Billionaire Romance14 min read
"Smash the Cake, Keep the Power"
ButterPicks16 views
"I want him," I said, and the whole room turned toward me.
People froze. Glass chimed. A man laughed like it was a joke. Then Cooper Jordan looked up from his birthday seat, slow and calm, and his smile sharpened.
"Katharine Charles," he said, with that half-amused, half-mean tone he used to have even in high school. "You really know how to make an entrance."
"Where is my brother?" I asked. My voice was small and fierce. Rain had soaked my hair. My palms were cold under my coat. Everett was missing from every answer I'd begged for in five years.
Cooper's eyes narrowed, but he didn't rise. He was still the same man who owned rooms with his look, only older, cleaner, more dangerous in a suit. Two women sat close to him—same hair, same mole at the edge of their eyes. I had seen gossip photos of men who did that, surrounded like planets. I had no plan to orbit.
"Your brother's here," Cooper sighed, as if this were a favor. "But since you're so dramatic, let's make it interesting. Drink this."
He pushed a glass toward me with a lazy finger, and the room's laughter crawled over us like wet cloth. I remember how I moved—body running on a furnace of red-hot fear and shame—and took the glass like a dare. I drank.
"Now I will get him," I said.
He smirked. "If you drink my drink, you can see Everett. Cheer me, Kathryn. After all, we were 'schoolmates,' weren't we?"
When I said I would free Everett for his five words—"we were schoolmates"—his voice folded into a cold joke. I felt my chest launch into a hundred small pains. He always could twist me with four letters: "we." I kept my face blank and asked again.
"Bring him out."
They brought Everett out like a joke. They'd dressed him in a cheap red dress, a green wig draped like a joke, heavy makeup. He teetered on tiny heels and smiled with the kind of innocent trust that made my stomach drop open.
"Stop!" I mouthed. My hands found the nearest bottle and I swung. The wine hit the man who had tried to drag me away.
Cooper's face changed then, like winter fog rolling into the bar. He threw the wine glass. It hit the man who had his arm over my shoulder. He threw him out with three words: "Get out. Now."
The room had been loud. The room went small and sharp. People watched like it was theater. I moved to Everett, but women blocked me. Silvia Arnold stepped forward with a laugh that tasted like coal.
"Katharine, five years gone and you still look so sad," she sneered. "Your brother looks perfect as a show. Come on—dance for the birthday boy."
Everett looked at me through the dark. His face was lit with a child's need. "Kathy… I want Kathy…" he stammered.
Silvia tipped a cooler and poured ice in front of Everett like a stupid game. He crawled over his knees on the ice, his long frame slipping. People laughed. I had never felt so small and then so hot with blood.
"Don't," I shouted. I shoved people aside. My hand found a wine bottle again. This time it smashed on Silvia's head. The sound was a pop, like someone breaking my last restraint.
She fell. People yelled. I had red on my hands. The bottle might have cut me; I didn't feel it.
"Get them out." Cooper's voice was low. "Bring him."
They dragged me out. Everett cried. He called me "small one" and reached for me in a voice like a lost boy. Someone pushed him down. I heard a heavy thud as they forced him onto the floor.
"Katharine," Cooper said as they held me by the arms. He came close, thumb under my chin. "You look like you want to die."
"Let him go," I spat.
"Promise me something." He leaned his face close, and even with cold in his throat, his breath warmed me. "Give me your twenty percent. Let me have the stock. And you will stop testing me."
"You're insane."
"I'll give you a choice," he said. "Drink again. Or I'll keep Everett."
I swallowed, because I had no map left. I swallowed because Everett's eyes were empty with fear. I drank. He laughed. "Good girl."
They put me in a room that smelled like lemon soap and money. The door locked. I banged and begged. It wasn't until Cooper returned, wet hair from the shower and colder than the rain, that I stopped screaming.
"You did this for the stock?" Cooper said, low. "You think I wanted your shares?"
"I will give them. Take them. Please—just let Everett go."
He watched me like he was reading the wrong page. "You would trade yourself to free him."
"I would trade my life."
