His Need (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part One)

HIS NEED (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part One)

Ava Claire

Copyright © 2015

The Billionaire Dom Diaries Series

His Need (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part One): March 13

His Desire (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Two): March 27

His Passion (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Three): April 10

His Love (The Billionaire Dom Diaries, Part Four): April 24

**Please note: The Billionaire Dom Diaries Series is not a standalone story. You must read The Billionaire’s Wife Series first.**

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Chapter One

The journal burning a hole in my thigh was blank for two reasons.

One: I was currently in the midst of taking steps toward closure, the very activity the therapist ensured writing my thoughts down would give me.

Two: Men don’t keep diaries.

I could still feel Leila stifling her giggles every time I used the ‘d’ word. I even overused it because after I got her back, hearing her laugh was about as rare as me smiling.

It had been one month since I’d flown home to discover the one thing I couldn’t exist without had been taken from me. The one person who had irrevocably changed my life, chipped at the walls that no one else touched, who moved me in beautiful and terrifying ways, the love of my life…

I nearly snapped the pen in my hand in two. Even after I paid the ransom and watched the culprits drive away, I still couldn’t breathe. Despite the angry red slashes on her neck and beneath her collar fading, I still saw nothing but red, felt nothing but fury when my fingertips touched the fragile skin. And regardless of her insistence that she was okay, the insatiable need to destroy Cole and his sister was as overwhelming now as it had been when that little psycho told me they had my Leila. And no amount of therapy or journaling could snuff out the rage.

Ending them would.

I gripped the leather bound thing, a flicker of satisfaction rippling through me when I imagined it was Cole’s throat my fingers were wrapped around. I could have easily used my contacts for a clean, distant ending to my brother’s story but that was a mercy he didn’t deserve and I couldn’t allow.

He’d looked into my face, and my wife’s face, and lied. I let him close enough that by the time I’d realized my error, it was too late. So it was my turn to be close. Close enough that I saw the moment he realized his death was near and it was at my hand. I needed to see the second the light in his eyes flickered into nothing.

I blinked, the journal sturdier than I’d realized.

It didn’t bend. It didn’t break.

I eased back in my seat, the symbolism of that not lost on me. I flipped it to the first page.

I should write ‘charade’ in big, blocked letters
.

My suggestion that Leila and I go to therapy had nothing to do with me at all. I wasn’t the one that had been drugged and bound and-

I drew a deep breath and exhaled. The relaxation didn’t last; jaw locking, teeth grinding. Lay had been hurt and there was nothing I could do to stop it. To look at the strongest woman, no
,
perso
n
I’d ever met and see how broken she was behind her forced smiles; the lie behind ‘I’m alright’… With the exception of my reason for being at the edge of the city, the only other way to help her was to make her talk. And since she refused to talk to me, that left therapy.

But Leila would have given me that look if I said she needed therapy. So I told her I needed it, but I’d only be able to face it if she went with me.

Deceptive? Slightly. But she’d done more talking in the therapist’s office in the last week than she’d spoken to me in the past month. And clearly I wasn’t getting off scot free since I had to keep a diary now.

If only the therapist knew the real way I was handling the fallout from the kidnapping.

It would be hard to miss the vehicle my contact drove. It was a decaying, beige colored Chevy El Camino with oversized tires and glittering rims. To further confuse and confound, the man behind the wheel was a flannel wearing stoner named Mike Josephs. He’d gone to MIT and was courted (then offered just about everything under the sun) by the NSA . He turned them down and used his skills for those who could afford his six figure fee.

He was worth every penny.

He found Cole.

I put the journal on the dashboard and watched him park his neon sign of a car warily. He hopped from behind the wheel, stamped out his joint and pulled out a bizarrely professional looking folder.

He slid into the passenger seat and pushed his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Whitmore--it’s nice to meet you face to face.”

We could have communicated through more discreet means but I refused to hide behind the threat of being caught. After this was all done, if the worst came to fruition, it wouldn’t matter anyway. “Thank you for taking this on.” Since my usual handler had somehow missed the fact that my long lost brother was a murderer, I pulled out all the stops to make sure the job was done right this time. “And thank you for speedy delivery.”

He shrugged nonchalantly but even in the dark I saw him blush at the compliment. “No problem. Hopefully you’ll remember me next time something or someone gets lost.”

I hoped I would never have to see his face after tonight, but I left that unsaid, reaching for the folder. “Your fee is in the trunk.”

He handed it over and rubbed his hands together gleefully. “So we’re good?”

I flipped open the folder, already forgetting him. “Take care, Mr. Josephs.”

My car signaled the door was opened and I felt the thud when the trunk closed, but I was a million miles away. Apparently, Cole had contacts of his own. He was no longer Cole Sommers, but John Finnigan.

I glared at the passport. He’d shaved off his long, blond locks and erased a few years in both appearance and according to the birthdate listed.

