For Your Eyes Only: A forbidden, billionaire romance. (Blurred Lines), page 1
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
TIA LOUISE
CONTENTS
For Your Eyes Only
Preface
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
Fearless
Prologue
Boss of Me
Prologue
Chapter 1
Books by Tia Louise
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For Your Eyes Only
Copyright © TLM Productions LLC, 2022
Printed in the United States of America.
Cover design by Emily Wittig.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, photocopying, mechanical, or otherwise—without prior permission of the publisher and author.
Created with Vellum
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
BY TIA LOUISE
Can you love what you can’t touch?
No touching.
It’s the only rule in this business, and trust me, with my money and power, “hands off” is not a problem.
I don’t need the women I employ to satisfy my needs…
Until her.
She’s different than the other girls, innocent, intoxicating, impossibly seductive.
I can’t take my eyes off her, and it’s not long before hot looks turn into hotter touches.
I’m the boss, after all, I call the shots.
And nothing’s more fun than breaking the rules.
I came to this country to pursue my dream… but it was a lie, a scam that quickly fell apart.
Desperate, I took the only job I could with no work visa.
They promised no one would know.
They promised no touching.
Until I saw him.
Dark scruff shading an arrogant grin, lean muscles stretching expensive fabric, eyes like twilight sending electricity from my stomach to my toes.
He’s my boss, but the way he watches makes me do dirty things.
For his eyes only, I’m uninhibited, experienced, a seductress.
Only, our game turns dangerous when a watcher threatens everything, and my hands-on hero vows to save me.
(FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is a STAND-ALONE, extra-spicy romantic suspense with forbidden touches, organized crime, and a virgin heroine. No cheating. No cliffhanger.)
For Kerissa and all my sexy book lovers who always ask for more…
I love you!
Many waters cannot quench love,
Neither can the floods drown it:
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
It would utterly be consumed.
-Song of Solomon 8:7
i like my body when it is with your
body…
-e.e. cummings
PROLOGUE
GIANA
Obsession killed my mother, but it’s not how I will die.
The detectives called it a crime of passion, but she would’ve hated that verdict. She adored passion and colors and beauty and music. She taught me to love these things. She taught me to sing and to sew and to dream…
“Your mother was a great beauty.” Aunt Graziella jerks my head as she attempts to pull a comb through my thick, gnarled curls, forcing a yelp from my lips. “You are not like your mother.”
I don’t cry. It’s true, I’m not beautiful like my mother was, but I try to be strong like her.
My mother would walk through the streets of our small, coastal village in southern Italy with her silky brunette hair shining in the sun. Her skin was smooth as the delicately carved ivory plaques of Mary and the baby Jesus in the cathedral, and when she passed, the men would lean back, closing their eyes like they smelled fresh bread straight from the oven.
They would follow her along the narrow streets, hoping to pick up something she dropped or to help her carry a heavy load—all to see her smile and perhaps even say grazie.
My olive skin was tanned brown by the sun, and my aunt would rub lotion on me saying I’d never attract a man with the way I looked. It only got worse as I got older, and she said I looked like a peasant with round hips and a full bust.
But I wasn’t looking for a man.
When I was ten years old, a man took away the life I loved, a life of happiness in which my mother and I lived in a pretty little apartment overlooking the sea. A man killed my beautiful mother, and then he killed himself. And I was sent to live with my aunt.
My father died in a fishing accident before I was old enough to remember him. He gave me my love of dancing and running around the streets barefoot, which made my heels as rough and calloused as a donkey’s hooves, as my aunt would say.
I started dancing when I was thirteen, and to everyone’s (mostly my aunt’s) surprise, I was very good at it (for a girl my size, she would say).
I wasn’t as slim as a reed, but I could dance well enough to draw the attention of the city company. I was talented enough to be paired with a boy as light on his feet as I was, a boy who asked me to marry him and then broke up with me—but that came later.
The memories I cherish are the ones I spent with my mother, sleeping with the windows open so we could breathe the salty sea air. I would close my eyes and dream of lifting my arms and riding higher on the warm currents, my stubborn curls flowing straight in the cool breeze, the stars illuminating my skin from the inside like a goddess.
My mother once told me butterflies work very hard to become the beautiful, flying creatures that kiss all the flowers. She said their metamorphosis happens when they’re not even expecting it.
