Auctioned To The Billionaire (Part One) Read online

  Auctioned To The Billionaire (Part One)

  Kelly Favor

  Favor Ford Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by Favor Ford Publishing

  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.

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  Contents

  Auctioned To The Billionaire (Part One) by Kelly Favor

  1. Dermot

  2. Haisley

  3. Dermot

  4. Haisley

  5. Dermot

  6. Haisley

  Auctioned To The Billionaire (Part One) by Kelly Favor

  Dermot

  I open the encrypted email and stare at the contents.

  Pictures. Videos. A lot of them.

  I take a deep breath and let it out.

  At first, I wonder how this could have happened. My security is top-notch. Nobody could have just broken into my home and set up cameras. And yet, they did.

  Which means that someone I trusted enough to let into my home has been recording my bedroom activities.

  There are a lot of women, some of them very famous women, contained in these files. I scan through the contents of the email, looking for clues to who might have done this. And what it is they want from me now.

  Money? It’s always money.

  “Fuck,” I mutter, realizing how deep this shit has gotten, and how quickly.

  For a brief instant, I consider the possibility that a business rival has done this. I’ve made a lot of enemies in New York real estate. Perhaps someone from my former company, which fell into ruins when I left and took most of their business with me.

  But no.

  It only takes me a few more moments to realize that this is the work of someone I’m intimately acquainted with. A rival company would have just released the videos and damaged my reputation.

  And more to the point, it’s a question of access. The only people who have even been to my home, let alone my bedroom, are the women I bed.

  I don’t have friends.

  I don’t have casual dinners at my pad.

  I don’t even have family or business partners over. So, barring a break-in, which is quite impossible with the security detail we have in the building, it’s got to be an inside job.

  One of my many female “friends” is the villain here. As I lean back, scrolling through more and more pictures, more videos, I consider who it could be.

  Unfortunately, it’s not a simple answer.

  As one of the wealthiest men on the planet, and one of the most sought-after bachelors in the city of New York, I have been swimming in beautiful ladies for the last five years. Longer, if you factor in my early days when I was still building my fortune and reputation.

  Even then, it was never difficult for me to meet and seduce a woman.

  The defining trait of my existence is my attraction to, and affinity for, beautiful women. Ironically, the other defining trait I possess is that I have never been able to commit to a single woman.

  Not even for a week.

  I’ve also never led anyone on, though. I have always been up front about the way I do intimacy. Which is to say—I don’t.

  Or, let’s just say that the intimacy remains on the physical level. I show them a good time, we have some fun, and then we go our separate ways. There are no long talks, no cuddle sessions, no meaningful gazes are exchanged, no flowery texts are written nor responded to.

  Sure, there are women that I see more than once, but never have I allowed any of them to get the impression that we are an item.

  And since the tabloids and internet trolls began following me around, it’s become common knowledge that I operate in this fashion. If a woman accepts a date with me, she accepts everything that comes with it.

  Amazing sex, wonderful meals, expensive wine, the best means of travel, opulent hotel rooms and mansions…and the freedom to then go off and live your life as if none of it ever happened.

  That’s how I do things.

  There are very good reasons why I live this way, and those reasons can never change.

  I will never change.

  And that’s why it’s extremely disconcerting to have received this batch of files from the unknown sender.

  Because these files indicate that somehow, someone slipped through and contaminated the entire system.

  Almost any woman I’ve bedded or taken to my home is now suspect.

  And it’s not just a simple process of elimination. I could assume that whoever has been spying on me is one of the women that doesn’t appear in these files. But that would be a huge mistake. A very smart lady—and whoever did this is clearly intelligent—would know that including herself amidst the other victims would make it more difficult for me to figure out the culprit.

  I close the screen and rub my eyes, taking a long, deep breath and recalibrating my emotions.

  I know that eventually I will figure out who did this to me.

  I will remove all the traitorous devices in my home. Already, I’m texting the head of my security team and letting them know that a crew has to be brought in to sweep my home and even my office.

  Just to be sure.

  But right now, I cannot take any chances. I cannot contact any woman whom I’ve been seeing in recent years. Not even someone from the distant past.

  Not to mention, any previous conquest is now a potential victim, caught on camera, on video, having sex with me. And the next time I speak to them, I will feel like I need to tell them the truth about their situation. I will need to warn them that they have been caught on tape.

  As it is, I may need to do that, soon, with all of the women involved.

  A complete PR nightmare for all involved…

  So, for the near future, I have to stay far away from the tangled, messy female population of New York City.

  I will need to go elsewhere for my fix.

  I sigh, get up from my desk and walk to the window. Looking out at the city, I consider what to do next.

  I’ve been burned.

