing his breath, choking him, whispering to him in his mother’s voice, and he couldn’t fight it, he just couldn’t.

Stumbling back from the door again, he shuddered as the feeling passed. Then he flung back his head and roared with frustration. With fury. At himself. At the past that he’d tried so hard to put behind him and yet was still trapping him.

At Phoebe, who’d told him she was his and then left. And hadn’t come back.

But even that didn’t help, the fury burning him up from the inside out.

He stormed down the hallway, pulling pictures off the wall and flinging them on the floor, breaking frames, and shattering glass. Destroying the windows to the outside world, all the little illusions he’d allowed himself to have. To believe.

They were lies. They were all lies.

They’re not the only lies you tell yourself.

But he couldn’t bear to face that thought, not yet.

He went into the dining room, broke all the pictures on the walls, overturned the chairs where she’d sat and shared his wine. Hurled the dining table he’d spread her over and where he tasted her against the wall, heedless of the expensive vase that smashed with it. Then he went into his office, tearing the pictures off the walls there, too, before striding into his control room. He picked up his chair and hefted it, hurling it straight at the wall of screens in front of him.

They broke. Every last one.





Chapter 13


Charles died on the second day. It was peaceful and quiet, and she held his hand as he passed. Even though she’d been expecting it, the grief was still sharp. Not so much for his loss—she’d lost him two years ago and the pain of that wasn’t so raw—but for the future that had died with him and for the loneliness that she knew would engulf her the moment he was gone.

Except . . . it didn’t. Grief, yes. Loneliness, no.

She didn’t want to think about the reasons for that though, so hours after he’d died, she moved around his hospital room like a zombie, collecting belongings and tidying stuff away to make it ready for the next patient. She’d already called her parents to let them know the news, her father stoic and silent, her mother weeping and being histrionic, begging her to come home to “be with your family.”

Which sounded nice, but it wasn’t love and support she would have come home to. They only wanted her back because they both needed something from her. Her mother needed an emotional crutch and her father needed her to support her mother. Neither of them actually wanted to see her.

She’d made up some lie about how she couldn’t possibly come home now, that there was too much for her to organize and that she’d be in touch later, then she’d disconnected the call before her mother could start with the emotional blackmail.

Phoebe took the sunflowers out of the vase and dumped them in the bin. They didn’t even look like they were wilting, and it seemed like a waste, but she wasn’t going to take them home.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her jeans, and she pulled it out, glancing down at the screen. Nero, again.

Her throat ached, her chest sore.

He’d sent her lots of texts and had called as many times, too, but she’d ignored all of them. It hadn’t felt right to talk to him or even respond, not with what was going on with Charles, so she’d left all of them unanswered.

It hurt, though. She wanted very much to go back to his house, to walk through the door and into his arms. To feel him around her, comforting her, protecting her. But she couldn’t let herself. Her fiancé had died, and to go straight to another man was wrong on just about every level there was. No matter how badly she wanted to.

Besides, there was also the matter of Nero’s terrible past. He was just as trapped and as broken as Charles had been in his coma, except with Nero it wasn’t physical, it was mental. Which made it even more difficult for him to heal, especially when he refused to acknowledge the issue.

No, she definitely didn’t want to take on caring for another broken person. She’d been doing it all her life, first with her parents, and then with Charles. Even before the accident, she’d been the one who’d run their household and organized things because he couldn’t. Or maybe because he wouldn’t. And after the accident, she’d been the one who’d had to pick up the pieces, who had to pay for the hospital and make the medical decisions. Who visited every week.

She couldn’t face a third person. She didn’t have the emotional energy. It felt as if it had all been sucked out of her and she had nothing left.

She needed some time, some space. She needed to figure out who she was when she didn’t have anyone else to focus on.

“I can leave whenever I fucking want to . . .” Nero’s voice, harsh and insistent, refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of him . . .

God, how could she fight that? What could she offer him that would help anyway? All the emotional support she’d given her mother had only made her mother more needy and her father even more critical. Organizing her and Charles’s life hadn’t made him any more capable of doing it himself. And then after the accident, sitting beside his bed and playing songs . . . Well, that had done nothing at all.

No, Nero needed more help than anything she could give him.

Quickly, she keyed in a text: Charles has died. I need some space.

There was a brief pause and then he responded: I’m sorry.

So simple, only two words, making her eyes prickle. No one had said that to her, certainly her parents hadn’t. A simple acknowledgment of her loss that made her heart ache, that made her suddenly want Nero with an intensity that left her breathless. She wanted his arms around her and his big, hard body surrounding her, his strength taking some of the load for a while.

But no. She would be strong. She didn’t need him. She had to do this on her own.

The next week passed in a blur.

Charles had no family, so she had to do all the organization for his funeral by herself, plus there was the sorting out of his stuff back at their apartment and getting his affairs in order. Even in the two years since he’d been in hospital, she’d left all his belongings in the apartment as they were the day he’d walked out of it. She hadn’t wanted to get rid of them just in case. But now there would be no “just in case,” and there was no reason to keep them, so she spent at least two days putting everything in boxes and donating them to Goodwill.

That was difficult, as was the funeral. While he’d been in hospital, Charles’s circle of friends had dropped away, so there weren’t very many of them who turned up. And even though her mother called her every day asking when she was going to come back to London, her mother never suggested flying over to attend Charles’s funeral.

After that was over, Phoebe came back to the empty apartment to find a bouquet of flowers had been left for her, roses with jasmine winding through them. They smelled so sweet, reminding her of the scent that used to drift up from the garden at Nero’s house and in through her windows in the evening.

There was no note but she knew who they were from all the same.

The smell of them made her throat close and her chest tight, and she thought about texting him to say thank you. But she couldn’t face it so she didn’t. Instead she put them in a vase on her nightstand and went to sleep with the scent of them around her.

Another week passed.

She kept herself busy with making final arrangements for a headstone and dealing with the lawyers and the details of Charles’s will. Then she took a few days to decide what she was going to do. All her life had been spent revolving around other people and what they wanted, so it was strange not to have that. Strange to have to think about what she wanted.

She really didn’t know what that was.

Eventually she decided that she was going to have to leave New York, get out of the city and go somewhere different. Definitely not back to London, but somewhere she’d never been. Somewhere with big open spaces, where she could breathe and could figure out what her life was going to look like from now on.

For some reason, she kept thinking about that picture of Everest Nero had given her, the one that had hung on the wall in her bedroom in his house. The one that made her think of freedom and the world at her feet. Maybe she’d go to Nepal. Maybe she’d go trekking.