"Funny." He put on a smile that had been polished for years. "Then let's bargain."
I didn't sleep. I thumbed the old scar on my palm where my father used to press my hand and say, "You will be the one who fixes it." I promised him then that I would not bow. But I had no money, no help, and Everett's crooked smile burned into my chest.
Cooper signed on something like a contract before he left the room.
"I'll free Everett. I will let him go now. But you will do one thing first. You will be my assistant at Vortex Holdings. You will be at my side. You will be my woman."
"Your woman?" The words hit like a slap. I felt all the old naïve things crash and break at once.
"You are bargaining," he said. "You get to work. You get the chance to claw back what was taken. I get my amusements."
"If I am your assistant, I will not be anyone's pawn."
"Then don't be a pawn," he said. "Be useful."
I nodded. I signed. I left the villa with Everett in my arms. He was ashamed and sweet and fragile. At the hospital the next morning, Emilio Jensen crouched at Everett's side and checked him like he was a secret to be guarded.
"He's stable," Emilio said, sliding me a look that was both clearing and weary. "He hit his forehead but he'll be fine."
"Thank you," I whispered.
Emilio looked at Cooper like someone who wondered whether mercy was a joke. "He should rest."
Cooper didn't let us leave. He watched us with an expression that made my bones go quiet and loud at the same time.
"Stay with me at Vortex," he said on the ride home. "You will go to work tomorrow."
"I will stay only if Everett is safe."
"Fair."
That night he kissed me. It was not soft. It was not kind. It had the taste of old debt and new claim. I tried to pull away, and he tightened his arms.
"Don't make this painful," he breathed. "Be quiet. Be small. Be mine."
I had a fever that night. He pressed a damp cloth to my forehead. Later, in the early hours, he was shaking as if the night held something dangerous. He muttered that he hated me, but when my skin warmed he called Emilio and had me treated. After watching Emilio give me a needle, he told me to rest. I did. I woke with a pill in my hand and a note pinned under a stone paperweight on my desk.
"One rule. You are mine at work. Out in the world—be free. But here, follow me."
My first week at Vortex began with small tasks and big eyes. People whispered. I met Ida Chandler, gentle and sharp, who had worked for Cooper for years. She smiled like a soft lamp.
"Do not worry," Ida said when I looked lost. "He can be kind. He can also be a storm."
"Which one is he today?" I asked.
"Both." Ida shrugged. "He wants control. He likes that he can make you tremble."
On day three, Silvia Arnold found me at the reception and walked in like it was her house.
"What are you doing here?" she sneered.
"I'm his assistant," I said. My voice was calm. Then I thought I might be brave. I said more, "If you have a problem, please schedule it."
She laughed. "You think he'd pick you over me? Girl, he keeps you to humiliate you."
"Then don't be on his invitation list," I said, and the words rolled out steadier than I felt.
She struck at me with words. I struck back physically. We were in the middle of a polite lunch when we collided. I smacked her, and soon enough, security moved like chessmen. I pressed my hand to my knuckles and watched the slow bright come up. Cooper learned of it and marched into the office like an arresting wave.
"Why?" he demanded.
"She insulted my brother," I said. "She humiliated him."
"Then you handled it badly." He said it like a fact. He sat and put his feet on the desk, like a man carving a claim.
"She deserved worse."
"You can't start a war inside my walls." He fixed me with a look like lightning about to break a tree. "Or you can. But understand this: I protect what is mine."
"I am not yours," I said.
"You are here because you chose to be useful," he replied. "You keep your promises, you'll get what you want."
Days at Vortex were a strange kind of schooling. Cooper expected me to be exact. He expected me to be in the right place at the right hour. He expected me to watch his phone and edit his emails and file the things that smelled like power. I did it. It gave me access to meeting notes and email threads and the small red flags buried in polite corporate language.
On the third week, Cade Davidson—tall, stern, and owning a cigarette-less calm—took me aside.
