Lured: An Arranged Marriage Forced Proximity Romance (A Billionaire's Secrets Book 1)

Lured A Billionaire’s Secrets Book One Simone Fox Crave Publishing Contents 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 Epilogue Sam’s Secret What Do You Crave? Freebie Friday Book Shark About the Author LURED Copyright © 2022 by Simone Fox. All rights reserved. First Print Edition: December 2022 Crave Publishing Kailua, HI 96734 www.cravepublishing.net Formatting: Crave Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-648-2 No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental. Chapter 1 If there was one thing in this world that I hated more than being trapped down in some bunker on the outskirts of a desert city in the middle of nowhere, it was being forced to work a dinner party. Normally, jobs for the Machiavelli family came in one of two varieties: armed deals or galas that involved a suit and tie. My least favorite were the latter. I tugged at the knot digging into my Adam’s apple, begrudgingly trying to loosen the damn thing without looking too conspicuous as a few women laughed loudly a few tables away from me. As of late, the head of the Machiavelli family—Ricard—had gotten on about making his personal guard seem more blended in with the background. Something about not wanting to scare his party guests or whatever excuse he’d given Max while I’d been busy eyeing the rest of the man’s staff. There was something about them that tended to rub me the wrong way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on yet. But my brain had latched on and hadn’t let go of the distrustful thoughts since Max and I had been brought in as personal security only a few months ago. It felt like a strange transition now more so than it had at the time. I’d gone from active combat zones and espionage to dinner parties that forced me to recognize the difference between crew cut and dress socks. “Quite the turn out, ey?” I felt Max’s—my best friend—elbow dig into my ribs. “Wine’s good, too.” I settled back into my chair, a foldable one that creaked as I did so. From here, I had a good vantage point of the entire venue. Most of the guests were either mingling on the dance floor with wine glasses topped off in their hands or scattered throughout the tables circling around it, picking through the entrees that had been brought out about half an hour ago. “You aren’t supposed to be drinking.” Max scoffed, the scar over his eye crinkling a bit. “Tasting and drinking are two different things, cuz.” Shaking my head at him, I folded my leg over my knee. I wasn’t surprised by his attitude. Ex-military like me, it was expected that these kinds of functions made him feel restless. Hell, they did for me, too. Guys like us weren’t built for the calm and collected that was high society. “Yeah, and if Senior catches you, you can kiss that fat paycheck goodbye.” “Good thing I’ve got Junior in my pocket then, huh.” I flattened him with a look, even if it was a good point. For some reason, Ricard Machiavelli’s son, Ricard Jr., had taken a liking to Max. Giving him a bit of an unfair advantage when it came to getting away with things the rest of us would most likely end up being shot execution-style over and thrown into the nearest river at their earliest convenience. I had a suspicion that Max’s overwhelming charisma had charmed the teenager into some kind of older brother/younger brother–type relationship, bringing Max higher up onto the totem pole than the rest of us guardsmen, even if the man didn’t wholly believe it himself. Using it to his full advantage though? That was another story. I supposed it wasn’t a bad thing to have a mobster’s son in your back pocket on the off-chance shit went belly-up and you needed an ace up your sleeve. “You’ve got that look on your face, cuz.” That was another thing about Max: he was sometimes too perceptive. Especially when there were times where I needed him to focus on something else other than me for once. “Bored.” He snickered. “You want to go start a bar fight after this shit wraps up? I’m game.” His words drew a smile out of me, despite my souring mood. “That’s not what I meant, but I’m glad to know that our ride-or-die shit is still intact.” “You pulled me out of a Russian Roulette. I told you, we’re locked for life.” While I appreciated the words, I didn’t think I’d call extracting him from the basement of some bio-terrorist whose idea of weekend fun with his hostage was trying out old replica guns to the temple of my best friend to see if there were still bullets in the chambers as a “Russian Roulette”–type situation. Though it had been satisfying to bulldoze my way in there and grab the 1809 shotgun off of the fucker’s display shelf and fire it at him, catching him dead in the chest with a bullet older than my own bloodline. Revenge was always best served with a body bleeding at your feet. “Caleb.” My name brought me back to reality, swinging my eyes back to my friend. “Where are you today? You keep disappearing on me.” I shook my head, stopping the apology tickling the end of my