The Billionaire's Past (His Submissive, Part Ten) (2 page)

“Not even a day after our little
conversation, my mother called me in a panic. Ana ran away.” A tear
dashed free from her dark eyes but she swiped it away before it got
too far, making me wonder if I’d imagined it. If I was imagining
this entire conversation. But I could feel my nails digging into my
palms.

"She was gone for two whole weeks and my
mother was inconsolable the entire time." Missy pinched the bridge
of her nose. "And my father...he was barely around anyway so this
gave him an excuse to sleep at the office and focus on work even
though he had no idea if his sixteen year old daughter was dead or
worse."

I bit my lip, seeing the parallels between
her story and Jacob's. Both came from well-off families. Why was it
that the people with so much spared so little for their
children?

"And then they found her." Missy's voice
pulled me back to the story. "Strung out, barely clothed in the
seediest part of the city. Selling her..."

There was no stopping the waterfall that
streamed from her eyes now. She crumbled, leaning over as far as
the seatbelt would allow. Sobbing.

"I always had to be the strong one," she said
in between gasps, "I had to be strong for Ana and my mother. It's
what they always needed. How was I supposed to know how far gone
she was? It wasn't my--" She stopped, eyes widening as she looked
at me through the tears. Her body still shuddered, but she’d
silenced the crying, like she realized that she was breaking down
behind enemy territory.

But I wouldn’t use this against her. That’s
not who I am.

I reached out and put a hand over hers. “I’m
sorry that happened to your sister, but I’m sure she knows you love
her. That you were just trying to do what was best for her.”

“Rehab at sixteen. That’s what was best for
her?" Missy said with a bitter laugh.

“If it kept her from making a mistake at
eighteen that couldn’t be fixed without permanent damage.”

I couldn’t believe I was about to say this,
but like it or not, Missy was being genuine. I didn’t think she
could pull this off, turning her makeup to soup, losing it in front
of me with some sort of ulterior motive. She’d made a mistake with
her sister and obviously another with Mia. The fact that she was
here was proof that she wasn't all bad. That there was hope for
Missy Diaz yet.

The driver pulled up to the entrance of the
hospital and I turned to Missy, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Ready?”

She tilted her chin up, a look of
determination on her face. “Let’s go.”

Armed with larger than life bouquets, we
avoided the flashing bulbs, heading toward the sliding doors. Some
gangly, strung out looking guy was grinning big in front of the
crowd, talking about Mia. He was updating the press, letting them
know that she was conscious but under close watch with no visitors
except for family. I felt anger catch fire in my veins when I
realized this was the ‘friend’ who found her. The ‘friend’ who had
no problem selling her out if the price was right.

“Another time, Leila," Missy said, picking up
on my desire to pummel him. "Right now, let’s check on Mia.”

For once, me and Missy agreed on
something.

As soon as we breezed to the waiting room
area disinfectant and the odorless smell of sick washed over
me.

There was one nurse behind the desk and I
could tell she was no joke. Built like a mountain, with eyes like
jagged rocks and arms like boulders, she looked dead at us and
smirked like we weren’t getting what we wanted before we even got
it out.

“Good afternoon,” Missy said warmly,
disregarding the woman’s demeanor.

The nurse grunted. I gave her an uneasy smile
as my eyes dropped to her badge. Nurse Deadwood. Of course that was
her name.

“We’d like to visit a patient. Her name is
Mia--”

“You and every other Tom, Dick, and Harry
with a camera,” Nurse Deadwood interrupted with a snort. “If you
ain’t related to the girl, you can march right back on out of here
and join your pals.”

“How much?”

Nurse Deadwood narrowed her beady eyes.
“They’ve already been raining twenties around here like this is a
strip club. You can leave or I can call security.”

“How about a thousand dollars?” Missy
countered smoothly.

All those zeroes made my eyebrows jump but I
yanked them back down before the nurse glanced at me, sure this was
some sort of ruse.

“That’s a lot of money for a photographer to
be throwing around.”

