Melody Anne's Billionaire Universe: Devoured (Kindle Worlds Novella)

Scarred and disillusioned by his ex-wife’s betrayal, gorgeous and powerful billionaire Luca Valencia has become even more ruthless in the corporate arena and unapologetically heartless when discarding women who mistakenly think they're the ones to change him.

But for his young daughter, he’s willing to risk marriage for the second time.

However, it would be on his terms, and he decides to take a leaf out of his friend Rafe’s book by hiring a woman carefully screened for his needs.

That woman is Vivian Day, whose innocence makes her a trustworthy companion for his daughter…and whose desperate circumstances would make her unable to afford saying no to his proposition.

ABOUT THE BOOK

He raised a brow. “You wish to say something, Vivi?”

Oh.

‘Vivi’ wasn’t actually her nickname, but it was what Gian liked to call her and somehow, the sound of it always made her feel like shivering in pleasure. There was just something so…intimate about it, even though she would never have thought him the type to come up with such nicknames. It was too oddly cute for someone as seemingly serious as Gian.

She said slowly, “You work too hard.”

“Ah.” Placing the papers inside a large brown envelope, he set it on the table before glancing back at her, asking softly, “Is that a bad thing?”

“Not really,” she murmured, thinking about how she also had two cleaning jobs and worked seven days a week. “But only if you’re doing so for the right reasons.” Unconsciously cocking her head to the side as she looked at him, she said, “I don’t think you need to work so hard, though.
Do you
?”

Gian looked thoughtful. “I guess I’m thinking about the future. I don’t want the people I care about to suffer in any way.”

She watched him perch himself on the edge of the desk, long muscular legs encased in an exquisite pair of pants stretched in front of him, and it was such a sexy sight that Vivian found herself shifting restlessly on her seat. It was times like this, when she was confronted by just how attractive and powerfully sexy he was, that she felt like she was dreaming.

He looked like a god, and she looked like…an office cleaner, which was exactly what she was.

Why was he even wasting time with her?

“However, it may not seem so, but I am actually not a workaholic. I know how to balance my time,” Gian was saying.

And as she listened to him, she realized one important thing, and Vivian jerked.

Gian stopped speaking abruptly, his narrowed gaze on her paling face. “What is it?”

She shook her head.

“Spill it out,
cara
.”

Should she tell him or not?

He said warningly, “It clearly matters much to you. I cannot let you leave seeing you are evidently distressed about something---”

She cut him off, blurting out, “I’m being friendzoned, aren’t I?”

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Devoured by Marian Tee

Prologue

“And then we lived happily ever after,” Rafe drawled mockingly in conclusion, having shared how he had eventually won back his woman’s trust. “Or at least we will tomorrow, assuming I get out of this bachelor’s party alive.” The famously handsome CEO of Palazzo Enterprises surveyed his surroundings with lips thinned in annoyance. Although Rafe appreciated his best friend’s efforts at organizing tonight’s gathering, if he had to be honest, there was nothing he wanted more than to spend the evening with his fiancée.

“Too late for regrets, Palazzo,” Luca said wryly. “Now that you’re here, you know Shane won’t let you leave until everyone’s smashed.”

Rafe grimaced. “True.”

Luca raised his glass. “To your fortune,
amico
.”

Knowing that his friend was not referring to his material possessions, Rafe raised his glass in return, murmuring quietly, “I wish you the same luck,
amico
.”

After downing his third shot, he put the glass back down on the table and leaned back against his seat, silently contemplating the story his friend had shared with him. He had gotten to know Rafaello Palazzo years ago through a mutual acquaintance: they had the same divorce lawyer, and afterwards they also found out that they had filed for the same grounds.

Adultery.

Even now, the word left a despicable taste in Luca’s mouth. He had grown up in an extremely conservative Italian family, with a strict but loving father who had done his very best to raise his only child to know right from wrong. Even though his father had passed away in his late teens, by then Luca’s character had been fully developed, and with his mother’s gentle, soft-spoken guidance, he had grown up to be honorable and hardworking, a man without any pretensions of himself and with no desire to sow his wild oats.

Unlike many of his peers, Luca had looked forward to starting his family young, and at that time, he could not imagine himself loving or marrying anyone else than his childhood friend Maria. They had grown up together, gone to school together, and he had been her first lover – as she had been his.

