Hot Billionaire’s Damaged

By Rachel Foster

Ian's a billionaire and he is a damaged man. So damaged in fact that he has Kayla taken and kept at his house… Which he claims he is doing to protect her. But she will do anything to get away. Even if it means be with him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 3rd Publishing
• Release date: Mar 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215109502

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Hot Billionaire’s Damaged

Rachel Foster

Copyright © 2018 by Rachel Foster

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.

Contents

Hot Billionaire’s Damaged

Hot Billionaire’s Damaged

1

Kayla

"H

ey, honey," I greeted Tabitha as I headed into her room. The little girl grinned at me, and I couldn’t help but feel the warmth spread through my chest as I gazed back at her.

You had a good day? she asked me. For someone who had only just turned twelve, she really was the sweetest thing, especially after everything that she had been through. I knew that she was struggling right now, and I knew that she was going to have a hard time in the coming weeks, but it was so sweet that she was so sure to ask that I was doing okay.

Yeah, I have, thank you, I replied, as I went to check her medication and look over her chart. She had been in and out of the hospital for the last couple of years. I wanted to make sure that she could rest easy tonight. It was what she deserved. Even though I knew that I couldn’t make everything work for her, I had to try my best.

You’re my favorite, you know, she told me, winking at me playfully. I laughed.

You know that Carrie already told me that you say that to everyone, don’t you? I teased her. She giggled. She had a lovely laugh, bright and peppy. Full of life. Hard to believe that she was as sick as she was, when she was so bright and active.

Yeah, but I mean it with you, she joked back. I fussed around her bed and started to tidy her up. It was the least that I could do after everything that she had been through.

Looking at a little girl like her, I knew this was why I had gotten into nursing in the first place. I wanted to make sure that kids were as safe, and as happy, and as at-peace as they could be. I knew that they weren’t exactly doing the best if they were in a place like this, and the least that I could do was make sure that I did everything that I could to show her that she was safe. That she had nothing to fear when she was around me.

Because it was the same thing that I had longed for a million times over when I had been a child. And nobody had been able to make me feel that way.

I ruffled her hair as I headed out of the room and checked my watch – it wasn’t going to be long until I was done for the night, and frankly, I was looking forward to getting back to my place. I knew a lot of people would hate the thought of that little studio apartment I was going back to, but it was mine, and that was all that mattered to me.

I grabbed a coffee from the little machine at the end of the hall and sipped on it, even though it was bitter as hell and tasted like it had come straight from the bottom of a jug at a diner that had failed to change it all day long. But it tasted like home to me. It tasted like something that was mine, entirely and completely. It tasted like something that I had made for myself, a life that I had carved out on my own terms, and I would never, ever take that for granted.

You okay, Kayla? Kiera, one of the other girls on shift with me that day, asked as she bustled past me and toward the nurse’s station. I nodded.

Yeah, I’m good, I replied, and I had to cover my mouth to stifle a yawn. She grinned at me.

Looks like you could use some more time off, she remarked.

Couldn’t we all? I replied. She laughed.

Yeah, I suppose you have a point, she agreed. You almost at the end of your shift?

Yeah, nearly, I replied.

You go home and get some rest, okay? She ordered me. Kiera had been in charge of this place for as long as I had been working here – she might not have been the most high-up in this building, but that had never stopped her before. She always liked to make sure that she knew everything that was going on, moving forward, and nobody dared let her down. I liked that about her. I knew that I would get there one day, that I would have the power and confidence that she did. It was going to take a long time to get there, but I would find a way. I would navigate my way to the sureness that she had, and seeing her walk around this place as though she earned every minute of it inspired me to no end.

I had been forced, a long time ago, to accept that being as sure of myself as she was, just wasn’t going to come easy to me. For a long time, I had hated that. I had resented that the life I’d lived till that moment had been so goddamn shitty that I had been bruised beyond all repair. Broken to a point when I had believed that I would never be able to put together those parts of me that had been shattered in the childhood that I had been forced to live through.

Honestly, it had been becoming a nurse that had changed all of that for me. I had been able to see that there wasn’t anything in the world that someone couldn’t make their way through if they were still alive, if they still had the fight left in them. I knew that it was a spark inside of me, something blooming into a full flower of the life that I could live. The life that I could have if I tried hard enough. The life that I knew that he never thought I deserved, and the life that he had tried to steal from me for as long as I could remember.

I shivered, took another sip of the coffee in my cup, and tried to push those thoughts to the back of my mind. I wasn’t going to give him the space in my head. He hadn’t earned it. I had to keep reminding myself of that. He didn’t get to live there any longer, after everything that he had done. Even good parents didn’t get to stay completely in their children’s heads at all times, and he had certainly been far from kind. Far from good.