I pondered the backstory of the new life he’d created
.
Newly twenty-one. A grunt that had enlisted straight out of high school with the eyes and grimace of someone that knew life was too short for bullshit
.

I kept flipping through the contents of the folder, steadying my hands well enough but unable to stop the vindication that whipped back and forth in my chest. He was in Ireland, working at some pub about 4 hours from Dublin. He was pictured driving to a cottage he rented in the middle of nowhere. There were a couple of shots with him and some toothy woman with red hair and a glimmer in her eye that told me when she looked at my brother she saw happily ever after and babies.

Unfortunately, my brother would father no children because he was not long for this earth.

I gripped the steering wheel but this time it wasn’t joy that filled my veins. Thrill didn’t flood my ears, a soundtrack to the revenge movie I would turn into reality, complete with cable ties and jumper cables and an impressive set of knives. It was Leila that came rushing in. My conscience.

“I know you’re probably tempted to go all Liam Neeson on somebody, but I don’t want that. I don’t need to be avenged. I won’t get any comfort from bad things happening to either of them.”

Leila making a joke these days was so few and far between that I clutched the moment and made one of my own. “Well, when I’m caught, because you’re always caught, and by some strange twist of bad luck my lawyer doesn’t get me off, will you visit me in prison?”

All emotion was wiped from her face. It was a look I’d seen reflected back at me when I looked in the mirror. A lonely, harrowing look. A look I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“I don’t want you to go after them, Jacob. And it’s not because of some ‘give peace a chance’ thing or because I wouldn’t recover if you went to prison.”

I almost felt relief when I saw tears fill her eyes. I knew this truth better than anyone – the ability to feel is a blessing. It’s numbness that’s the curse. To go day in, day out and feel nothing at all. It becomes far too easy to ask yourself questions like, ‘Then what’s the point of living at all?’

“I don’t want you to give into the hate for you, Jacob,” she said solemnly. “Because once you let that animal out of its cage, it’ll devour you.”

Was I making some terrible mistake? Every time Cole’s name was dropped, Leila went cold and said it wasn’t his fault. She would go no further than that and it was easy to not push her because I needed a target for the poison I carried. If I found something redeemable in him, some humanity, then it would be easy to do the same for his sister. And I refused to let them get away with it. They couldn’t do what they did to her, then we all handle it rationally and legally.

They were a threat to Leila’s safety and peace of mind. I saw her jump at loud noises. I could still remember her leaping out of her skin when I offered a knife at dinner two weeks ago. And when she thought I wasn’t looking, she gripped whatever she could get her hands on, squeezed her eyes shut, and whispered something that gave her strength to keep going.

When I saw proof that she wasn’t okay, that she was putting on a brave face and carrying on while darkness threatened to overwhelm her, it was impossible for me to think about anything but making things right. And while some would say the tit for tat would be to abduct Cole, rough him up for twenty four hours and set him free, that wouldn’t right the scales. He’d wronged my wife. He’d wronged me. His scars didn’t deserve to fade; his wounds didn’t deserve to heal. This wouldn’t become some secret he revealed to his redhead while they were naked and tangled in the covers, laying out the skeletons in their respective closets. He didn’t get to look into the eyes of the woman he loved as he told her that he did something terrible. He wouldn’t get the chance to hear her whisper that it was all in his past and he was a better man now.

There would be no redemption.

No forgiveness.

I charged forward, foot on the gas with a renewed sense of purpose. Dublin – I’d make arrangements. Cover my bases at work, come up with some excuse for Leila, then reunite with my little brother.

I smiled in the darkness. He’d unwittingly picked the perfect location. Out of the way. Secluded.

Remote enough that we wouldn’t be disturbed...and no one would hear his screams.

But Cole Sommers won’t be the only thing dying that night.

I angrily punched the power button on the steering wheel. My conscience always reared its head at the most inopportune times.

My mind dragged me back to the day I found out my father lost his battle with lung cancer. I’d kept my distance, holding onto anger and disappointment. It made it easier to limit my interactions to footing the bill.

I let my mother take care of the flowers and I humored her updates, both of us knowing death was a certainty. Just when her loaded, guilt inducing, ‘When will you be coming to visit?’ wore me down and it became more difficult to cling to a childhood filled with lies and an adulthood filled with cleaning up his mess…he was gone. By the time I couldn’t fight my conscience any longer, I came up wanting. So many questions left unanswered. So many things left unsaid.

This would not become my regret.

I pulled to a tauntingly slow stoplight and even the music pumping from the speakers couldn’t fill the silence.

I could care less about my sou
l
, I thought stubbornly. There was only one person that I cared about–and Cole Sommers hurt her. He took something from her that I wasn’t sure she’d ever get back.

I clicked the pen and put it to the paper, black ink bleeding as I made my first entry.

Entry #1

I couldn’t stop them…but this? This I can do.