Titan’s Addiction: Wall Street Titan: Book 2 , livre ebook

Titan’s Addiction
Wall Street Titan: Book 2


Anna Zaires

♠ Mozaika Publications ♠
Contents



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Epilogue


Excerpt from Tormentor Mine

Excerpt from Dream Walker

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 © 2020 Anna Zaires and Dima Zales
www.annazaires.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

Photography by Wander Aguiar
www.wanderbookclub.com

ISBN: 978-1-63142-531-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-63142-532-5
1

E mma
I cry for the first hour of the two-and-a-half-hour flight to Orlando. I can’t help it. My heart isn’t just broken; it feels like it’s been ripped out of my chest.
And I did it to myself.
I told Marcus I can’t move in with him.
I told him it was over.
My seatmates—a balding fifty-something man by the window and a blond teenage girl in the aisle seat—try to scoot away as I blow my nose for the fifth time. Only there’s nowhere to go. Well, the blond girl can technically get up and go to the bathroom, but she’s already done it three times to get away from me, so she stays put, giving me the occasional side-eye.
I don’t blame her. The only thing worse than a crying baby on a plane is a crying adult.
“You, um… okay?” the balding man finally ventures, and I bob my head, forcing out a watery smile.
“Yes, sorry. Just a…” I swallow a lump in my throat. “A bad breakup.”
“Oh, cool,” the teenager says, visibly brightening. “I thought you’d just learned you had cancer or something.”
I wince, feeling like an asshole. Because she’s right: it could be so much worse. People have real tragedies, bad things they can’t avoid. Whereas the pain I’m feeling is entirely self-inflicted.
I hooked up with Marcus Carelli, a hedge fund billionaire who’s so far out of my league as to reside on a different planet.
I fell for him, knowing we have no future, and now I’m paying the price.
“I once had a bad breakup too,” the teenager confides, chewing on her green, sparkly thumbnail. “The asshole cheated on me with my best friend in middle school. Kissed her behind the bleachers, can you believe that?”
“Oh, wow, that’s terrible. I’m sorry,” I say sincerely. Middle school or not, that had to have hurt. At least Marcus never cheated on me. He disappeared for three days after an amazing weekend together, but as far as I know, no other women were involved.
Well, except Emmeline.
She—or her equally perfect clone—was always there between us.
“Yeah, well, happens,” the girl says, shrugging philosophically. “What about you? What did the jerk do?”
“He…” I swallow again. “He chased me down at the airport and asked me to move in.”
Both the girl and the man stare at me like a jellyfish just sprouted from my head, so I rush to explain. “He didn’t mean it. Not the way people normally do. It’s just a convenience thing for him. He’s going to marry someone else. He told me so when we first met and—”
“He’s engaged?” the girl exclaims in horror, and I shake my head.
“No, no. They haven’t started dating yet. It might not even be her, necessarily. It’s just that he has a very particular criteria, you see, and I don’t fit it. At all. We have chemistry, but that’s not enough for a long-term relationship. I’m not the type of girl he’d want to introduce to his friends or clients. At best, I’m just a diversion for him, and sooner or later, he’s going to get bored and walk away. And then”—I drag in a shaky breath—“then it’ll be so much worse.”
“So you, what… sent this fellow packing preemptively?” The man looks fascinated, like he’s getting special insight into the female psyche. “Kind of like striking first in battle to minimize your losses?”
I nod and blow my nose again. “Something like that.”
Except if the goal was to win said battle, I’ve already lost. My heart belongs to the man I walked away from, and it’s hard to imagine it hurting more than it does now. Still, I’m sure I made the right choice when I broke it off with him.
If I feel this way after a weekend together, how much worse would it be if I’d actually been with Marcus for some time?
No, this is the only way. Rip off the Band-Aid—along with a chunk of my heart, in this case—and move on.
The wound is bound to heal over time.
Isn’t it?
2