I threw back the rest of my coffee and shoved him down again. I was hungry. I should think about what I was going to make when I got home. I wanted to get takeout, actually, something good and greasy that would fill the pit in my stomach and let me go to sleep with a warm belly full of food. I could just imagine it now, snuggling down in my bed and putting on the latest episode of the crazy reality show that I had been watching to wind down from work, biting into a spring roll dunked in plum sauce and smiling. Those were the small moments that I lived for. The seconds that I sought out no matter what, the parts of me that I wanted to remember forever.

It didn’t take long till my shift was over, and I punched out and stepped out on to the street outside. It was just starting to rain, a tiny sprinkling of water pattering down over my skin. I liked that. Felt like a fresh start, like the universe was wiping the slate clean so I could get on with enjoying the rest of my day.

I decided to walk back to my apartment building. It was just twilight, and people around me on the street were heading out to parties and clubs, dressed in sparkly clothes and high heels to show off their strong, lean bodies, big smiles on their faces, cigarettes in their hands, talking fast as they chatted to their friends.

I used to be jealous of people like that. I used to look at them, able to have fun, and wonder when I would be able to get that for myself. Resenting that I didn’t have the ability to let go the way they did. But I knew, just the way I knew at work, that I would get there. I had to give myself time. When it came to healing, it didn’t happen overnight, and I knew that there was no point in pushing myself to a point that I couldn’t handle what I was being given right now.

My father had taken so much of that from me. I understood that on a visceral level. I understood that he had treated me so badly, made me pay for all the crimes that he thought that she had committed. I was the only piece of her left on this Earth, and that meant that I was going to fix everything that she had left behind. At least, that’s the way he had treated me.

Though, I tried not to linger on the details of what had happened to me. I hated the way he treated me, and I hated the way that he had made me feel, so pointless, so weak, so pathetic. Like I shouldn’t have even had a place on this Earth and that I should have been grateful that he didn’t kick me out on to the street the moment I woke up in the morning. Though he had tried to do far worse when I had been old enough.

I pushed the key into the lock of my door and swore to myself that I was going to leave those memories out here in the corridor, far removed from everything else. I had to keep pushing forward. I had to keep moving. I knew that it might have been hard, I knew that everything might have felt as though it was falling apart when I thought of him, but my father and everything he had done to me were far behind me now, and that was just the truth of the matter. That was the end of it.

I pushed the door shut, and, as soon as I heard that lock click behind me, I couldn’t help but smile. See? I could do this. I could move on. I was stronger than I had ever been before, and I was going to keep blossoming into the woman that I knew I was due to become. It might not have been easy, but it was worth every step of the way – worth every moment of pain, of doubt, to get to this place and know that I had come here on my own.

And to know that my father had no right to claim anything about the person that I was now. That was all on me – and I intended to make sure that he understood every inch of it. When he looked at my life, he was going to see that I had done it all despite him, not because of him. And that I only had myself to thank for everything that I had been through – everything that I had survived. Nothing was going to take that from me.

Not as long as I lived.

2

Ian

"O

kay, ten more reps," Sid barked at me, clapping his hands together as I leaned down to pick up the weights again.

Back straight, don’t strain anything, he ordered me, and I closed my eyes as I wrapped my hands around the barbell once more. It was heavier than I normally lifted for deadlifts, but I could handle it. I was going to make sure of that.

I gritted my teeth as I pulled the barbell up, making sure to keep my form perfect – I knew that Sid would kick my ass if I did it wrong and put us back a few weeks with an injury. He was trying to get me to beat all my personal bests by the end of the year, and that wasn’t going to happen if I kept fucking up and pulling something out of place.

I laid it down again, caught my breath, and felt a trickle of sweat run down the inside of my collar. I tried to ignore it. I could do this. I could. I had come this far and I wasn’t going to let anything stop me now. I had worked my ass off all year to get to this point, and I knew that Sid wasn’t going to let me back down now that I was about to finish this workout.

Sid had been my personal trainer for the last three years, and honestly, I had never had one who had pushed me as hard as he did. He seemed to understand better than anyone else that I had trained with that I needed these workouts to pull my mind off the stress that lived there almost every day of my life. When I walked into the gym that I’d installed in the office, I needed to be able to pretend that the rest of my life didn’t exist. I needed to focus on the way the cold metal felt in my hands, the way the sweat felt running down my back, the solid strength that I knew I could pull off if I just tried hard enough.