She said caterpillars root in the dirt and leaves, dreaming of nothing, when all the time, deep inside they have the power to become magnificently gorgeous creatures that can fly.
I wrinkled my small nose and asked if she was calling me a worm.
She laughed and hugged me close. “What do you love, Gia?” She threaded her fingers in my wild curls until they were smooth coils around my cheeks. “Follow what calls to you, and that’s how you find your passion. Then spread your wings and fly.”
Then she was gone, and I was left with no one who believed I was special.
She made it sound so easy—believe, work hard, fly. I didn’t know metamorphosis was dangerous and cruel. I didn’t know how easily everything could go wrong.
I only thought it created a beautiful butterfly.
I didn’t know it also brought death.
CHAPTER 1
TRIP - TEN YEARS LATER
“You’re out of control, Mother.” I exhale, straightening the lapel on my dark brown, Brioni suit.
Agitation itches beneath my virgin wool collar, but I don’t let it show. I never let my irritation show. I study the Manhattan skyline through the oversized windows of our Upper East Side apartment and collect my thoughts.
At twenty-five, I’m well-connected and highly invested in the obscenely wealthy shadows of the city’s real-estate, gaming, and nightclub scenes. I operate on the razor’s edge of what’s legal and what’s, shall we say, morally gray.
Players from around the globe operate in my world, and high-priced lawyers use many words to construct the shady legality of our deals. The margins are thin. At any moment, someone's number could come up, in which they discover they owe more than they can repay.
Such things don’t happen to me.
Remaining off the record, in the deep background, protects me. I never stick my neck out for anyone. It's a world of poker players, and I’ve got the straightest face in the group—or should I say, the most detached smile.
“Don’t speak to me that way.” My mother acts offended, but she’s not.
Turning from the window to the mini-bar, I pour a tumbler of vodka casually. “Forgive me. I wasn’t trying to be rude. Would you like a drink?”
“Of course.” She touches her hair lightly with her fingertips, preening like a goldfinch in her bright yellow Balenciaga caftan. “The very idea of you sleeping with my best friend, a woman twice your age. What would your father say?”
“He’d make some crack about my manhood.” I glance at the bronze urn on the mantle holding his ashes. “He’d wonder aloud why I couldn’t land a girl my own age or something like that.”
William Robert A
He sent me to the finest boarding schools his inherited wealth could buy. He made sure I got into Columbia, then when I realized I didn’t need him, I quit wasting everyone’s time and dropped out.
Naturally, he had many unkind things to say about that decision, and what he dubbed my failure to finish anything, as if he had any idea the deals I was closing. But I had stopped listening to that old bully a long time ago.
“Your father was difficult, but he took care of us financially. We can be thankful for that.”
Did he? For starters, it wasn’t his fortune to leave, not that it matters to me, and secondly, his finances always came with strings—or barbed hooks.
“I find other things to be thankful for.” I hand her the drink.
She can live off the spoils of an unhappy marriage, pretending to be unaffected by years of emotional abuse, but I’m doing everything in my power to divorce myself from that man’s legacy. I’m so close to being completely, utterly, independently wealthy. I just have to stay focused, then I’m cashing out, leaving the game.
“Still,” she continues, “I don’t know why you’d want to validate his low opinion of you by sleeping with that woman.”
Taking a sip of my drink, I decide it’s time to prick the air out of her precious gossip bubble. “I didn’t sleep with Belinda Desayda-Rice.”
Her eyes narrow, and I can tell she’s trying to decide if I'm being honest. Give me a break. Of course, I didn’t sleep with Belinda. I could murder Grish for putting me in this position. He’s the one who can’t keep his dick in his pants.
Greg Peters is one of my most trusted business partners—because we’re the same age and equally hungry. He’s from Moscow, so while Grisha is the Russian diminutive for Greg, I shorten it further to Grish.
Shaking her head, she sighs. “I confess, I wasn’t sold on the story. Belinda isn’t your style, and you’ve been friends with Debbie since you were a child. It would be too bizarre.” My mother lifts the olive from her drink, chewing as she speaks. “But why would anyone spread such a lie? It must be a terrible strain for you, Trip dear.”
