Billionaire Grump , livre ebook

Billionaire Grump


Misha Bell

♠ Mozaika Publications ♠
Contents



1. Lucius

2. Juno

3. Lucius

4. Juno

5. Lucius

6. Juno

7. Lucius

8. Juno

9. Lucius

10. Juno

11. Lucius

12. Juno

13. Lucius

14. Juno

15. Juno

16. Lucius

17. Juno

18. Lucius

19. Juno

20. Lucius

21. Juno

22. Lucius

23. Juno

24. Lucius

25. Juno

26. Lucius

27. Juno

28. Lucius

29. Juno

30. Lucius

31. Juno

32. Lucius

33. Juno

34. Lucius

35. Juno

36. Lucius

37. Juno

38. Lucius

39. Juno

Epilogue


Excerpt from Of Octopuses and Men

Excerpt from Sextuplet and the City

About the Author
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.


Copyright © 2023 Misha Bell
www.mishabell.com


All rights reserved.


Except for use in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.


Published by Mozaika Publications, an imprint of Mozaika LLC.
www.mozaikallc.com


Cover by Najla Qamber Designs
www.najlaqamberdesigns.com


ISBN: 978-1-63142-784-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63142-787-9
Chapter 1

Lucius

The lobby is teaming with cacophonous meatsacks, and I’m late.
I readjust my giant headphones and up the volume until the sound of heavy metal drowns out the infuriating voices.
Yeah. That’s a little better, though what I really need is a pair of glasses that can use Augmented Reality to filter out the people. Alas, such glasses do not exist yet.
Oh, well. Such is life—or sic vita est as the Romans would’ve said.
Pretending I’m alone, I stride past the security desk. The guards know better than to check my ID. After all, I own the company that owns the building.
When I’m halfway to my elevator, I begin to have hope that I’ll make the meeting. Thanks to my reputation, everyone steps aside and makes way for me.
Wait. Spoke too soon.
A man stands in my path. A man whose name I don’t recall, but I’m pretty sure he’s a VP of something dumb, like marketing.
Does he not realize how late I am for the Novus Rome meeting? Everyone knows it’s my highest priority at the moment and is thus sacrosanct.
The man doesn’t seem to have a clue. He’s clearly not high enough on the corporate ladder to be needed for the meeting. Or he is high, but in the other sense of the word.
Mindbogglingly, his lips are moving.
As in, he’s talking to me.
I give him the IANE, my patented “I am not entertained” glare.
His lips are still moving.
Bullshit like this is why my dream is to replace all my employees with robots. I’d give a billion dollars to do that, or a couple years of my life. And maybe even my Russell Crowe-signed Gladiator poster.
I pull away the right earcup. “What?”
“Hello, sir. I just wanted to tell you that our last campaign went outstandingly well and—”
I tune out the rest. I can always tell what people are really saying, and in this case, it is: Promote me. Please promote me. I know I don’t deserve it, but pretty please promote me.
The irony is, he has just hurt his chances for that promotion with his rudeness. That is, if I recall his name come the end of the year…
I place the earcup back in its place. “Excuse me, I'm late.”
Ignoring his stammered apologies, I stride purposefully to the elevator, and this time, my expression is such that no other meatsack dares interrupt me.
As I walk, my stomach rumbles.
Damn it. I should’ve eaten something.
My stomach growls in agreement.
I hate this and anything that reminds me that I’m a slave to biology. As soon as I can upload my brain into a robot body, I’m doing it and never looking back—but for now, I hope there are snacks at the meeting.
Reaching my elevator, I check the clock on my phone as I wait for the doors to crawl open.
I’m a minute late. Hopefully, Eidith can smooth things out with the real estate guy—whatever his name is. Actually, given how much I want this particular plot of land, I should really try to remember his name.
I pull up my calendar, open the meeting invite, and repeat the stupid-sounding last name over and over in my head.
Yep. Got it now. I step into my elevator and press the top button: LXXXVIII.
My phone rings.
I frown at it, until I realize it’s Gram calling. Accepting the call, I jab at the “door open” button to make sure the elevator doesn’t close. My grandmother is the only person whose calls I always take, and I don’t want to lose reception and thus needlessly worry her.
“Lucius, pumpkin, how are you doing this beautiful morning?” she asks, and I can picture her dimpled smile on the other end of the line.
“Hungry and late,” I say, not doing a good job of avoiding another accusation of sounding like the Grinch.
“I keep telling you, and you don’t listen: you need a good woman to take care of you.”
Sure. I’ll add “find good woman” to my to-do list, right after “get a hole in the head.”
“How’s your back?” I ask in lieu of a reply.
Gram pulled a muscle while opening a jar of peach jam the other week, which prompted me to fire her home attendant and replace her with a burly bodyguard. His job involves opening all future jars in Gram’s house in addition to looking after her.
“Oh, much better.” With a chuckle, she adds, “Turns out Aleksy was a masseuse back in Poland.”
I take a thoughtful sip from my water bottle as I process what I’ve just heard. The bodyguard got handsy with my grandmother? Do I need to fire him or raise his salary?
“Wait, didn’t you say you were late?” Gram asks.
“A little. No big deal.”
“Go,” she says. “Call me after.”
“Will do.”
She hangs up, and I smash the “door close” button.
The doors slowly slide closed—way, way too slowly. This is what you get when you opt for looks over function. The doors are in the Roman style I prefer, but all the adornments make them move slower than a turtle that’s been bitten by a radioactive snail.
Then, when only a tiny opening remains, a dainty, sandal-clad foot with sparkly pink nail polish wedges itself between the doors.
A foot that’s close to perfect—so much so, it serves as another unwelcome reminder of my biology.
The person the foot belongs to is brave. Had this door been designed with efficiency in mind, this maneuver would’ve severed the foot, and the elevator would’ve gone on its way as if nothing had happened. Alas, the engineer I hired was clearly a tree-hugging vegan because the elevator doors open back up, just as slowly as they closed.
I glare at my watch again.
Five minutes late now.
Motherfucking fuck.
I turn my attention back to the foot and prepare to rip into its owner.
Chapter 2

