The Mogul (Necessary Lies Book 2) Read online

  The Mogul

  Alison Ryan

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  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

  ATLAS

  1. ATLAS

  2. PIPER

  3. ATLAS

  4. PIPER

  5. ATLAS

  6. PIPER

  7. ATLAS

  8. PIPER

  9. ATLAS

  10. PIPER

  11. ATLAS

  12. PIPER

  13. ATLAS

  14. PIPER

  15. ATLAS

  16. PIPER

  17. ATLAS

  18. PIPER

  19. ATLAS

  20. PIPER

  21. ATLAS

  22. PIPER

  23. ATLAS

  24. PIPER

  25. ATLAS

  26. PIPER

  27. ATLAS

  28. PIPER

  29. ATLAS

  30. PIPER

  31. ATLAS

  32. PIPER

  33. ATLAS

  34. PIPER

  35. ATLAS

  36. PIPER

  37. ATLAS

  38. PIPER

  39. ATLAS

  40. PIPER

  41. ATLAS

  42. PIPER

  43. ATLAS

  44. PIPER

  45. ATLAS

  46. PIPER

  47. ATLAS

  48. PIPER

  49. ATLAS

  50. PIPER/VICKI

  51. ATLAS

  52. PIPER

  53. ATLAS

  54. PIPER

  55. ATLAS/PAUL

  56. PIPER

  57. ATLAS

  58. PIPER

  59. PIPER

  60. ATLAS

  61. PIPER

  62. ATLAS

  63. PIPER

  64. ATLAS

  65. PIPER

  66. ATLAS

  67. PIPER

  68. ATLAS

  69. PIPER

  70. ATLAS

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Alison Ryan

  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.

  Cover Design: Shayne Rutherford @ Wicked Good Book Covers

  You can also find Alison Ryan on Facebook and in the romance reader group, Book Boyfriend Central. Or email her at [email protected]. To get news on the newest releases and to win free stuff, sign up for the Alison Ryan Newsletter.

  Created with Vellum

  To Greg. As always.

  The course of true love never did run smooth.

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The MOGUL is part 2 of a 2-book story. If you have not read The MENTOR yet, it is highly suggested you read that book first before diving into this one.

  Also, this book has a bonus book in the back, so The MOGUL will stop around the 30 % mark.

  Enjoy!

  Chapter One

  It was the last thing I ever expected Nolan Weston to tell me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “My father is alive?” I was shaking from the revelation. I felt sick to my stomach. Either Nolan was lying to me now, which was completely fucked up, or he’d lied to me then, which was also completely fucked up.

  “Your father is alive and in hiding,” Nolan said. He was so matter-of-fact about it that I wanted to scream.

  “Hiding from what?” I snapped. “Me? The CIA? The IRS? The firm? I don’t understand, Nolan. You’ve watched me almost have a nervous breakdown over this. You seemed so genuinely distraught that he was gone… And now you’re standing here telling me he was never dead at all?” I shook my head. “It’s kind of scary how good you are at being whomever people need you to be, to get whatever you want out of them.”

  I watched him clench and unclench his fists, his eyes fixed on me.

  “That’s not what this is,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you. I shouldn’t even be telling you now. It’s because of how I feel about you that I’m telling you this, Camilla. I promised never to lie to you. And besides not telling you the truth about your father, I haven’t lied to you. Everything I have told you is true.”

  “Well, lying to me about my father being dead is a pretty big deception for me to get past,” I cried. “Why would you do that? Why would he do that?”

  “It’s complicated,” Nolan said. “I can’t tell you why. That’s his place alone to tell you.”

  “You said you wouldn’t lie to me anymore!” I yelled. “And you’re already doing it again!”

  “I’m not lying,” he said quietly. “But there are some things I can’t tell you. At least I’m honest about that. It’s for your own good, Camilla. I can’t let anything happen to you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m really sick of people deciding what is or isn’t good for me.” I walked toward the door as I spoke. “I need you to tell me where he is. Take me to him.”

  Nolan shook his head. “That’s not happening. Not now, anyway. He doesn’t know you even know this. I’m breaking protocol by telling you.”

  “Fine,” I said, pulling out my phone. “I’ll just call Jessa. She called me a couple of months ago to see what I wanted to do about the firm. She’ll tell me where he is. She works for me now, right?” I started scrolling through my phone, honestly not even sure I had her number, but hoping it would get Nolan to confess.

  Suddenly he yanked the phone out of my hands.

  “I can’t let you do that,” he said. “No one knows your father is alive. Especially not people at the firm. Only I know. And you. And, obviously, Richard.”

  I was furious now.

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, my voice shaking with rage. “Why would my father pretend to be dead?”

