Victoria The Billionaires Maid

INTERMISSION Kenzie & Jonas [POV]

I heard the sound of a text tone in his hand. He glanced at it and said, “Okay baby, thanks. I’m going to go with them.” James was standing behind me.

“I’m going too,” he said. Alex looked at his father like he was going to protest but something on James’ face changed his mind.

“Alex… what if it’s not safe?” I had a really bad feeling about this. I didn’t want him to go. I was suddenly afraid for his life.

“I’ll stay out of their way and let them do their job, but when they have this creep in custody, I want to be there to hear what he has to say for himself.”

I nodded slowly. I was worried and I felt sick, but I wasn’t going to be able to stop him. If I thought I could get away with going, I would go too. “Be safe.”

“I will.” He kissed me softly and said, “I love you.”

“I love you too.” I watched him go, surrounded by his security staff. The two officers that the detective left behind was getting Jason to his feet. He looked like an old man trying to stand up, Joe’s tackle must have done a number on him.

I walked up to him and he flinched. Good, I want him to feel afraid and humiliated. The sight of him alone disgusted me. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to waste my time hitting you again. I just want you to know how disgusting I think you are. The only place I ever want to see you again is in court.”

“You don’t understand,” he whispered.

“What Jason? What is it that I don’t understand?”

“They’re going to kill me.”

“Who?”

“The people I owe a quarter of a million dollars to.”This text is property of Nô/velD/rama.Org.

“How the hell do you owe so much money, Jason?” He didn’t say anything. “Gambling? You’ve been losing at the track again and borrowing money?” He still didn’t answer. I knew his fondness for the track; that had to be it. “You know what, I don’t care. You thought that you could get money to pay your gambling debts by hurting my family?” Still nothing. The officers on either side of him were looking at me. “Just take him, please. I can’t stand to look at him.”

When Jason was gone I went up and sat in Michael’s room. The security officer was at the door and Michael was still asleep but after finding out that one of them was working with Jason, I didn’t trust anyone anymore.

PROLOGUE

Kenzie’s [POV]

Houston, Texas

Torn from the pages of my book, our love story was over before it ever really began. Well, that was if it was even considered one, to begin with. The chapter had been so short, yet it’d also been both the best and worst time of my entire life. As I sat on the cold, hard ledge atop Courtland Hall, regret and shame filled me.

“I just can’t escape you,” I lamented as I realized who the Courtland was in this particular building. No, it wasn’t Jonas, but generation after generation of his family. I’d heard about those before him. Who hadn’t? Yet, I still deluded myself into believing that he was different. “Maybe, I’d just hoped that you were.”

He wasn’t different, though. As I recently found out, Jonas made the things his elder brother did, appear mild in comparison. Body counts aside, I’d never even heard of Logan Courtland engaging in the same deceitful activities as his younger brother. Of course, just because I hadn’t heard about it, didn’t mean it never happened. After all, he had to have learned it from someone.

Still, as the warm spring breeze lifted the loose, dark tendrils of hair framing my face, none of that counted. It’d only be a matter of time before everyone at Spencer Academy knew what Jonas had done. More importantly, they’d know what I had done, too. Despair began to fill me at that prospect. Good girls like me didn’t have premarital sex, especially, with the captain of the football team. But I had, and it’d been the best night of my young life. Now, the pleasure I’d felt then threatened to strangle me like a noose around my neck.

“What am I going to do?” I didn’t have any friends, and there was no one to share my despair. “If Daddy finds out…”

My thoughts drifted to my father. George Broderick, minister at Life Pointe Baptist Church, would surely have me sent off to a convent. Or worse. Thomas and Ethel Broderick had a farm in midwestern Nebraska, and the very idea of being shipped off to live with my grandparents had me looking down at the pavement below.

I scrubbed my hands down my face, the movement made easier by the dampness of my cheeks, courtesy of the tears I’d been crying for the last hour. Everyone in school had to know what he’d done to me by now, so I certainly couldn’t show my face inside those halls. Not now, and maybe not ever again. I’d been duped and would be the mockery of our entire school. God knows I’d heard about every other conquest of Jonas’s, although he’d denied most of them to me.

“People just like to talk,” he’d explained, and I’d stupidly believed it all. It hadn’t been the only lie I’d fallen for over the last couple of months. “I like you, Kenzie.” “You’re everything I never knew I wanted.” I sarcastically laughed at those words, which now viciously taunted me. “I care about you.” Those had been the worst because they’d made me discard my values, principles, and common sense in a pile at my feet.

“They’re all going to laugh at me,” I cried out loud. Why, oh why had I believed Jonas Courtland!

I stood and started to pace back and forth. I’d made such a mess of things, and just the thought of having to see him for the last couple of months of school would be torture. We were even seated within arm’s reach of one another at graduation which seemed like an eternity to this when now, it was closer than ever.

A few more errant tears rolled down my cheeks as they stubbornly refused to stop falling. I had to think of a way out of this situation I’d stupidly put myself in. If only there was a way to go back in time to the period when no one knew who I was or even cared. If I could go back there, I’d certainly make sure to steer well clear of Jonas Courtland. I couldn’t, and now I had to quickly think of a solution. Maybe it wasn’t even as bad as I thought.

After all, the only one who would possibly tell my father would be Mila.

The girl’s mother, Caroline, was the biggest busybody in the entire congregation. The woman would latch on to this gossip like a dog with a bone and spread it around to anyone and everyone she saw. The news would then reach my father. I could already see next Sunday’s sermon being directed at me, and what my father considered a sin. We’d only moved to Houston last summer, and now it didn’t look like I’d even make it here a year this time. Ever since I was ten, my family moved from one place to another for a multitude of reasons. I’d never been the cause, but this incident would certainly change all of that. I’d brought shame to my entire family, and I’d never live this down.

“Fuck!” Cursing was something else my father considered a sin, but by this time, I was too upset to care. Sirens blared off in the distance, or at least I thought they’d been far enough away until the shrill shrieking got closer. Seconds later, I realized two police cars and an ambulance were out front of the school. Sensing the oddity here and forgetting my problems for a moment, I peered over the ledge again just in time to see the officers and paramedics file out of their vehicles.

“Mackenzie Broderick,” one of the uniformed officers called through his megaphone.

It was then that I realized exactly why they were there. The police had been called because of me. Shocked, I stepped back. Did the authorities think I was trying to jump? Of course, they did. Why else would they be gathered floors below me while calling out my name?

Just great. If the entire student population didn’t know what Jonas had done to me, they would now. I’d be the center of every salacious story told in those halls. Everyone would want to know what I had done and why, and the rumor mill would run rampant with different variations of the truth. Most would involve them talking about how I was suicidal.