The Billionaire she threw away

Chapter 02

The Billionaire She Threw Away

Chapter Two

Jensen stood at the curb where the cab lane met the main road, phone still warm in his hand from the call, and waited for his sister.

He hadn't seen Geena in almost two years. Phone calls only, and even those were rare, because the rule his grandfather had set didn't just cover money and status. It covered contact too. Geena had broken that part of the rule more times than either of them would admit to Alfred, sneaking calls late at night when she thought no one was tracking her line. Jensen never told her to stop. He needed those calls more than he ever let on.

Geena wasn't his sister by blood. Alfred had adopted her when she was six, after some business arrangement with her parents had gone sideways in a way nobody ever fully explained to either of them. It didn't matter. From the day she arrived at the Pike estate, she'd attached herself to Jensen like he was the only solid thing in a house full of cold marble and colder relatives, and he'd let her. Real siblings didn't always understand each other the way they did. He used to think that was strange. He'd stopped questioning it years ago.

The last time he'd seen her in person, she'd cried at the gate for almost twenty minutes, furious that the rule meant she couldn't even visit him during the trial. Jensen remembered standing on the other side of that gate, wanting badly to break the rule himself just to hug her, and not doing it, because some habits from growing up under Alfred Pike's roof went deeper than wanting.

He didn't have to wait long before the club's side door opened behind him and Rose's voice carried out into the street.

"Look who's still here." She had her arm looped through Benjamin's, walking like she owned the sidewalk. "Waiting for me, Jensen? That's pathetic, even for you."

"I'm not waiting for you."

"Sure you're not." She laughed, the same sharp laugh from inside. "You're like a stray dog that doesn't understand it's been kicked out. Just sitting here, hoping someone throws you a scrap."

Benjamin straightened his jacket and looked Jensen over the way a man looks at something he's stepped in. "Poor people don't have dignity. That's the thing nobody tells you growing up. You can act proud all you want, but at the end of the day, you're still standing on a sidewalk with a busted lip while the rest of us drive home." He pulled a key fob from his pocket and pressed it without looking. Down the street, a yellow Lamborghini lit up and chirped twice. "That's mine, by the way. In case you were wondering what dignity actually looks like."

Jensen said nothing. He'd learned a long time ago that giving Benjamin a reaction only fed him.

That was when the sound came, low at first, then loud, an engine working hard against the asphalt. Headlights swung around the corner two blocks down, and a black armored SUV came tearing toward them faster than any car had business going on a street full of people.

Rose grabbed Benjamin's arm, knuckles white. "What is that—"

She didn't finish the sentence before the SUV cut across two lanes and drove straight into the side of Benjamin's Lamborghini.

The sound was enormous. Metal folding into metal, glass spraying across the road, the Lamborghini's frame buckling sideways like it was made of foil. The car alarm screamed for about two seconds before it died along with the electronics underneath the hood.

Benjamin's mouth hung open. "What the hell—my car, my CAR—"

The driver's door of the SUV swung open and a young woman stepped out, dark hair pulled back, dressed like she'd come straight from somewhere far more important than a club parking lot. She didn't even look at the wreck she'd just caused.

A few people on the sidewalk had already started whispering quietly. "That's her. That's the Pike girl. I saw her at the gala last spring." Someone else murmured something about not getting in her way. Within seconds, the small crowd had gone from mocking Jensen to studying Geena like she was the only person on the street worth looking at.

Benjamin's fury lasted about as long as it took him to actually see her. Up close, in the streetlight, she was young, sharp-featured, dressed in clothes that cost more than the car she'd just destroyed, and clearly several tax brackets above him. His whole posture shifted.

"I'm so sorry about the confusion," he said, smoothing his jacket again, voice suddenly warm. "Beautiful driving, by the way. Reckless, but beautiful. Can I ask your name?"

Rose's face went tight watching him pivot that fast.

Geena didn't look at him once. She walked straight past Benjamin like he wasn't standing there at all and crossed to Jensen, wrapping both arms around him before he could say a word.

"I missed you," she said into his shoulder. "I missed you so much."

Benjamin and Rose both went quiet.

Geena pulled back and finally took in the state of him, the split lip, the torn collar, the way he was holding his ribs without realizing it. Her whole expression changed, the warmth draining out of it and something harder taking its place.

"What happened to you?"

"Geena, it's fine—"

"Don't say it's fine." Her voice dropped, cold now, the warmth from a second ago completely gone. "Who did this?"

Rose, never one to read a room, crossed her arms. "Oh, please. He probably started something and got what he deserved. Honestly, I don't know why anyone bothers feeling sorry for him. He's nothing." She glanced at Geena like she expected her to agree, woman to woman. "And whoever you are, you should know better than to waste your sympathy on a guy like this."