  “Camilla, listen to me,” Nolan said, gently touching my shoulders. Even as angry as I was at him, his touch still raised goosebumps on my skin. My mind was filled with rage, but it wasn’t enough to convince my body that it shouldn’t have a raw, primal reaction to his touch. The same touch that had given me ecstasy beyond my wildest imagining. “You can’t know anything. The less you know, the better you’re protected. It’s ‘plausible deniability’. If you don’t know anything, you can’t be tricked or coerced into revealing something. And there are people who would do both, or worse, to get you to talk. Know that I’m not avoiding these questions to hide anything from you. I’m giving you the gift of blissful ignorance. In case you’re ever asked anything, you can honestly say you know nothing.”

  I cried, my shoulders shaking.

  “I was starting to move on,” I said. “I’d almost made peace with his death. I was starting to think of you less and less. I’m supposed to get on a plane tomorrow morning, on my way to a new life. And you waltz into this room and take that away from me. What the fuck, Nolan?”

  He stared at me for what felt like an eternity. I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I could see regr
et in his eyes. I could sense something in him that was still there from when I’d first loved him. And despite how stupid it was, part of me was desperate to trust him. I was desperate to believe he loved me and that those nights in Tahoe had meant as much to him as they’d meant to me.

  “I know,” he finally said. “It’s not fair. None of this is. Maybe it was a mistake to come, but I couldn’t let you… I couldn’t let you leave without telling you how I felt. I don’t want to take your dreams away from you, Camilla. I want you to be happy more than I want anything.”

  I wiped the tears from my eyes.

  “You made me happy,” I whispered. “And now that I know what happiness really is, it’s been hard for me to live without it.”

  “Camilla…” he said, pulling me toward him. God, the heat of his body against me. It was all I’d needed; all I’d been able to dream of for months. And here he was again.

  I would have given him anything he wanted.

  He touched my face, our eyes locked on each other.

  “I want you so bad,” he said. “I’ve been dying without you, Camilla.”

  “I want to believe that,” I said. “You have no idea how much I want to know that’s true.”

  His mouth pressed against mine while his strong arms gathered me up, and I immediately wrapped my legs around his waist, accepting everything he gave me, my body aching for more.

  His kisses were answers. I moaned at the taste of him, the forbidden fruit I’d been missing all this time.

  “Let me show you,” he growled against my ear. “If my words won’t make you believe me, my body will.”

  Everything was as it once was for a moment. He stripped me of my clothes, my defenses, and my soul. I accepted him back in without a fight. There was no chance that I’d ever be strong enough not to let Nolan Weston back inside me. He was the drug I was hopelessly addicted to, the human heroin I never had a hope of denying myself. I called out his name as I came for him, begging and crying for mercy for an hour as he did anything he wanted to my body.

  When we lay next to each other afterward on top of my bare mattress, neither of us could say anything. I listened to our breathing go from ragged back to normal. He’d released himself inside of me, just as I’d wanted. Having a part of him in me was a salve on my wounded heart.

  “Camilla,” he finally said. “I missed you so much.”

  Tears fell from the corners of my eyes into my hair.

  “Nolan, you about killed me,” I confessed. “You broke my heart.”

  “I know,” he said. “I will always hate myself for that.”

  I turned to look at him. He was staring up at the ceiling, his eyes sad.

  “Why?” I asked. “Who was on that phone call?”

  He turned over and pulled me toward him, kissing my head as he ran his hand down the side of my naked body.

  “Jessa,” he said. “I had to tell her those things so she wouldn’t be suspicious. She’s not someone who can be trusted. And being that I can’t know who in our firm is a mole, I can’t chance her knowing how I feel for you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So, how would she know about us anyway?”

  He sighed. “You don’t want to know.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, pulling away for a moment. “Tell me.”

  “Your father’s house is bugged by the firm,” Nolan said. “Something I didn’t know until Jessa called me and wondered why I was sleeping with my dead boss’s daughter.”

  Holy. Shit.

  “So we were being spied on,” I said. “The entire time? Why? How could you not know this?”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t know everything,” he said.

  I thought about all the things that had happened in Tahoe between Nolan and me. The thought of someone listening to us made me sick to my stomach.

  “This is so fucked up,” I said. “It just keeps getting worse and worse. And what do you mean, there’s a mole at the firm? Who? Why? I’m completely lost. You’re telling me so much at once…”

  Nolan pulled me close to him, his arms tightening around me as I sobbed into his chest.

  “Just promise me,” I cried. “That I can trust you. That all of this really is because you love me. Because my heart wants to believe that, but my brain is telling me to run from you as far and as fast as I can.”

  “If there is anything I can promise you,” he said, taking my face in his hands. “It’s that I will never let anything happen to you.”

  He kissed me again, long and deep. But despite how much I wanted to…

  I didn’t believe him.

