Juliette
He warned me we were doomed from the start, and I should have listened. But some fires burn too hot to resist.
Now, I'm trapped in a vicious cycle of desire, tangled up in Areston's dangerous world. Every kiss, every touch pulls me deeper...
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"Never imagined I'd be bagging a lunch date with Juliette Rothschild," the typical Silicon Valley billionaire dressed in a tight-fitted blue t-shirt, black jeans, and ruffled hair quips with a practiced smile as he sits down opposite me at Nonna's restaurant.
It's late afternoon, and far from looking like a man who hopped out of his lavish private jet to fly down to New York and drove a luxurious collector's edition McLaren here, he looks like a Harvard dork who just woke up and walked out of his dorm room.
"I appreciate you coming down here on such short notice, Mr. Montgomery," I smile, closing my iPad and gesturing toward the piping hot Neapolitan between us. "Try this. Belle Napoli makes the best Neapolitan. Even better than the ones they make in Naples."
"Is that so?" He takes a slice and hums his approval. "This is genuinely the best Neapolitan I've ever tasted."
"I know, right? I love it here," I say, folding a slice of pizza and taking a bite.
"The place looks good too. It's like I've suddenly been transported to some ancient family-run pizza establishment in the streets of Naples, and the quality," he makes the chef's kiss gesture.
"The owner uses tried and tested recipes passed down to her through generations," I nod, licking my thumb. "She markets them as pizzas for the soul for a reason."
"Definitely for the soul," he nods, taking another bite, completely oblivious to what's about to hit him.
I reach into my Birkin with my clean hand pull out a bright pink envelope, and push it towards him on the table while biting into the slice of folded pizza.
"What's this?"
"Let's consider it... pizza for your soul," I reply with a smirk.
His eyes narrow as he wipes his fingers clean with the napkin and opens the envelope to reveal a pen drive and some neatly folded papers. Unfazed, I lift the glass of wine to my mouth as I watch his eyebrows shoot up, reading the content.
"This..."
"This," I state, cutting him off, "is what you've been up to. It's illegal, and it's fraud. It's market manipulation. It's a betrayal of every shareholder and user who trusts you and your platform."
He looks up, his jaw clenched. "How did you get access to this highly secure data?"
"If that's your definition of secure, then I'm glad I'm not using your platform. Besides, how I got it doesn't matter. What matters is that it's incriminating." I spray an extra layer of oregano on my pizza before eating it while he's glaring at me. "Can you imagine the field day SEC would have with this? Criminal investigation, multiple lawsuits... it would be so costly and messy. Not to forget the PR nightmare."
"This is not fair."
I lick the cheese off my thumb. "I had lunch last week with the head of SEC. I could have mentioned this when the topic came up, but I felt so generous towards you."