"I need you to be careful in here," he said. Cade was a childhood classmate of mine who had become a quiet investor. "There are people watching you. And he is not the only hand in the fire."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You remember who bought our company," he said. "But not all purchases are simple. There were patterns. Chauncey Brooks, Everett's uncle, moved assets at odd times. Gustavo Schuster and Vernon Dalton were in the mix. Cooper is on speaking terms with Gustavo."
My heart kicked. "Cooper? He lied to me nightly about hating my family. He buys what he wants."
"He buys what he needs," Cade said. "Sometimes needs and revenge look alike."
One rainy night, Cade gave me a file. "If you want to find out what happened to Everett, start with those transfer memos. They follow money. Money will lead to bodies of truth."
I spent nights at the office, making coffee my religion and files my worship. Cooper watched, and sometimes he came by and stood behind me, silent as a shadow. He started to leave small things on my desk: a bandage, a scarf, a cup sealed with red date tea. He did not tell me he cared. He did things to me the way he had always done: occupied my space, made my world smaller so he could fit into it.
"What do you want from me, Cooper?" I asked once when he stopped talking as if he was afraid to say too much.
"To own the thing I can't have," he said. "To have the person who hurt me so deep I could not breathe."
"You think I hurt you."
"You left me," he said. "You said ugly things at the airport. You walked away. For five years that hollow sat in me. I let it rot others. But I never stopped thinking about you. So I made a plan."
"I want to know the truth about Everett," I said. The paper-filed truth sat heavy over my hands.
"Find it," he said. "Prove I'm the bad guy if you can. But know this—if someone moves on you, I will find them."
"That is a promise," I said.
Cooper laughed—short and raw. "A threat. A promise. Same language."
Weeks sped like broken glass. I found emails—hidden headers signed off with Chauncey Brooks’s private account. I found transfers going from a shell firm into accounts at a casino chain that Gustavo Schuster controlled. I traced the phone logs and realized Everett's crash occurred right after a meeting with a man I knew Cooper had met the week before.
"Cooper, did you see Everett the night before his crash?" I asked one evening, pushing the printouts across his desk.
He sat in the leather chair heavy, as if carrying a city. "Yes. He came to my office."
"You argued," I said. "Emails prove you were in talks about selling them a way out. He left angry."
"I wanted the company," Cooper said. "I told him to be reasonable. He wouldn't sell."
"Then who tampered with the brakes?" I pushed. "Who struck?"
He was quiet and suddenly small. "I don't believe I did it, Katharine. But if I knew a man I would have killed for, I would be the last to confess."
We both laughed—an ugly, tired sound. "So you were there, and then he crashed."
"I am not a murderer."
"Find the proof," I said.
"Like you." He smiled. "I expected no less."
Soon after that, someone tried to push Everett's wheelchair down stairs. A caregiver found the handle loose. Cooper intercepted it. He pressed himself into my world like a shield. The same night, there was a fire alarm in my apartment area. Cooper's car appeared in ten minutes. He collected Everett in the rain and took him to a place where the lamps were soft and the guards were a wall.
"I do these things because I care," he said.
"You tell me you don't," I said. "You say you only hurt to hurt."
"I told you that because I couldn't bear that you might pity me," he said. He picked up my hand and kissed the scraped knuckle. "I have been a monster. Not because I wanted to be, but sometimes monsters get made."
I had never once heard him speak like that. My heart unclenched with a thin little sound.
The hunt for truth took us to the legal floor, to bank windows, to drunken men who knew numbers and traded them like cigarette butts. It led to Chauncey Brooks’ office, where a secretary with ice in her smile told a story about a late-night wire, and to Gustavo Schuster's yacht, where a ledger winked at us like a promise. At each step, Cooper slid between me and the storm.
"You're putting yourself in danger," Emilio said when we found the ledger. "You have no backup."
"I have him," I said.
"You have yourself," Cooper snapped. Then he softened. "And me."
Cade came to me one night, voice low. "There are people who set the crash as the lever. Chauncey and Vernon wanted Everett to sign away assets. Gustavo handled the money. They used an accident as a way to scare the rest."
"Who ordered the tampering?" I asked, eyes fat.