It had not mattered to Luca that she was the daughter of one of the countless servants employed at the Tuscan winery that his family owned or that she had only finished high school before leaving the countryside to work as a secretary in town. It had not mattered to Luca that her manners had been rather coarse, which then he had considered more charmingly refreshing than anything else, or that she occasionally showed wild bursts of temper.
At least she was being honest with him,
Luca had thought then. It was better than those women in college who had constantly thrown themselves at him and pretended to be the kind of girl they thought he would like.

For Luca, everything about Maria was perfect because he had been in love.

And so he had married her, even knowing of his family’s tacit disapproval of her. It was not that his mother and their relatives had been snobs. Rather, they had simply cautioned him about not knowing Maria well enough to make her his bride.

Their concerns then had sounded ludicrous to him, and Luca’s lips twisted at the memory.
How foolish he had been
, he thought with self-contempt, to believe that knowing another person was a matter of years.

He had grown up with Maria
, his brash twenty-five-year-old self had rationalized. So of course he knew her inside and out.

The first few months of their wedding had been bliss, and with hindsight, he realized it was Maria doing the same thing he despised other women for, which was to pretend to be someone she was not. The only difference was that where others had failed, Maria had managed to succeed, and he had considered himself the luckiest of all men. He had loved her so much that by the time Maria began to exhibit gradual but significant changes in her behavior, Luca had tried damnably hard to accept all of them.

First were the demands. She had wanted to spend more and more of his money and had thrown tantrums and threatened to leave him when he had forbidden her to do so. It was not that he couldn’t afford her expenses. He could. But it was the sheer frivolity of her purchases that were anathema to him. It went completely against how his parents had raised him.

Then there were the late night outs, the way she had attended one party after another, dancing the hours away until the driver would be forced to take her home, drunk and incoherent. Luca had found Maria’s behavior increasingly disturbing, but because he loved her, he tried hard to understand her wild ways. Because he had been raised to honor his wife and stay with her through thick and thin, he had forced himself to swallow his anger and told himself that in time, Maria would grow weary of the party scene. In time, she would realize that she would be happiest when she was with him.

And then she had fallen pregnant.

The news of her pregnancy had appeared heaven sent for Luca. Finally, he would be a father. Finally, Maria would realize the error of her ways. Finally, she would have a reason to slow down and spend more time at home.

But she hadn’t.

Instead, Maria had acted even more outrageous. There were nights when she no longer came home, and when she did, it was only because she had either run out of money or places to go. Even so, Luca had been unwilling to restrain her…until the night he had received a call about Maria overdosing on recreational drugs.

Seeing her on the hospital bed, looking so pale to the point that she appeared lifeless, with dark circles under her eyes, Luca had blamed himself for being too lenient. It was now apparent that his wife had needed him to take control, and he hadn’t. All her actions now appeared nothing but the work of a rebellious child, someone begging for understanding and attention.

She clearly didn’t think she was ready for motherhood
, Luca had reasoned out to himself. It was why she had taken more risks than usual, a typical way for someone desperate to blind herself to the truth. It was as if by pushing her body beyond its limits, Maria was able to deny the reality of her condition.

That day, Maria had woken up sobbing, terrified by her near brush with death. She had begged for his forgiveness, and he had given it freely, comforting her and promising his wife that he would be with her every moment.

And for a few months, they were happy again. He hadn’t even needed to lock her in the house as he had feared he would. She appeared content to simply spend time with him, and Luca began to hope that the worst was over.

Maria had eventually given birth to a baby girl, and she had insisted that Luca name her himself. Then, he had thought it incredibly generous of his wife, but now he knew of course that it was only because she had been completely uninterested in their child.

He had named their daughter Eula, and he thought her the most precious thing in the world. However, it became apparent soon enough that Maria was less than enchanted with their baby girl. Soon, he came to realize that motherhood was a mere obligation for his wife, and now that she had fulfilled it, she was determined to pick up her life right where she left off.

The parties continued, the late nights, and it was up to Luca and his own mother to care for Eula. While he knew Letitia was more than happy to continue caring for her grandchild, he also knew that it was neither right nor fair to take advantage of his mother’s love and allow her to spend her golden years babysitting his daughter.

When he had told his wife he expected her to spend more time caring for Eula, Luca had already expected that there would be fights ahead of him. And it did happen, but what he hadn’t expected at all was how bitterly acrimonious it would get between them, to the point that his work was affected and he began making mistakes – costly mistakes that eventually wiped out almost the entire family fortune.

