Billionaire unnoticed, p.1
Billionaire Unnoticed, page 1
Billionaire Unnoticed
Copyright © 2021 by J. S. Scott
All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission.
ISBN: 979-8-780799-63-4 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-951102-49-4 (E-Book)
Prologue
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
Epilogue
One Year Earlier…
I knew I had to keep moving even though I was running on empty.
Every movement was pure agony.
Every second seemed like an hour.
Yet, I had to keep going.
I had no other choices.
At this point, it was keep moving…or die.
Crawl, Torie. Keep crawling. You have to get to the river. There’s no other way. If you can’t get there, you’re dead.
I was close enough to hear the flow of the water, but not near enough to be rescued if someone came by on a boat.
I’d be invisible in this jungle.
To be seen, I had to get to the riverbank.
So close. I’m so close.
I groaned with pain as I stretched my arm over my head and scooted my body along the forest floor.
My other arm was broken and useless, but that was just one of my many injuries. I hadn’t stopped to try to ascertain where all of the blood was coming from that had been slowly oozing from my body.
I knew I didn’t have the time or the energy to worry about something I couldn’t change right now.
I had to survive.
I needed to be rescued.
The alternative was to die while crawling around in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon jungle, and I’d be damned if I’d give my kidnappers that satisfaction.
I wasn’t about to let those bastards win.
Me eventually dying from my injuries was exactly what they’d planned on happening.
My intention was to make sure things didn’t work out the way they’d calculated.
Instead of just killing me, they’d beaten me until they’d broken more bones in my body than I could count, and had left me for dead before they’d gone to find a safe hideout.
The assholes had known that someone was going to eventually notice I was missing, and they’d wanted to get as far away as possible.
“Pirates!” I hissed out loud as I kept inching my way toward the Amazon River. “How in the hell could I have known I’d be snatched by pirates?”
The possibility hadn’t even been on my radar two weeks ago when I’d been rushing to join my riverboat cruise in Nauta.
Focus, Torie! You have to get to the river.
I knew my chances of rescue were pretty slim, but I had to hang on to some kind of hope.
I lay there for a moment, panting, my face resting against the ground while I tried to get a grip on the pain that was raging through my entire body.
I knew I was badly injured.
That agony radiated through every part of my body,
I was dazed, and I’d lost track of exactly how long I’d been crawling toward the river.
Once my kidnappers had beaten me senseless, I’d lost consciousness for a while. By the time I’d come to, they’d already fled.
I’d understood every word they’d spoken during my two-week ordeal, so I’d been totally aware that they’d left me for dead in a very remote area of the Amazon.
I was a linguist, a woman with a gift for languages, and Spanish was one of the languages I could understand and speak like a native.
Not that I’d been very chatty with the bastards who had nearly killed me, but I’d known from the very beginning that the two men hadn’t planned on letting me leave the Amazon alive.
Even though they’d started out with the not-so-brilliant idea of holding me hostage for ransom, me emerging from this remote rainforest alive hadn’t ever been an option.
Both of the men were pure evil. Torturing and tormenting me had all been an entertaining game for them.
“Assholes,” I rasped, my anger urging me forward.
Of course they’d deprived me of food and water, giving just enough to keep me alive. Unfortunately, I’d been weak from deprivation and previous torture well before they’d started to kick the crap out of me.
Afterward, my rage had been the only thing allowing me to move at all.
I’ll most likely die of my injuries before anyone finds me.
I immediately rejected that thought and thrust it from my head as I kept struggling to get to the water.
I had to hang on to my anger, my fury, and my outrage. It was the only thing keeping me conscious and advancing forward.
As the sound of flowing water got louder, I stopped crawling and reached to swipe the blood from my eyes.
Move faster, Torie! Get to the river before you pass out or lose the ability to move.
My heart was racing, most likely from my blood loss and the adrenaline flowing through my body.
I. Need. To. Live.
I. Want. To. Live.
A sob escaped from my lips as I kept crawling.
I was barely thirty-one years old.
I hadn’t even settled down…yet.
I hoped to get married one day.
I hoped to have kids.
I hoped to be around to see my two older brothers do the same thing.
I wasn’t ready to die yet, dammit!
My hand finally slapped down at the top of the riverbank, and I let out a strangled sob of relief.
If I’d had the strength, I would have screamed with agony as I flipped onto my back.
I have to be visible to any passing watercraft.
Using one arm and the leg with the least amount of injuries, I propelled myself slowly down the riverbank until I was right in the middle of the fairly gentle slope.
Completely visible if anyone should pass by via the river.