"Evidence will show Chauncey signed off on a payment to a firm that outsourced car maintenance. The timestamps line up with a call from Vernon's office to a number registered to a shell company."
We had the paper trail. It was ugly, like a map of greed. We took it to a reporter and the law. But before the press ran, Chauncey’s men tried to burn the office. A molotov tossed into the meeting room set a black flame licking paper. We escaped by seconds. Cooper smashed the glass and carried me out like a man who pulled a child out of fire.
"You keep getting me into trouble," I said later, my shirt smelling of smoke.
"And you keep making me save you," he retorted.
We chose the shareholders' meeting to finish it. I wanted Everett’s name cleared. I wanted my family to breathe without a ghost in the hallway.
"You're sure?" Cooper asked when I stood at the top of the stage with the file in my hands.
"More than ever," I said. My voice echoed over the marble. "Today I will tell the board what they stole, who sold us out, and how they used Everett. Today is for truth."
The room thudded. People turned. Teams of suits glided like a sea. Chauncey sat like a god on a chair too big for him. Vernon by his side looked thin and angry. Gustavo had the face of a man who thought money was an armor. Cooper sat in the front like a spear.
I stepped up.
"Good afternoon," I said. The microphones tasted like iron in my mouth. "My name is Katharine Charles. I was the heir to a company that others took. I was told to be silent. I was told to be small. But today I will speak."
"Cooper," Chauncey said into his cuff. "This stage is not for his woman."
"Sit down," Cooper said in a voice that froze the room. "You will hear her."
I pulled up the photos, the bank wires, the call logs. I read names. I read times. I read transfers. I read the payment that sent a man to tamper with Everett's car.
"Transfer 45B, handled by a shell firm," I said. "Signed by Chauncey Brooks. Payment processed through Vernon Dalton's company. Money placed in Gustavo Schuster's account."
Gasps. A man from the press pushed forward. Chauncey's face went paper-thin, and for the first time I saw him sweat.
"This is defamation," Vernon hissed.
"No," I said. "This is proof. It shows your payments. It shows your pattern."
Cooper came up beside me, then in front of me. He didn't hold my hand. He stood and looked at Chauncey with a cold I had never seen. "You file a lawsuit, I'll release the rest. The recordings, your messages. You think you own me? You think you own anyone?"
Chauncey's men started shouting. Security moved. Police filters pushed through. The boardroom filled with cameras and red lights. Vernon tried to stand, but a deputy held his arm and read him his rights.
"It is not just me," Cooper said softly into the microphone for the cameras. "It is all of them. They robbed a family for profit."
Chauncey screamed and tried to throw my file off the stage, but Cooper moved faster. He slapped him hard across the face in front of everyone.
The world kept breathing. Men in suits watched with sticky faces. The board members' cheeks fell. Chauncey sat stunned. Vernon sobbed like a small, beaten thing. Gustavo's face collapsed when the ledger was played on the screen.
When the police drove them away, the room looked smaller, bleached of power. The cameras swarmed like bees.
After the arrests, Cooper found me alone near the service stairs. He took my hands without asking.
"You did this," he said with a kind of wonder I did not know how to receive. "You did it with nothing but a stubborn heart and a file."
"We did it," I said.
"No. You did it," he insisted. "I only helped after the fact."
"You put your body between me and the men who tried to set the building on fire," I said. "You kept Everett safe."
He stepped closer. "I did it because I couldn't stand the thought of you hurt. Because you kept breathing in a world I once thought I had broken. Because watching you go to work, watch a coworker get angry—it's the only way I know to be near you."
"Then apologize for making us suffer," I said, the old wounds folding into my voice.
He smiled a small, dangerous smile that could have been me on fire. "Apologize for what?"
"For the years you took," I said. "For the silence and the punishments."
"I'll do better," he promised. "And there's a longer part: I love you." The words landed like a hand on a table. "I have for a long time."
I breathed in. "You told me you couldn't love me. That you loved no one."
"I lied," he said. "I was too proud to say the truth. Will you let me make you safe now?"
I closed my eyes. I had wanted justice. I had wanted Everett's name cleared. I had wanted to be able to work without men putting prices on my mouth. I had not expected to want to give my heart again.
