Page 6 of Beauty and the Billionaire

Zain shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t think why you would need it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, boy,” I said with disgust that made him recoil. “I’m not a goddamn mobster.”

Although his breaths were shallow and his fingers restless, he managed a contemptuous little laugh. Damn him.

“I made my wealth honestly,” I growled, heat flushing my face once I realized I was justifying myself to a twenty-something-year-old. I had been mocked enough times that I should have been used to it by now. Still, his disbelief opened up a wound that had never fully healed.

“I’m sure you have an honest reason to come down from your palace in the clouds to bother hardworking people like my father. We barely scrape by without people like you wanting a cut.” The desperation in the kid’s tone was the same old sad song I had heard a million times.

I rolled my eyes. “Your father owes me nearly forty thousand dollars, boy. And if he didn’t care to ask for your esteemed opinion in these matters, why should I justify myself to you?”

He visibly lost some of his youth at that moment. Hardness came into his face, and he held the phone like a gun. He mouthed the number. “But…that’s impossible.”

Few things gave me as much pleasure as proving someone wrong. They all doubted me at every step of the way, and Zain Rashid was no different. “Impossible?” I moved over to my desk, opened a drawer, and produced a folder with Amar’s name on it. I tossed it to the other side of the desk, and Zain glanced down at it. He moved his arm down and tucked his phone inside his coat’s pocket, then approached the desk without touching the folder.

“You’re a loan shark,” he said in disgust.

“Shame on you,” I replied in a cold, restrained tone, then leaned over the desk and opened the folder for him. “These are favorable interest rates. Your father’s timely repayments over the years helped him lower the rates until he was practically making money.” It was an exaggeration, of course, but it wasn’t that far from reality. “Your father mortgaged his house andbusiness for the loans. He came to me when banks wouldn’t consider him. Now, why on earth he hadn’t consulted his then-teenage son is frankly beyond me, but I would appreciate it if you spoke to your father before accusing me of foul play.”

“House?” Zain asked in a thin voice. He had come here riding on the wind of ideals and romantic notions, showing me his siblings as if it mattered, but he would leave defeated and disillusioned. While I enjoyed proving people’s assumptions about me wrong, I found no pleasure in destroying this young man’s beliefs. “I didn’t know,” he said, his lower lip quivering for half a heartbeat before he stilled it. “Nobody knew. Please…” He looked at me with that same pleading expression I had seen on countless faces. I was so easy to dismiss until their futures were in my hands, but then the doe-eyed looks came into play.

Zain Rashid had his father’s big, dark eyes, but he had his mother’s complexion. He was an odd mix of Lebanese and Mexican heritage, cooked in the great American pot, and when he lost the cold composure, the natural beauty of both sides of his ancestors melted into one. If I were an easily moved man, I would have hesitated then. But it had been a long, long time since I had last been impressionable. And I had learned my lessons then.

“I’m not running a charity,” I said, my voice sore and rough. “And I will have this debt settled one way or another. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe it’s past your bedtime.”

“I’m not a kid!” Zain balled his fists and stared at me. He was half a head shorter, and there was a scattering of hair above his lip and over his chin that didn’t exactly work in favor of his fiery statement, but his molten-chocolate eyes blazed with fury. “Stop acting like I am.”

“Fair enough,” I said coolly and squared my shoulders. “Now, Mr. Rashid, get out of my apartment.”

He took a hurried step back, staring at me just as intensely, and turned on his heels. He was gone in a heartbeat.

As I returned to my chair, I recalled the faces of the three former owners of the HVB investment firm. They had been so devastated to learn that the scrawny guy they’d picked on mercilessly was their new boss. I couldn’t wait to see their fathers’ reactions, each sitting on the board as a token of respect. They had been so eager to protect their sons from any disciplinary action I might have put in motion that even the college board urged me to let it go. And I had. I hadn’t trusted the disciplinary board to deal with these assholes. There was nobody out there who could be trusted. The only power was the power of a clean contract between two parties. Anything beyond that was too speculative and susceptible to corruption.

My entire life was built on contracts. It was perfectly clear to me at any moment who was right and wrong because I never left the terms vague. Why I shouldn’t feel justified for sending that little brat home with a bruised pride was beyond me, but I tried my best to put him out of my mind.

The lights of the city glimmered miserably.

I longed to return to the quiet solitude of my home. I longed for this business to be over. If only Amar Rashid would have respected the men I had sent to collect the debt. But as things were standing now, my presence was unavoidable.

Zain

I walked quickly down the street and around the corner, huddling in my coat against the chilling gusts of wind. Maybe itwasn’t the cold wind that made me shiver. Perhaps it was a pair of icy eyes devoid of all humanity and warmth.

I should have listened to Mama Viv. For all my stupid hope that I could change his mind about pressing this further, I had only angered a very ruthless man.

My mother was still up when I returned home. My siblings were in our little room upstairs, and Mother was in the office in the back of the shop, reviewing the day’s work. There had been little of it. “Zain?” she called softly when I appeared in the hallway.

“Mom?” I replied, hating the desperate question in my voice. “Is Father back?”

“No, darling,” Mother said. “But he will be. Don’t worry about him.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. “Did you know? About Blackthorne?”

Mother’s face was lit softly by the desk lamp. Her features were elegant, and I had been lucky to inherit them, or so people said when they teased my father. She smiled a little and nodded. “I knew, darling.”

“Why did nobody tell me?” I asked.

“What difference would it have made, Zain?” Mother asked calmly. “We needed money, and business was going well enough that your father was confident in taking a loan.”

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