I almost corrected her, but I had a feeling
that if she knew what company we worked for the price would double.
Nurse Deadwood looked around and when she was satisfied no one was
watching she gave Missy a nod. The envelope was pulled covertly
from Missy's clutch and handed it over. It was way too bulky to
hold a check.

I gulped. She’d just forked over 1k in cash
and the nurse didn’t even bat an eye. I wondered what kind of haul
she got when she had celebrity patients in the hospital.

She typed in our names and printed out our
visitor badges. Her face scrunched when I said mine but she
shrugged her shoulder like I couldn’t be
that
Leila
Montgomery.

She slid the badges across the counter with
two sausage sized fingers. “One person at a time. The other can
wait out here.”

We put some distance between us and the
warden, pressing the adhesive to our chests.

I almost asked Missy if she usually carried
around that kind of cash for these types of situations, but the
first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club.
Besides, the means didn’t matter. We were gonna see Mia. That was
priceless.

Missy fumbled through her clutch and pulled
out a small container of hand sanitizer. “I have a feeling she’d
want to see your face before mine. If she wants to see mine at
all.”

I wheeled toward the secured entrance, eyeing
Nurse Deadwood. She gave me a strange look before she hit the
button that sent the doors swinging outward.

“Leila?”

I stopped just inside, turning back toward
Missy’s voice.

She gave me a rueful smile. “Tell her I’m
sorry.”

Section 2

I couldn’t even recognize her.

Mia’s cheeks were drawn, gaunt like her skin
was pulled too tightly over bone. Her eyes were down, staring at
the hands bound beneath the restraints, but I could still see the
swollen bags beneath. Her dyed blond hair looked fluorescent
against her pale skin. The hospital gown clung to her frame.
Swallowing her.

I tapped hesitantly on the open door.
“Mia?”

She didn’t even look up. “I told you I’m not
hungry. Isn’t it enough that you have me strapped to this bed like
an animal?”

I moved into the room until I was in full
view. “I’m not a nurse.”

She slowly tilted her chin up, those same
swollen blue eyes from earlier widening with recognition. “You!”
She looked to her left where the nurse call string dangled just out
of reach. “I don’t want you here. This doesn’t have anything to do
with you. Scott was supposed to keep you people out.”

I remembered the guy at the entrance, smiling
for the camera and milking his five minutes of fame. A part of me
wanted to reveal him for the asshole he really was, but she already
felt cornered. The last thing I needed to do was out one of her
friends as a fake.

“I’m not here as a rep of Whitmore and
Creighton.”

“Oh really?” she scoffed, looking like
herself when she arched her eyebrow and gave me her best ‘bitch
please’ face. “Why are you here?”

“Because I meant what I said at the meeting,”
I answered, crossing the divide and dropping my bouquet on the side
table. “I’m here to help."

Surprise flashed in her eyes but she erased
it with an eye roll. “I don’t need your help.”

The fact that she’d been found in a pool of
vomit surrounded by empty pill bottles and was strapped to the bed
The Exorcist
style begged to differ, but I knew she wasn’t
gonna welcome me with open arms. She’d been living in denial for
too long.

“You mind if I sit?”

“Do I have a choice?”

"Not really." I gave her a smile and lowered
myself into the armchair beside her bed. The plush, roomy thing
seemed out of place in a hospital. Just like the wet bar and fridge
and the glossy LCD TV tuned to
Teen Mom
. I could tell her
mattress actually looked like a mattress instead of the
uncomfortable pallet thing they usually have in hospitals. And she
had fluffy pillows. And a duvet. A. Duvet.

She was glaring at the screen, but when she
thought I wasn’t looking, she stole peeks at me.

“Pretty sure this is the nicest hospital room
I’ve ever been in.” She didn’t respond other than shifting her eyes
back to the TV and keeping them there. “Not that I’ve been to a lot
of hospitals or anything, so I don’t have much to compare it to.
The few that I’ve been to...” I shuddered. “Death was a kindness
compared to holing up in there.”

