Lonzo: Book 1 (Tycoon Series Book 1) (17 page)

She was annoyed. It was probably Francesca. She specifically asked the concierge not to connect any calls to her room except if it came from either Francesca or Leandro.

My goodness! Can’t she give me a moment to sleep in peace?!

She was having second thoughts whether to answer it or not. With the way she had been working this past month, she was entitled to every hour of sleep, she thought rebelliously.

But her sense of professionalism won. With a groan, she stretched her arm to pick up the phone from the side table.

“Hello?” she asked sleepily.

“Have you seen the papers?” It was Leandro and his voice sounded tight.

“Seen what? What papers?” she asked, confused.

“There are alleged pictures of you and that billionaire, Lonzo Vitale, splashed in the tabloids. Naked ones!” Leandro’s voice was harsh.

Jordana’s blood ran cold.

How in the world..?

“Tell me that those pictures are photoshopped fakes and I’ll immediately ask the lawyers to file legal action against the publications who ran them. Just say the word, Dana.”

But she couldn’t speak nor think clearly. Her brain functioned like a train wreck in slow motion. She tried hard to think back and piece together the circumstances that led to this fiasco. She was also considering how this mess would impact her career and add to her already chaotic personal life.

Everything pointed to one man.

Lonzo Vitale.

He must’ve hidden a camera, she was sure of it. He wanted to get even because she rejected him. The evil rat bastard!

“Dana?! I need you to answer me. Is that you in the picture? Tell me you didn’t sleep with that man!” Leandro’s voice seethed with anger.

Her cold fingers tightened around the phone.

“Yes,” she admitted. “It happened only once and—”

She cringed when she heard the colorful expletives in Portuguese coming from her childhood friend.

“That fucking
tarado
!”

This was way worse than than what happened to her as a kid many, many years ago. At least that was kept under wraps by the courts.

Whereas this…everyone can easily Google this.

She felt humiliated and violated all over again.

It was all too much. Her skin felt clammy and she began to shake. She couldn’t breathe. Blackness was about to engulf her.

She was having another panic attack. She could barely hear Leandro’s shouts on the other line.

“Dana! Listen! Listen to my voice. Don’t hang up! Dana! Breathe deeply. Where are you? Stay with me!” her friend’s instructions got through her woozy mind.

Leandro had seen her panic attacks in the past so he already knew the drill.

“Dana, I’m not there to help you. You have to calm down and stay with me. Just listen to my voice, okay? Say something, baby girl.”

She nodded as she fought for control. “O-Okay.”

She concentrated hard on the breathing exercises taught to her by the psychiatrist who treated her as a child. Focusing on Leandro’s voice, she slowly fought off the anxiety that threatened to shut off her system. After a few minutes, her sight and air passage began to normalize.

That was close.

“Leandro, I’m really sorry—”

“Hush. That’s it. I’m flying over. Don’t leave your room. Wait for me.”

Leandro’s voice was reassuring. Even in their youth, she could always rely on him.

Why, oh why didn’t I fall for him instead? Things would have been simpler!

She knew the answer to that, of course. Her treacherous body craved no one but Lonzo Vitale.

She was done for.

Lonzo went straight to his office after spending a restless night
at his penthouse unit in one of Via Venetto’s exclusive private apartments. He scheduled an early GM board meeting today and too bad for the members of the current board, he wasn’t in the mood to be charitable for even the smallest of mistakes.

The meeting started promptly at seven and thirty minutes onto the meeting, he felt a huge urge to gnaw his teeth at the figures that were shown to him. Majority of the current board were relics he had inherited from the Agnellis. The geezers were trying to hide their ineptitude through glowing forecasts that were simply too optimistic to be taken seriously. They hoped to dupe him by kissing his ass. Well, they could kiss their positions goodbye. He despised ass-kissing of any kind.

He maintained his silence throughout their presentation. Let these asshats think they got his approval in the bag. These Agnelli cocksuckers were nothing but a bunch of useless pricks who got huge paychecks without sweating for it.

Time to cut their dead weights off his ship.

Lonzo raised his hand when one of Agnelli’s guys was in the middle of delivering his glib report on the first half of the year earnings of the company.

“Stop,” he interrupted.

“Signore Vitale, if I may finish my report—”

“You may take your seat. I heard enough. Your assumptions are misleading. Where’d you pick these numbers? Out of thin air?” he asked gravely.

The man paled before turning red. “
Scusi
?”

“Don’t act so amazed. You know damn well what I’m talking about. I’ve run the same figures but I came up with a less optimistic outcome from yours.”

The man was visibly rattled but was able to recover.

“Then you are obviously mistaken, signore. There’s nothing wrong with my figures. We should be expecting recovery within—”

He refused to let this guy off easily.

“I’ve crunched the numbers…so if you value your seat at GM’s board, do not insult my intelligence,” he said dryly.

The man swallowed before taking his seat dejectedly.

“Any more of you punks who’d like to try and dumb out GM’s real financial situation? You may take the floor. I’m all ears.”

Another one of the cronies stood up. Lonzo glanced and recognized the man as one of Agnelli’s closest business associates.

His money guy.

Giulio Rocio.

“You dare thumb our noses down? You haven’t done anything yet! The share prices continued to tumble at a much faster rate since you took over. Face it, Vitale. GM’s shareholders and workforce didn’t trust you and your plans. I can’t blame them, though—”

The man paused and dramatically slapped a copy of Rome’s biggest-selling tabloid before him.