  Even the mere thought of dealing with a random woman who could turn crazy and make trouble, has my stomach in knots.

  Yet, I also must continue to feed my hunger for sex. Sex is the one release that has never failed to calm me, to soothe the wild beast, to quiet the demons that torture me when I am not focused on work.

  I have to fuck.

  I need my women the same way I need air to breathe and water to drink.

  What is the answer?

  How can I make sure my needs are satisfied without risking everything I’ve built?

  And then the answer comes to me. I return to my desk, open up my web browser, and pull up a search.

  I recall the name of a very reputable web-based service that was recently discussed at a heavy drinking dinner with some of my wealthy clients.

  At the time, I remember thinking how silly and pathetic it was for a man to purchase a woman’s services. To pay good money, sign contracts, non-disclosures, set terms, and treat sex like it’s just another service, like getting your house cleaned.

  But now I am seeing it all in a different light.

  I remember the name of the company and type it into my browser.

  A moment later, the web page loads.

  I start to fill out the form. It has begun.

  Haisley

  “I’m in some trouble.”

  He says the words casually, but there’s nothing lighthearted about the threat behind his chatter.

&n
bsp; I look up from the meal I’m cooking in our tiny apartment kitchen. Dad is grabbing a beer from the fridge and opening it.

  “What kind of trouble?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady. Already, my heart is pounding. The ground beef is burning and I stir it, as the smoke accumulates.

  “Just a little something from last week.” Dad takes a sip of beer and scratches his chin, his eyes shifting away from me when I look at him.

  “You told me you were done gambling. You were going to meetings.”

  “I was,” he says, whining a little, as if hurt by my accusation that he might have lied about attending his Gamblers Anonymous meetings. “But those groups are a total downer. The people in there…you should see them. It’s enough to make you want to jump off a bridge.”

  “Why? Because they’re actually trying to get help?”

  “They just sit around and bitch and cry and moan about life.” Dad belches and comes over to stare at the food. “That looks amazing, kiddo.”

  “How much money do you owe?”

  He takes another long sip of beer and then walks over to the small table. “Just forget I mentioned it, kiddo.”

  “Don’t call me kiddo. I hate when you patronize me.”

  “It’s nothing,” he says, but I know he’s lying.

  This is always how it starts. I feel enraged, helpless and frightened all at once. I finish making the food and serve it up. Dad eats on the couch in front of the computer on the rickety coffee table, as he watches three different college basketball games.

  I eat by myself, standing at the counter and trying not to scream at him. I’ve screamed at him before and it does nothing.

  We had a good few months, I think. Three months of my father keeping his hands clean, no gambling debts, no screaming phone calls to bookies, no sobbing because he’s lost everything yet again.

  But here we are, and it’s all starting back up.

  We already lost our house.

  We already lost our savings. Dad’s cushy teaching job is long gone. He’s been working odd tutoring jobs here and there, but I’m certain whatever he saved is now evaporated and replaced by debts.

  It can go fast when he’s gambling. A few years back he lost fifty thousand dollars in a weekend partying in Atlantic City.

  The last couple of years, I’ve been mostly paying the bills and keeping us afloat. I work as a receptionist at an urgent care walk-in clinic. The pay is decent, benefits are great.

  But I can’t keep going on like this, not if my father is going to sabotage me every single time I start to get my head above water.

  I finish my food and then get dad seconds and another beer. He’s grumbling about his games, and I know he’s got money riding on them. I consider walking out on him and never looking back.

  Let him fall as far as he needs to in order to hit rock bottom.

  I’ve been told that I’m enabling his addiction.

  The problem is, Dad is the only person who has been there for me in my whole life. When Mom walked out on us, I was seven years old. She left and moved to Ireland with a guy she met online. I still remember her cheerfully promising to have me spend half the year with her, all the places we’d visit together.

  But instead all I got were phone calls and promises. Next month, next month, it was always next month.

  The phone calls got fewer and further between. Eventually, the calls stopped.

  She wouldn’t phone me back and she changed her number, moved to a new address.

  I found out a few years later through Facebook that she’d started an entirely new family. Her and the new guy have three kids together.

  During all of that, during the pain and crying and heartbreak, Dad was there for me. He never wavered, never faltered.

  He has a disease, and yes, it’s fucked up our lives completely.

  But how can I walk out on him?

  I’m so frustrated, I could scream.

  But I don’t scream. Instead, I do the dishes, clean up, and get dad a light blanket when he finally falls asleep on the couch after beer number four, snoring, the games still playing on the computer.

  I shake my head, kiss his forehead and turn the volume down.

  Not long after, I go to bed and fall into a heavy sleep. But I’m awoken some unknown time later by a large crashing sound. It’s so loud that it almost sounds like a gunshot, and I sit bolt upright in bed, shrieking.