Okay, so there was a possibility that I could eventually become caiman food if I lay here too long, but by that time I’d probably be dead. I hadn’t seen a single caiman in this area on my trip down the river, so I was willing to take my chances.
I closed my eyes as blood from my head wounds started to flow down my face again.
I was done. I couldn’t move another inch. I’d done everything I could do to save myself.
I needed medical treatment.
I needed food.
I needed water.
I was close to the latter, but the water of the Amazon River wasn’t safe to drink untreated, and I’d already ingested a fair amount accidentally during my captivity.
I knew my survival was now in the hands of fate.
Exhausted, sick, and critically injured, I let my mind wander to a more peaceful place because I couldn’t stay grounded in reality anymore.
I relived all of my good memories from my childhood, and I had many of those.
I’d been blessed with an amazing family, including two incredible older brothers who were going to be frantic when they realized I was missing.
A lone tear trickled down my cheek as I recalled every treasured memory of my deceased father and mother before my mind grew hazy.
“I’m sorry,” I said in a hoarse, tormented whisper as I saw a vague image of my older brothers, Chase and Wyatt.
Our mother had died of cancer when I was a teenager, but my father’s death was more recent and still painful for all of us.
I knew if I died here in this rainforest, my brothers would find some way to blame themselves, and that thought made my heart ache.
My older brothers had always been my protectors, even though they knew I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself.
If something happened to me, I knew it would have a profound effect on both of their lives, and remorse flooded my being right before I lost all ability to think.
Darkness loomed, and I fought it briefly before I finally allowed myself to sink into that welcoming, pain-free oblivion.
There was no reason not to escape the pain anymore since my destiny was no longer in my own hands.
Cooper
The Present…
“I really need a favor, Coop,” my friend, Chase Durand, told me when I answered my cell phone.
No greeting?
No smart-ass comments?
This definitely was not behavior that was typical of Chase.
He continued in a sober tone, “I wouldn’t ask, but Wyatt and I are still in Paris. We’ll probably have to be here for a few more months. We’re trying to move as much of the headquarters as possible back to San Diego so we won’t have to be here as long in the future. Neither of us like being away from Last Hope for months at a time. But this extended stay really sucks right now.”
The hair stood up at the back of my neck.
Something was wrong.
Chase was rarely this serious. His older brother, Wyatt, tended to be much quieter and more thoughtful, but if Chase wasn’t joking around, something definitely wasn’t right.
“What’s up?” I asked.
I’d always trusted Chase to have my back in any situation, and that wasn’t something I could say about very many people in my life—other than my own brothers.
If he needed my help because he was out of the country, I was all over whatever that problem might be. He’d do the same for me in a heartbeat.
“Are you home?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I confirmed as I headed toward my kitchen. “Just walked through the door, actually. I got out of the office a little early today.”
It was Friday, and since I’d been working late all week at the office because Montgomery Mining was opening a new diamond mine, I’d decided to knock off a little early this afternoon. All of the issues with the new mine had been resolved.
I’d planned on changing my clothes and heading toward the dog training center my brother Jax and I supported financially. The dogs that were selected from the shelter were taught to function as assistance dogs for military veterans.
There were currently a couple of intelligent canines there that I took out for a run regularly because they needed to blow off steam.
However, whatever Chase needed right now was going to take priority. My run with the mutts would have to wait.
“It’s Torie,” Chase explained.
I tensed and held back a tormented groan.
Thirteen days.
Six hours.
Ten Minutes.
And…
I took a glance at my watch.
Exactly twenty-seven seconds.
That was precisely how long it had been since I’d first met Victoria “Torie” Durand, Chase and Wyatt’s younger sister.
Fuck! Anything but that! I’d just as soon parachute out of a plane at high altitude and into shark-infested waters than to deal with any kind of issue for Chase that involved his little sister, Torie Durand.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like Torie…exactly. Truth was, since the moment we’d met almost two weeks ago, I’d tried really hard to avoid her.
She was wickedly smart, a talented linguist who spoke and wrote more languages than any single person should be capable of translating.
She was also strikingly beautiful.
And, for some damn reason, I’d felt some kind of weird connection to her since the moment we’d met, which I logically knew was impossible.
I was pragmatic.
I was not in the least idealistic.
I didn’t believe in soul mates or having an affinity with another person I’d just met.
It wasn’t…rational.
There was no such thing as an instant connection with another person, for fuck’s sake.
The thought was pure fantasy.
So, yeah, I could ignore that weird sense of affinity I’d mistakenly thought I’d felt that couldn’t possibly exist.