Juno

I step into the building and pause my audiobook— Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus . So far, the book is great, but to my disappointment, it’s about a human girl and not a cactus as the title would imply.
As I take in the lobby, my eyes grow wide. The place looks modern on the outside, but it’s like an Ancient Roman museum on the inside.
I readjust my dress—not that it will help me blend in. The suits I see around here likely cost more than I make in a year. Worse yet, the chilly air roughens the skin on my arms, making me realize that my outfit, a yellow summer dress I got on sale at TJMaxx, is a failure on a practical level as well, as it’s doing a poor job of protecting me from the overzealous AC. My sandals aren’t helping either.
Then I spot something nearby that makes me feel warm… at least on the inside.
It’s a wall covered in greenery. There are vines, moss, and ferns, which are all great, but there’s also representation from my favorite living thing in the whole world: the cactus.
Unable to stop myself, I walk over to the wall, where I come face to adorable spines with a Haworthia retusa, a.k.a. a star cactus.
“Hi, little cactusie. You’re a real star, aren’t you?” I croon in a soft whisper. Most people don’t understand when I talk to plants in front of them. In fact, they often refer me to a psychiatrist. I lower my voice further. “Are you thirsty? Hungry? Cold?”
At home, I know my pet cactus El Duderino so well I can picture (and say out loud) what his reply would be if we lived in a better universe, one where cactuses could talk. I wouldn’t dare reply as this little hottie, though, even if we were better acquainted, because that’s something even fewer witnesses would understand. Instead, I make sure no one is looking, and then I stick my index finger into the soil next to the gorgeous creature.
Yep. The soil feels just right—not too wet. Of course, if I get this job, I’ll bring my trusty tensiometer to be sure.
By saguaro spines, I almost forgot about the job, or more specifically, the interview that will start in a few minutes.
How could I be so scatterbrained? This is not my typical small-business client. This building belongs to a corporation—which means if I get the gig, I’ll finally make the money I need to pay for my college tuition.
Adrenaline spiking, I hurry over to the security desk—and nearly bump into a man wearing huge headphones.
Damn. He’s not even bothering to look at whom he might trample. Then again, if a man was going to ram me, this one might not be a bad specimen for the job. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, with angular, brooding features, a Roman nose, and intelligent eyes the color of steel. He has thick, bushy eyebrows, and his dark hair is cut in a spiky fauxhawk Caesar that makes me want to run my fingers through it. Speaking of hair, I wonder if his stubble would feel scratchy on my thigh if he—
Snap out of it, Juno.
Interview.
A few feet away, the stranger is stopped by some suit. His reaction isn’t pretty. He very nearly growls at the suit.
What a gr