  My next thought is Dad fell. Badly.

  I run out of my bedroom and down the narrow hallway.

  That’s when I find my father in the living room where I left him, only the apartment door is standing open, hanging really, from its hinges.

  And three men are standing in our tiny apartment.

  They look mean. They aren’t huge, muscular guys like the types I pictured bookies would send to collect money. Instead, they just look cruel. Their eyes are cold and dark, their mouths humorless, and the dead stare they hit me with is enough to chill me to my bones.

  One of the men punches my father. He is workmanlike as he punches him methodically, without emotion. “Pay up, dumb ass.”

  Smack.

  “You going to pay?”

  Smack.

  I cry out for them to stop.

  They ignore me.

  The punches continue. My father is wheezing, hardly speaking or even crying out. They hit him in the belly, the chest, the face.

  “I can pay,” I tell them. “How much does he owe?”

  The shortest one, and also the oldest, with gray around his temples and a receding hairline, turns to me. “You got a hundred large on you, sweetheart?”

  He means one hundred thousand dollars. I know that, unfortunately, because of my father’s constant gambling terminology that he speaks, like his own language.

  I lick my lips. “You’re joking. He doesn’t owe that much.”

  “I don’t joke about money. I won’t even tell you how he managed to get so much credit with us, but he did.”

  “I can pay you three thousand right now. It’s all I have,” I tell them. I walk to get my checkbook.

  “Three grand? That’s dog shit. I won’t come back here for less than half of what he owes. And if I don’t get half by the end of the week, then…” he shrugs. His eyes tell me all I need to know. I realize at that very moment, how real this is. I can tell that this man will murder my father over this debt, and it won’t even ruin the man’s night. He will continue on as if nothing happened.

  Another day at the office.

  He means it, and the certainty of his criminal coldness frightens me beyond any terror I’ve ever felt before.

  If I’m around, he might just kill me too. That’s what those cold dead eyes say, all without ever uttering a real threat.

  “I’ll get you half by the end of the week. Just please stop hurting my dad.”

  “You really want to vouch for it? Because then your name is on there right alongside his.”

  “I will get it,” I say, even as the fear threatens to overwhelm me.

  “Okay, then,” the killer says, and flashes a little grin, almost as if he’s enjoyed adding another name to his list. Another person to potentially hurt and victimize.

  The three men slowly troop out of the home, they don’t even bother closing the broken front door. When they leave, I run to my dad and check on him.

  He’s dazed and in a little shock, but basically okay. He refuses to go to the emergency room.

  “For what?” he says. “Nothing they can do but add more money to my bills.”

  “We need to call the police,” I tell him, as he gets his tool box and begins to repair the door as best he can.

  “Don’t be silly,” he says, as he rummages through the box, grumbling.

  “Silly? Three men broke into our home and assaulted you. Threatened our lives.”

  Dad turns and glances at me incredulously. “Do you have any idea who those guys are?”

  “No.”

  “They’re with the Rossi f
amily. That little guy who was chatting you up? His name is Vincent Rossi. Google him if you don’t believe me. And then think about what you just said.” My dad shakes his head and returns to fixing the door.

  I pull out my phone and google the name Vincent Rossi.

  Immediately images and headlines pop up by the dozen. The pictures confirm that the short man with the receding hairline and cold eyes is Vincent “Vinnie Boy” Rossi, a ruthless soldier in the Rossi crime family who was recently promoted to Captain. There are articles just on page one of my search that makes my insides shudder and my heart nearly stop beating.

  Vincent is reputed to have murdered potential witnesses in a court case, and did nearly five years in jail for a brutal assault when he was just eighteen that left a man paralyzed.

  He’s known, apparently, even among the vicious thugs in the mob underworld, as being particularly heartless and brutal in his dealings on the street. He inspires fear even among the most hardened criminals.

  “I can’t believe you’re involved with these people,” I say, finally finding my voice after perusing the horrifying results of my search.

  Dad chuckles. “You think I intended to be involved? That’s not how it works, kiddo.”

  “Don’t call me kiddo. Especially not after this.”

  He continues, ignoring my complaint, as he uses a screwdriver to tighten the screws in one of the door hinges. “I owed money to a bookie. I didn’t have a clue the bookie was connected to the Rossi Family. If I’d known…”

  I don’t bother to mention that he wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently if he’d known who his bookie worked for. When my father wants to gamble, he does it, regardless of the consequences.

  “Dad, how could you gamble so much?” I say, when he finishes with the door and closes his toolbox.

  He can’t meet my gaze. “I’m fucked up, honey.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I know,” he says, softly. “I know.” And then two tears roll down his cheeks, silently, and that’s somehow worse than everything else.