E mma
By the time we land, I know way too much about my seatmates, as they seem to have jointly decided that the best way to keep me from crying over my breakup is to entertain me with detailed stories about themselves. As a result, I’ve learned that Donny—the fifty-something man—is originally from Pennsylvania but resides in Florida, has been divorced twice, owns a car dealership in Winter Park, and can’t eat anything green, while Ayla—the teenager—is a rare Florida native, has a sister who’s been divorced three times, and is graduating from high school next year. Ayla, not the sister, that is. The sister dropped out of high school. Oh, and Ayla’s allergic to tree nuts but has no issues with green stuff.
“Bye! Nice meeting you!” I wave to them as they hurry past me with their bags, and they wave back, obviously relieved to be done with the flight and the crazy redhead crying over a man who asked her to move in.
I’m relieved too. Not because I didn’t enjoy hearing their stories—they did succeed in distracting me from my heartache—but because I’m eager to see my grandparents and feel the warm Florida air on my skin.
The humidity here is murder on my curly hair, but it’ll feel amazing after that brutal snowstorm in New York.
Gramps is waiting for me inside the terminal, right by the shuttle exit, and I pick up my pace until I’m running toward him, the suitcase bouncing behind me. Though we frequently Skype, I haven’t seen him in person in a year, and my chest feels like it’ll burst from joy as I let go of the suitcase handle and tackle-hug him, grinning like a loon.
Despite nearing eighty, my grandfather is still sturdy, his shoulders unbowed and his chest thick with muscle. He also smells exactly as I remember—like Grandma’s cookies and starched linen. Pulling away, I study him, and I’m pleased to see that despite a few deeper wrinkles, he looks pretty much the same as last year.
He’s studying me right back, and I see the exact moment he notices my red-rimmed eyes.
“What happened?” he demands, his bushy eyebrows snapping together. “Were you crying?”
“No, of course not. Just got some lemon juice in my eyes,” I lie, grabbing the handle of my suitcase. “I was squeezing a slice into my water on the plane, and it squirted right into my face.”
“Lemon, huh?” Gramps takes the suitcase from me as we start walking to the exit. “I thought it might have something to do with that Wall Street boyfriend of yours.”
“What, Marcus? Oh no, it’s nothing like that. Besides, I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.”
He’s not my anything any longer, but I’m not going to delve into that now. Maybe later, once I’ve had a chance to settle in and have some of Grandma’s cookies, I’ll find the strength to crush my grandparents’ hopes, but right now, I’m too drained for that.
Besides, I’d rather break the bad news to both of them at once.
“Well, whatever he may be, we’re happy for you,” Gramps says. “Unless, of course, he’s the lemon in question.” He glances at me as we step on the escalator, and I force out a chuckle.
“Very funny, Gramps. How about you tell me how you and Grandma are doing?”
“Oh, same old, you know—which is old.” He winks at me, and my laugh is genuine this time. “How about you, princess? How was the flight? It looked like it was going to be on time, and then, bam, delay.”
“Oh, no. Were you already on the way to the airport when you learned about the delay?”
“I was, but don’t worry. I just circled around for a bit, listened to some audiobooks. Your grandmother was worried, though, so you might want to call her as soon as we get to the car. Did they say what the reason for the delay was? Was it because of the snowstorm?”
I shrug. “They didn’t say, but they probably had to de-ice the wings or something. I was lucky the plane took off at all.”
“That’s true. Your grandmother has been glued to the Weather Channel since Monday, tracking the damn storm. You’d think it was one of her Netflix shows.” He snorts, shaking his head, and I conceal a grin. Gramps watches Netflix right alongside Grandma, but for some reason, he keeps insisting they’re her shows and he’s not into them at all.
We continue chatting as we step out into the parking lot, and I learn that Gramps got a new fishing rod and Grandma’s already prepped most of the food for tomorrow. “It’s too bad your young man couldn’t make it,” Gramps comments when we get into the car, and my smile stiffens as I reiterate the excuse I gave them on Skype—that Marcus is crazy busy at work this week.
It’s true, actually—an investment gone bad is what s