“—after all, who would trust a man who prefers to cavort around naked for the cameras? The tabloids are calling you the ‘Italian Stallion’!” the man’s voice dripped with malice.

Tension filled the entire room.

Lonzo eyed his antagonist, his smile feral. He didn’t even look at the tabloid.

“I only read the financial section, Rocio. Unlike you, I don’t give a hoot about the public’s fascination about my sexual exploits. Don’t delude yourself. GM’s stocks were getting a beating because of the decisions that this board made in the past. And of course, Agnelli’s connections in the media. But this stops now, gentlemen. And I’m going to start with you.”

“Don’t threaten me, Vitale! I am not afraid of you—” the man shouted, but it was all bluster. The man was a fucking pipsqueak.

“You played your last trump card. I expect your resignation tomorrow.”

“You can’t force me out of GM!”

“Very well, do you want me to elaborate to this board about your Cayman accounts? Your choice,” he said casually.

The man spluttered and turned purple with rage before he stood up.

Lonzo knew he had him by the balls. Rocio wouldn’t dare dispute him.

He was right. The man decided not to push his luck further and stormed out of the conference room.

By the time the meeting finished two hours later, the composition of the board of directors was dramatically altered. Agnelli’s cohorts resigned to save their sorry asses from possible legal action, giving way to the members of Lonzo’s managing team to take over their vacated seats.

It took her quite a while to gather enough courage to Google the pictures.
Lo and behold…the pictures were already shared and uploaded at social and porn sites. Even the web pages of respectable media companies posted the pictures.

Billionaire Finance Whiz All Tangled Up with Supermodel
, one headline said.

Their position on the bed were very compromising. Half of her face was shown in one photo. One shot revealed a very well-endowed Lonzo pressing his muscular body on her naked backside.

A fresh wave of humiliation and anger washed over her.

She couldn’t even leave her hotel room. The members of the tabloid press and the paparazzi were camped outside, waiting to ambush her. She had no other option but to sit this one out and wait until Leandro arrived to take her home.

She mulled over this and she had made up her mind. She would face the music. She’d come out clean.

To hell with Lonzo Vitale.

By lunch time, Jordana had to pull the phone plug off the wall. Even her mobile was ringing nonstop and her booking agent and people from her agency had been leaving messages which initially chastised her for the scandal. The tone of the succeeding messages changed drastically. Francesca excitedly informed her that her already overflowing schedule had tripled in bookings. In fact, her bookings were full until next year!

She almost laughed at the irony of it all.

Lonzo hung up on his uncle.
He’d lost track of the number of times the old man called up to give him a piece of his mind today. Those personal nurses were utterly useless! They can’t even intercept a bloody paper from reaching his recalcitrant relative.

Now his old-fashioned and traditionalist uncle fell hook, line and sinker for Jordana’s media machinations.

His uncle thought that he had destroyed an innocent woman.

“I didn’t raise you to be like this. You have humiliated the poor child further.”

“I did what?!”

“You should have stood by her side. But no…my nephew left her alone to be eaten by the media!”

“
Non essere un pettegolo
, Thio. Jordana—”

“No! Don’t you accuse me of being a gossip, Lonzo! These papers…these journalists…they were all calling here! They’re saying you’re a defiler of virgins! The poor lass was really an innocent, isn’t she?”

He didn’t reply, confirming the only truth that Jordana Almueda ever possessed. True, she was a real virgin but that hymen came with a price tag that he had yet to find out. He just hated it when the old man kept on railing about him being the consummate playboy. He was a victim in all of this!

He can’t even defend himself. He feared that all this stress might spike his uncle’s already high blood pressure.

“Basta! I was right! And what do you plan to do about it? Hmm?!”

“Nothing!”

“
Ti comporti come un capone!
Vitale men stand by our women—” the old man ranted.

“She isn’t my woman.”

“Then you shouldn’t have touched her!”

He sighed.

“She isn’t my woman…yet,” he lied.

“So you’re seeing her?”

“I will. Or was about to. I got busy with work. Remember GM and VI?”

Finally, the old man did calm down.

“Good. I knew I raised you to be honorable. Do me proud. I want to meet her.”

Fuck!

“She’s busy. I’m busy—”

“You’d better do as I say, my boy. Or else, you can kiss those shares goodbye. I’ll make the disposal ironclad, you’ll never get your hands on it!” his uncle said before he hung up.

Merda!
What a mess!

His once relatively quiet private life was now being invaded by the
paparrazi.
They now took up residence at the gates of his company headquarters, hoping they’d get a glimpse of the vixen who started this media circus.

When he went out for lunch today they all jumped on him. Only his size and threatening stance prevented them from asking too many delving questions.

He cranked his neck before he straightened to pick up his phone to place a call.

When his call was answered, his instructions were clear-cut: get all the dirt on Jordana Almueda. ASAP.

Chapter Ten

Lonzo carefully read the report emailed to him
by his chief security guy, Titus Blackwell. It was not a well-known fact that he partly-owned ZETA—a billion-dollar security operations agency that had successfully secured contracts with the US and British governments for the past five years.

When he asked Blackwell to dig up dirt about Jordana this morning, he didn’t expect that the guy would come up with a chest-full of information. He was silently impressed with what Blackwell was able to come up within a span of a few hours.