  Chapter Two

  “So take me to him.”

  I said it the next morning at the Omni over room service breakfast. Nolan had taken me there after making love to me in my dorm room. Once we’d arrived at the hotel, I’d been too exhausted to do anything else. I just needed time for myself. To think.

  We’d slept in separate suites.

  But now we were eating breakfast in my bed, neither of us knowing exactly what would happen next.

  Nolan shook his head. “I can’t just take you to him. Do you know how many eyes are on me right now? Do you think it’s gone unnoticed by the firm that I came to your graduation? That we… spent the night together?” He leaned over me and grabbed a bagel. “They’re watching us. Closely. I can’t take you to Richard right now. I’m sorry, Camilla.”

  I sighed. “Well, what do you expect me to do? Forget that you told me? Live my life as if my father doesn’t exist? I mean, I know he was able to do that when he was ‘alive’, but I actually care about him and his well-being.”

  “What did I tell you? It’s complicated. This isn’t about missing your recital or your birthday party. This is his life. And yours.” Nolan looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “You have to let go of your anger toward him. It’s not his fault he was absent, Camilla. He didn’t have a choice.”

  “We all have choices,” I retorted. “He just chose something else over his child.”

  Nolan stood up, pacing at the foot of the bed. His shirt was off and he was wearing only boxer briefs. I watched his thigh muscles moving under his bronzed skin. Even as angry as I was at him, I wanted him so badly.

  I could tell he was frustrated with me. But I didn’t care.

  “Camilla, I’m not saying you can never see him,” he finally said. “You just can’t see him now. Honestly, we shouldn’t even be discussing this out loud. No one knows but us. If the wrong people were to find out the truth, we would all be in extreme danger.”

  He walked over to me. He stood above me and I craned my neck up to look into his eyes. He placed his hand against where my collar bone met my shoulder, tracing the soft skin on my neck with his thumb.

  “Before anything else,” he said. “Your safety matters most. To me. And to your father. I feel like I’ve already let him down by falling for you. I can’t let him down by allowing you to be in any sort of peril or jeopardy. You’re everything to me.”

  I ran my hands up his taut stomach, up his muscled pectorals. The bulge in his briefs moved subtly as my palms explored his chest.

  “I want to trust you,” I whispered. “More than anything.”

  “You have to trust me,” he said, leaning down toward me, his mouth close to my own. “You trust me with your body. You let me have my way with you, you allow me to take you in ways no man has ever been lucky enough to. Why won’t you trust me with this? Why would I let you down now? What would be my motive?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea. It scares me that I don’t have a choice when it comes to you, Nolan.”

  He smirked at me. “We all have choices, Camilla. A beautiful woman once told me that.”

  He laid me back on the bed, his large, rough hands running up my torso to my breasts, the nipples already rock hard, anticipating his every move.

  “Let me have you one more time,” he whispered against my neck, his hands already tracing down to my hip bones, pulling down my pajama pants. �
��Before we get on the plane.”

  “The plane?” I asked, suddenly not thinking about how badly I wanted him to fuck me. “Where are we going?”

  “Let me compromise with you,” he said, pulling me into his arms as he lay down next to me. “You go with me on this trip. And our next destination can be to where your father is. But I need you to come with me, Camilla. I can’t keep living without you.”

  I shook my head, so confused. “What kind of trip is this? And to where?”

  “Vancouver,” Nolan said, simply. “And it’s a business trip of sorts. We’re going to meet someone who can help us. Both of us. He has a lot to do with why your father had to go into hiding. And why it’s important for certain people to continue to believe he’s dead.”

  “Okay, you’ve convinced me. Who is this guy we’re going to see?”

  “The mogul,” Nolan said. And nothing else. His mouth had already begun its descent to my thighs. I no longer had any strength to resist him.

  “We’ll leave tonight,” he’d said after our shower. I was still breathless from the things he’d done to me under the steam of four shower heads. My inner thighs quivered. I’d never come so many times in my life.

  “So a red eye flight?” I faux whined. “Is that all that was available?”

  Nolan smiled. “We’re flying private. Emerson can’t meet us until around mid-morning tomorrow anyway. And I figured you’d need time to pack.”

  “Emerson?” I asked as I wrapped a towel around myself. “Is he the mogul?”

  “Emerson Titan,” Nolan said. “And yes.”

  My eyes widened.

  “Is he a client of my father’s?” I asked. Emerson Titan was one of the richest men in the country. Maybe the world. He rubbed elbows with Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. He had a reputation as a Santa Claus type if you believed the papers. He was the rarest of jewels; a billionaire with a heart of gold. Or so his amazing PR team led the world to believe.

  “A client and a very good friend,” Nolan replied. “And he’s the answer to everything.”