What I couldn’t overlook was the very real fact that my dick got rock-hard every time we were in the same space together.
I couldn’t see her—or even think about her—without wanting to get her naked.
Quite honestly, I wasn’t sure how to handle a physical attraction that fierce since it had never happened quite that way for me before.
So yeah, Victoria Durand was trouble. I’d learned to steer clear of anything or anyone that might interfere with my vow to stay romantically unentangled.
That shit had never worked out well for me.
Over the last year, I hadn’t even been tempted to change my mind about dating…until Torie Durand.
Damned if she didn’t make me want to reconsider my stance on relationships—which made her extremely dangerous to me.
That’s why I avoided her.
I was better off alone.
I didn’t need a romantic relationship in my life…again. Not after the last one had worked out particularly bad.
Before I could draw a breath to tell Chase I’d send one of my brothers to help him out, he continued. “I called Torie earlier. She went for a hike this afternoon at Mission Trails Park. She supposedly tweaked her ankle, whatever the hell that means. She claims that she’s fine, and she’s walking out of the park, but she joked that her progress was going to be slow. It’s likely to be dark before she makes it back to the parking lot. I don’t like it, Coop. She’s a really experienced hiker, and I get that it’s an urban park where you’re never that far from the city, but she’s still an injured female in eight thousand acres of undeveloped land. She’s alone, Coop. I hate the thought of her being that vulnerable.”
Fuck! There was an edgy desperation in Chase’s tone that I’d never heard before. Unfortunately, his uneasiness immediately sparked the same discomfort inside of me.
My jaw twitched as I yanked a backpack out of a closet near the front door. I took it with me back to the kitchen and started to toss some supplies into it.
There was no way in hell I wasn’t going after Torie myself at this point. There was no time for someone else to do it. I wasn’t waiting until I could get in touch with one of my older brothers.
Yeah, there were probably others on the trails today. It was a popular park in the cooler, winter weather because it had very little shade in the summer. But those visitors weren’t going to help Torie since she didn’t know any of them. In fact, it was those other people at the park who concerned me.
She was alone.
She was hurt, which made her prey to anyone with nefarious intentions.
And knowing she had no one around to watch out for her when she was almost defenseless bothered me more than the fact that my dick got hard every time I saw her.
I took a quick glance at my watch.
It was after three o’clock. Since we were just barely into January, the sun would set by five.
Some of those trails could be a little rocky and uneven for someone with an ankle injury.
Hell, Chase was right. There was no way she wasn’t going to lose the light before she could get out of the park. Did she even have a headlamp or a flashlight with her?
“What supplies does she have? How far is she from the parking lot?” I asked tersely as I sprinted up the stairs to get a sweatshirt.
“Next to nothing,” Chase answered, his voice irritated. “This wasn’t supposed to be an overnighter or an evening hike. It was more like a…longish midafternoon walk for Torie. She said she’d planned on being home before it was even close to dark. It looks to me like she was about three miles from her vehicle when I talked to her, which wouldn’t be a big deal if she wasn’t injured. She sounded like she was hurting, Coop. She says everything is fine, but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I was there to walk out with her. She might need someone to look at that ankle.”
“I’m on it,” I assured him. “Do you think we should alert the rangers?”
“Already done,” Chase informed me. “They weren’t particularly concerned since she’s not exactly missing, and she’s not requesting medical assistance. Her intention is to leave the park on her own two feet. Hell, maybe I’m overreacting because—”
“You’re not,” I grumbled. “If this was happening to Riley, I’d be worried, too.” I’d go after my younger sister in a heartbeat if she were in the same situation, so I could relate to Chase’s frustration. “I’ll be out of here and on my way in a few minutes. It will probably take me twenty minutes to get there. Do you have coordinates of where she’s at right now?”
My waterfront home in La Jolla wasn’t that far from where Torie was located, but it was after three on a Friday. Traffic was going to suck.
“She’s on the move,” Chase replied. “But I’ll send you the map of the trail she’s on and what her coordinates were when I talked to her on the phone. I have a feeling she hasn’t gotten very far.”
“That works,” I told him as I raced back down the stairs to the kitchen again. “I know that park pretty well.” I’d gone running there plenty of times, so none of the trails were unfamiliar to me. I just needed Torie’s general location to find her since there were several trails she could be following.
“She’s trying to pretend like she’s all right,” Chase grumbled. “But she’s not. I think she’s just trying not to worry me, but it’s not fucking working. I can hear the pain in her voice—no matter how well she tries to hide it. She might be moving, but I can tell that every step is killing her.”