"I will not let you close every door on me," I said. "I will not be owned. I will not be your quiet ornament. And if you expect me to be your woman because I owe you something, forget it."
He looked at me and something like a laugh broke the lines of his mouth. "I want you. Not a signing on paper. Not a captured woman. I want a partner who will hit back, who will stand up to me, and who won't be any man's puppet."
"I will hit back," I said. "I will work. I will not be silent."
"And if I fail?" Cooper asked.
"Then you will rise," I said. "You will learn to be better."
He stepped forward and kissed me with a gentleness that tasted like redemption. It was the way someone who had spent years beating himself would kiss—slow, asking for permission.
"You asked for one year," he said against my lips. "I'll give you a lifetime to decide."
"Mr. Jordan," I said, breathless, "you're not renting me by the year."
"I know." He grinned. "But if you ever need proof that I mean this, come to my office on the anniversary of your first fight. I'll bring the cake."
I remembered the cake I'd smashed on his face. A small smile came to me. "Promise you'll let me smash it again if I want to."
He laughed. "Only if I can lick the cake first."
We stayed like that for a long moment. The storm had cleared around us, but the sky kept its bruises.
In the months that followed, I did not let Cooper guard all my battles. I rebuilt my family bit by bit. With the ledger evidence and Chauncey's confession, Vortex forced a settlement that returned assets to my mother and Everett a safer home with a guardian who did not wear sharp suits.
Everett's mind never returned fully to before, but he smiled and learned to make me laugh. He painted a picture of the two of us as children under a tree—simple lines, wild color. I kept it in my office.
Cooper sat across from me one evening, tired and real, in my small office tower with city lights like scattered coins.
"You didn't tell me you forgave me," he said.
"I didn't forgive you then," I said. "I forgave the world that hurt me. You have to earn my trust every day."
"I will," he promised. "And for now, I will do the small, silly things. I will bring red date tea when you are tired. I will steal your jacket. I will watch your back."
"And you'll let me keep my autonomy," I said.
"Yes," he said. "And you'll let me love you. Even if you never say it back."
"I might," I said, thinking of the way he had carried me from the flames and kept Everett safe.
We were messy and dangerous and clumsy in love. We were careful and we fought and we laughed. The public loved the story of 'the cold billionaire who fell for the little heiress' until they didn't. The people who had hurt us learned what humiliation tasted like.
One evening, Cooper came into my office and set down a small cake with a single candle. It was not a birthday. It was not an apology. It was a soft promise.
"Make a wish," he said.
I looked at him, at the glow, at Everett's painting on the shelf, at the scarf he had given me months ago. I took the candle between my fingers, then leaned forward and blew. I lit the candle again and placed it on his desk.
"You promised to taste the cake first," I said.
"Then taste," he said.
I dropped my mouth to his and kissed him like a woman who had fought too long to lose what was hers, like a woman who had learned to take, and to give. He tasted like coffee and the city at night and the safety of a man who would ruin himself to protect what he loved.
Afterward, he laughed and placed a paperplane he had kept folded in his wallet on my desk. It was small and bent and had my name on it in a child's scrawl.
"Do you remember?" he asked.
"I remember everything," I said.
He held my hand. "Then stay," he said. "Not because you belong here, but because you choose to."
"I choose to," I answered, but on my own terms.
He kissed the paper plane and placed it on top of Everett's painting. The plane was battered, but it was ours.
We didn't end the game. We changed it. We fought with laws and files, hugs and kisses, cake and truth. We exposed the men who hid behind merciless smiles. We learned to be kinder to the people we were because the wounds cannot be undone with a single apology, but they can be mended with daily care.
When the sun hit my window that next morning, Everett laughed at a silly cartoon, Cooper steamed his coffee, and the city hummed like a kind lover.
"Come in," I said when Coopers hands reached the door. "We have work."
Cooper put his jacket around me like a shield and kissed my temple.
"Always," he said.
We walked into the office together, step by step, as partners and as danger, as lovers and as two people who had survived each other.
The End
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