It was like there was no room for anything else inside my head when I was here, and that was the way I liked it. I used to drink hard to try and get that mess out of my brain, but it had left me feeling like shit and unable to do my job when I needed to, and I wasn’t going to let whatever bullshit was going on in my head get in the way of that. I needed something that would blow the doors off my memories and let them out for a while, not something that was going to affect my work.

Because I had always sworn to myself that I was never going to let that shit get in the way of me living the life that I wanted to. I had worked too hard to get here to let all of that come bubbling back up again. So, my father was a shithead. Who didn’t have some crap in their childhood that they were trying to work through? If I got everyone who worked for me in a room and asked, they would be able to come out with a million different things, shit that was far worse than what I had been through. I didn’t need to spend my time overthinking when I could have been training, working, pushing myself to achieve things that I had never believed that I would be able to before.

There, Sid told me, slapping me on the shoulder as I put the barbell down again. You’re all done.

I hadn’t even noticed myself churning out the rest of the reps, but shit, I was glad that it was over right now. I leaned back, planted my hands on my waist, and tipped my head back to inhale deeply. I could feel the hot air tearing in and out of my lungs, my body pouring sweat, my muscles screaming. But at least when I was like this, I couldn’t think of anything else. At least, when I was like this, I could only focus on the physical sensations, and not the nagging memories that wanted to come out to play.

Okay, hit the showers, Sid told me. Take a break, eat your lunch – you got the meal plan that I sent, right?

I passed it along to my cook, I assured him, and he nodded.

Good, he replied. You’re going to need a lot of protein to feed the muscles you worked on today.

I know.

But you did good, he assured me. I knew that I must have looked a little distracted; normally, he wasn’t the guy who came out to convince me that I had done well, except when he thought that I needed it. Clearly, I must have had my discomfort written all over my face right now.

But that was why I had called him in here in the first place, because he was the only one who could help me work through everything that was happening in my head right now. This had been a last-minute meeting, one that I had insisted on, because I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to get through the new investors meetings this afternoon unless I did something to scrub the mess out of my head.

I’ll see you later, I told him. Take care, okay?

And with that, I headed out of the gym and toward the showers before he could say anything else. I got the feeling that he was going to pry a little deeper; we had been working together for nearly a year now, and perhaps he felt like he had some say as to what went on in my head. Well, he would have been dead wrong right there – I didn’t fuck with people who liked to try and move around inside my brain, and I didn’t intend to let him in there when all I wanted to do was work out my body.

Besides. I doubted he would have believed me even if I had come clean to him about everything that I had been through. Most people didn’t, when I tried to be honest. They just couldn’t conceive of the fact that I would have gotten this far in my life if I had really struggled the way that I said I had.

Sometimes, I had a hard time believing it, too. If I had gone back in time, told the kid terrorized by his father that he would be able to get out of here and do more than his old man had ever thought he could, I doubted that he would have bought into a word I said. My dad had beaten it into me – literally – that I was nothing, that I was going to be nothing, that nothing I could have done would ever have come close to being worth anything. I had let myself believe it. In some ways, it had been easy – easier than thinking that I might be good at something, easier than thinking that I had a chance in hell of doing what I wanted to do.

The hot water of the shower burned my skin, and I enjoyed the heat of it, scrubbing off the sweat that was clinging to me. Lifting weights made me feel alive, made me feel capable and strong, and God only knew that I needed to feel that way as much as I could these days. Sometimes, it was as though the stark, sharp memories were too much for me to handle. Sometimes, I was sure I would drown under the weight of them.

I got dressed and headed back to my office, and, as soon as I stepped through the door, I couldn’t help but smile. I had spent so long, back when MyLife had just started, working out of a shitty little office building trying to bring it all to life. Even when it had blown up, I had been too busy to think about moving to somewhere more luxurious, and I had just stuck it out there for way longer than I had to.

But when I had moved, finally, I had promised myself that I was going to find a place that I could spend all day and all night in if I needed to. Because I was pretty sure that was what my business was going to demand of me – as much time as I had, poured into it, focusing all my effort and all my energy on making sure that I got as far as I knew I could. A lot of people would have been happy to just back down when they had achieved the first rush of success that I had, but I knew that I was destined for bigger things. Why stop now, when I was only just starting to pull this off?

And so, this office had been made exactly to my specifications. A large picture window looked down over the city, the soft light of the sun pouring in and lighting the place up. A heavy leather chair sat in front of the vintage oak desk, and my laptop, top-of-the-range, of course, was open and waiting for me to sit and take the call. I settled down into my seat for