I can think of several reasons Belinda would allow people to think I was her lover. For starters, it feeds her ego. It makes her look desirable if an ambitious twenty-something wants to fuck her, but more importantly, it distracts everyone from the fact she’s actually sleeping with her daughter’s boyfriend.
Fucking Grish. My clever Russian pal thinks he’s scored a pair of queens, but he’s got a seven and a two—a notoriously bad hand in poker.
“It’ll blow over in a few days.” I pause at the mirror to straighten my yellow silk tie.
My thick brown hair curls around my ears, and dark stubble is on my cheeks. I need a trim and a shave, and I want to be anywhere but this goddamned city. I’m not in the mood for bullshit.
In that moment, I decide. “I’m going out of town for a few weeks. I’ll check on our properties in West Palm…” And my own business investments while this drama dies out.
In south Florida my work is more colorful and a lot more relaxing.
“Sounds lovely.” Mother walks over to give me air kisses. “I’m leaving for Saint Moritz on Monday, so before you go, would you be a dear?”
She smiles sweetly, which means she wants me to transfer money into her account. My father couldn’t stop her from pursuing other interests (a.k.a., other men) after he died, so in his will, he put me in charge of her purse strings. Barbed hooks.
As long as she remains single, she’s entitled to as much of the family estate as I am, but if she ever remarries, she’s out. Our eyes meet, and I catch a flicker of apprehension in hers.
It fucking pisses me off.
My father put me in this position of power because he hoped it would turn me into him. It gnawed at him when I would watch him be a racist, elitist bastard and not laugh at his jokes. It infuriated him when I drank vodka instead of scotch. He called me names and said I thought I was better than him.
I didn’t think it. I knew I was better than him, and the idea that he’d put me in a position to make my mother cower stirs an anger so deep in me it almost breaks my façade. Does she truly think she has to beg for what she deserves?
I suppose all those years of having to account for every penny created a mindset she can’t break. My father was a nouveau-riche dipshit who didn’t realize the truly wealthy never think about money.
My mother might drive me crazy with her frivolous behavior, but I’ve become protective of her as I’ve gotten older. I’ve learned how prolonged exposure to cruelty can change a person, and I only want her to be happy now.
“You can always have as much as you want.” I slide my phone from the inside pocket of my blazer. Tapping the face, I quickly move ten thousand from the family endowment to her personal account. “Text me if that isn’t enough.”
Her brow relaxes, and she’s about to speak when her phone interrupts us. One look at the face, and her entire expression lights up in a way I know all too well. Her boys are calling.
So much for that familial moment.
“Have to run, darling. Thanks.” She gives me a little wave and starts down the hall before hesitating. “You’re not spending the night here, are you?”
“No.” The last thing I’m in the mood for is stumbling into one of my mother’s threesomes.
“Have fun in Florida, and don’t worry. I’m not upset with you.” A smile curls her lips, and she’s off again. “Whatever you did, I’m sure you had your reasons.”
I don’t bother pointing out I did nothing. She’s gone, Chanel No. 5 lingering in her wake.
She’s satisfied. I should be satisfied, but I’m tense. I want to get out of here.
Tracing the lines of our luxury apartment, I think of the years I’ve spent in this elegant prison. My family moved into the Andover, a historic, massive apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, when I was in primary school.
I spent my days running through the halls and making friends with the other kids in the building, also offspring of ultra-rich, corrupt New York elites.
We spent summer days marching around the oversized fountain in the courtyard, stomping up the stairs, and screaming from the rooftops. We annoyed the older residents, the ones hanging on thanks to rent control, until they died.
Once you’re in the Andover, you never leave.
Tapping on my phone, I order our family’s private jet as I step into the hall, taking the marble stairs two at a time. My flight to south Florida won’t be ready for another few hours, and my upstairs neighbors are as much like family as my own. Hell, possibly more.
They’re the only ones who understand this shadow world that created us. They’re the only ones who want to escape it as much as I do.
“Is it just me or has the gossip mill hit rock bottom?” Hana van Hamilton drapes her thin, dancer-body over the velvet sofa in her living room.
She’s wearing light gray joggers and a matching, long-sleeved cashmere sweater, and her curly blonde hair is twisted up on her head.
“Since when did I become a topic of conversation?” I’m at the mini-bar pouring us both fresh vodkas. “I never kiss and tell. Even when it’s interesting.”