A vein in her temple twitched at the sound of
the word death and I bit my lip, scolding myself for my choice of
words. But it was in line with the pseudo reverse psychology thing
I was about to try to get the truth out of her.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that I get
why a person would want to get admitted here. This has to be like,
The Ritz of hospitals. Michelin star food in the cafeteria--”

“You think I want to be here? That I’m happy
to be tied down to this bed because my room is nice?”

“Then why are you here, Mia?”

“I took a couple of pills,” she said
nonchalantly. “Something to take the edge off. I guess I had a bad
reaction.”

“Just a few?”

“Yes. Like three or four--”

“--Bottles?” I finished for her, sliding to
the edge of my seat. “You weren’t trying to take the edge off. You
were trying to not feel the edge or anything else, ever again.”

She looked at me like I was speaking a
foreign language. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You
tried to kill yourself.”

Kill. Another trigger word. I watched as it
rippled over her, turning her face ashen like she’d just witnessed
something terrible.

“You’re wrong.”

"Am I?"

I could see the same fight she’d broadcast at
the meeting as she sat up as best she could, squared her shoulders
and looked me dead in the face. “Yes. I haven’t been getting a lot
of sleep lately so I took more than I realized.”

I took her in slowly, hard to keep my
disbelief in check. She didn’t really believe that, right? It just
sounded like a talking point she was told to repeat until it
stuck.

“I didn’t come here to upset you. I came
because you looked like you needed someone," I said gingerly. "A
friend. To know you’re not alone.”

“I have a friend,” Mia said acidly. “He’s the
one that found me and brought me here. He was supposed to be
keeping people like you
out
.”

I bit back the desire to set the record
straight and let her know that her so-called friend was outside
giving a press conference.

“You’re just here to save face," she
continued tersely. "If they found out I was a Whitmore and
Creighton client and was admitted to the hospital on a 48 hour
psychiatric hold, it makes the company look bad.”

It was harder to swallow the hurt that came
with that accusation. This had nothing to do with damage control. I
was there because I was worried about her. It was obvious she had
trust issues and she didn’t know me well enough to know better. I
had to fix that.

“Let’s start over,” I said, rising to my
feet. “I’m Leila.”

She let out a groan. “I swear if I was closer
to that string I’d put us both out of our misery.”

“I was born in the country, but I grew up in
the city. Now when I go back to the country with the rolling hills
and nothingness I can’t believe I lived there without driving
myself insane.”

“Are you being serious right now?” she
sneered.

“When I decided I wanted to work in public
relations, I set my sights on Whitmore and Creighton," I pressed
on. "If you want to be the best, no one else comes close. And then
I met Jacob Whitmore.”

She wriggled to the left, inching closer to
that string. She eyed me pointedly, clearly trying to let me know
that was my warning.

I ignored it.

“I’ve never met anyone like him. I’ve never
felt the way he makes me feel. I’ve never felt so....vulnerable." I
crossed my arms. “Before him, there were only three things I
couldn’t live without. My parents, my best friend, and coffee. Now
there’s four.” I looked at her, watching as her features softened.
“What can’t you live without, Mia?”

I saw the crack, the sliver, but there was
still a chance it could go wrong. She could keep the wall up. Keep
the door closed. Tell me it was none of my business or to go to
hell. But she didn’t reach for the white string or punch the button
I knew they had on the rail, well within her reach.

“I wish I had something I couldn't live
without,” she said in a tiny voice. “Lately, it’s just been a bunch
of things I can’t live
with
." Her eyes dropped and I watched
as she picked at some invisible scab with her fingers, black
polished nails burrowing into the white sheets. “I know what people
say when my face flashes on the screen. ‘There’s another entitled
celebrity given everything but she’s still not happy.’ And they’re
right. I have everything and I'm miserable. I don’t deserve one bit
of it.”

“Mia,” I said softly, “You don’t mean that.
I’ve seen your show--”

“You watched
Carolina, California
?”
she asked incredulously.

My face warmed. “I may have watched an
episode or two.” Or ten. “You were incredible. And your voice is
amazing.”