When he broke the news to his mother and the aunts, uncles, and cousins who depended on him, none of them had blamed him. Ironically, the only one who seemed to be hit the hardest was also the unspoken cause of his problems.

Maria.

Upon learning that Luca would have to declare bankruptcy, Maria had flown into a rage. She had stormed out of their bedroom and when he attempted to stop her from leaving, she had begun throwing things at him while screaming invectives. She blamed him for their financial downfall, blamed him for spending too much time on Eula when he should have been working harder to keep them in style.

In style.

Those had been her very words, and the sheer silliness and crassness of it had made him blow up. He had slapped her in the face, and for a moment there had been such stark silence between them.

Luca had found himself appalled and ashamed. He was not the type to ever strike a woman, so how could he have done such a thing, and to his own wife at that?

“Maria…”

But he had only taken one step towards her, and she had tried to claw his eyes out, her nails raking down an angry, bloody slash down his cheek. “I hate you,” she had hissed at him.

And then she had left.

The next day, all the major newspapers and tabloids in Italy had talked about the Valencias’ downfall as well as the news that his wife was cavorting in a bikini with his business rival Piero Palumbo. The photos showed the couple on Palumbo’s yacht, with the sixty-year-old millionaire squeezing his wife’s bottom.

“Luca?” Rafe’s quizzical tone brought him back to the present with a jerk.

“Scusa,” Luca apologized stiffly.

Rafe’s stunningly-colored eyes, purple fading into midnight blue, narrowed at the look on his friend’s face. Shaking his head, he murmured disapprovingly, “You are wasting time thinking about her again, aren’t you?”

Luca shrugged but didn’t bother to deny the truth. Rafe was one of the few who knew the complete story behind his divorce, and it wasn’t only because they had been in the same boat. Back then, Rafe had also been the only one of his friends who had taken the risk of investing in Luca’s startup.

With the divorce taking what little assets he had left in his name, prospects had been extremely bleak. Although Luca was not afraid of poverty, he did not want it for Letitia and the rest of his family, and most of all, he did not want his precious daughter to suffer such hardship.

And so he had taken a risk. He sold his remaining shares in the family winery and had used the money to start his own software firm. Technology had always been fascinating to him, but being a dutiful son, Luca had always known his future lay in the winemaking business.

Now, however, he had a chance to discover whether he had what it took to succeed in a field he had long been interested in. But for this, he had needed someone to vouch for him, someone willing to take a similar risk on his vision of the future, and that man had been Rafe.

Fast forward years later, and his baby had grown up into the most adorable five-year-old girl, the youngest heiress to a fortune worth billions because Luca’s risk – and Rafe’s – had paid off. Ironically, Luca was also a hundred times wealthier than Maria’s aging lover, who even now – if gossips were to be believed – refused to marry his ex-wife.

You reap what you sow
, Luca thought grimly. But his amusement was minimal because Maria’s selfish actions had also left their daughter motherless. She was at that age now where she was beginning to ask more and more questions he found increasingly difficult to answer.

“I think,” he heard himself say, “I’m going to take a leaf out of your book and hire a woman.”

Rafe stilled in his seat. “Excuse me?”

Luca nodded to himself. The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. “I believe it should work, only this time I will be more patient than you had been with Ari---”

Rafe slowly shook his head. “You’re crazy.”

“On the contrary, I’m actually taking a logical approach to what most people tend to view with foolish sentiments.”

“Did you
not
hear a single word I said?” Rafe said exasperatedly. “Every undesirable moment in my life happened because I had been too blind, thinking that I could be satisfied by hiring Ari as my mistress---”

Luca blinked. “Ah, but I’m not going to hire a woman to be my mistress.”

“Then what are you going to hire a woman for? To be your wife?” When his friend only looked at him, comprehension dawned and Rafe didn’t know whether to laugh or shake his head. “Are you serious? Are you actually seriously thinking you’ll hire yourself a
wife
?”

Luca shrugged. “Why not? Everything between you and Ari began because you hired her as your mistress---”

“Everything that was wrong,” Rafe pointed out, his exasperation deepening.

“
Exactly,
” Luca agreed. “Which is why I’m skipping that, and instead I will make sure that the woman I choose would have the respectability she would no doubt desire. I will hire her as my wife, but no one would have to know it’s purely business between us.”

Rafe threw his hands up. “You have clearly made up your mind, and you have clearly not learned a single thing from what I’ve shared with you. Things do not and will not work well when you try to manipulate such things, Luca. You do not understand---”