Breaking the Billionaire's Rules

by Annika Martin

Antonio reads the inside description, which guarantees success picking up nines and tens or you get your money back. “A pickup book? I’m a male model with an Italian accent, cara. What would I need with such a book?”

All in all, this hallway could be somebody’s idea of what the path to heaven is like. But being that every ten feet there’s a photo of Max Hilton looking like he’s Adonis himself, and I’m dressed up as an animal that eats from a bowl on the floor and poops in a box, it’s more like the highway to hell for me.

“You want the real Max Hilton?” I put my arm around his shoulders and my lips to his ear. “Would you like the Max Hilton with an addiction to peppermint schnapps and tormenting delivery girls in stupid outfits? Or maybe an underground fight club Max Hilton, full of rage and trauma and strange neck tattoos? Or we go with a Max Hilton who sings weepy show tunes and who still can’t get over his first love who rejected him?”

“You like it?” he asks. I turn. “What?” He tips his head at the wall. “The photo. You look at it enough. I could get you a copy for your bedroom wall. For…personal purposes.” I snort. “As if.” “And to save you the extra labor, I could have my assistants angrily pre-snip the women out of the picture. Or would you prefer I have them scratch their eyes out? Or maybe both? A two-step process?” “Do those poor women know you’re a robot with no feelings?”

Again with the lunch-cart girl. Deep inside my chest, small demons stoke a fire of outrage. Somebody needs a demerit.

“A smile with no subtext is but a shape of the lips.” Antonio turns his deep look to me. “How many men have I killed in this short life? One does not lurk around after a street fight in the alleyways of Milano.” “…cookies,” I whisper. “Roma, then,” he growls.

He slides his thumb across my lower lip. The urge to suck his thumb into my mouth is nearly unbearable. I would suck it so hard. I would suck the hell out of his thumb.

I gaze over at her and she itches her nose with her middle finger. FU. Everything in me swells.

“Yes. And you’re the only one who noticed. You heard what was really inside that music. It made me feel less alone.”