The slap landed before Rose even saw Geena's arm move.

Rose's head snapped sideways hard. She stumbled, caught her heel wrong, and went down hard onto the pavement, one hand flying to her mouth. When she pulled it away, there was blood on her fingers and a gap where a tooth used to be.

"You broke my—" Rose's scream came out garbled, half rage and half disbelief.

Benjamin's flirtatious tone evaporated instantly. "Hey! You don't get to just—" He snapped his fingers without finishing the sentence, and bodyguards started pouring out from the club's entrance and from two cars parked along the curb. Jensen counted at least ten of them, fanning out in a loose circle around himself and Geena.

"Teach them both a lesson," Benjamin said, backing up a step to let his men do the work.

Jensen put himself slightly in front of Geena, fists raised despite knowing exactly how this had gone the last time he'd tried to fight back tonight.

He never got the chance to throw a punch.

A shape moved out of the dark faster than anyone could track, and the first bodyguard simply left the ground, folding sideways into the open door of a parked car with a sound like a dropped sack of flour. He didn't get up.

The man who'd thrown him stepped into the streetlight. Tall, built like someone who trained because his life depended on it, completely calm, like crushing a man into a car door was no different than holding a door open for someone.

"Seth," Geena breathed, relief flooding her voice.

Seth Sting didn't answer her. He was already moving.

He'd been Jensen's personal bodyguard from the time Jensen could walk until the day he turned eighteen and the four-year trial began, the day Alfred had ordered Seth to stand down and let his heir live like no one for four years. Seth had hated that order more than almost anything in his life. Tonight, with no order standing in his way, he made up for every single day of it.

The remaining bodyguards rushed him in pairs. It didn't matter. Seth moved through them like they were furniture, a forearm into one man's throat, a knee into another's ribs, a sweep that put two more flat on their backs before they understood what had happened. Less than a minute in, eight men were down, groaning on the pavement or not moving at all.

Jensen watched it happen and felt something strange settle in his chest, something he hadn't let himself feel in four years. Not satisfaction exactly. More like the quiet relief of a held breath finally let out. He'd spent four years absorbing every insult, every shove, every reminder that he didn't matter, and telling himself that was the price of the trial, that it would be over eventually. Watching Seth tear through the men who'd just stood by while one of them beat him bloody in a private room felt like the first honest thing that had happened to him all night.

Benjamin kept shouting orders that nobody was left to follow. "Get him! What is wrong with you, GET HIM—"

Only one man remained standing. Bigger than the rest, slower to react but clearly stronger, the kind of build that came from actual professional training instead of just looking intimidating in a suit. Jensen recognized him immediately. The same man who'd beaten him down in the private room less than an hour ago. The same man who'd carried him out by one twisted arm and dropped him in the alley like trash.

Seth recognized him too, somehow, without ever being told. Maybe it was the way Jensen's whole body had gone tense at the sight of him.

"This one," Seth said quietly, almost to himself, recognition flickering across his face for the first time all night.

The fight lasted four seconds. The bodyguard threw one wide punch that Seth simply wasn't where it landed, and then Seth's hand closed around his forearm.

The crack that followed made Rose, still on the ground holding her bleeding mouth, go pale and silent.

The man screamed. Seth didn't stop. He took the other arm next, the same arm that had thrown Jensen out the door, and broke that one too, slow and deliberate, like he wanted to be sure Jensen heard exactly how it sounded.

"He used both arms to throw you out," Seth said, finally looking over at Jensen, voice as flat as if he were reporting the weather. "Seemed fair he loses the use of both."

The man dropped to his knees, both arms hanging wrong, sobbing into the pavement.

Benjamin stood frozen by the wreck of his Lamborghini, surrounded by ten unconscious or broken men, staring at Seth like he'd just watched something he didn't have words for. An hour ago he'd been the most powerful person on this street, the one who decided who got humiliated and who got to watch. Now his car was scrap metal, his entire security detail was on the ground, and the man responsible was standing there like none of it had cost him any effort at all.

Rose hadn't moved from the curb, blood dripping between her fingers, eyes wide and fixed on Jensen like she was finally, for the first time all night, actually afraid of him. An hour ago she'd called him pathetic. A stray dog. Pocket change. She didn't have a single word left to say now, and for someone like Rose, that silence said more than anything she could have managed.

Sirens were starting somewhere in the distance, faint but getting closer, the kind of sound that usually sent people running. Seth didn't move toward the wreckage or the men on the ground. He simply walked back to Jensen's side and stood there, calm, like he had nowhere else to be and nothing left to prove. He glanced down at Jensen's split lip once, then away, the only sign that any of this had been personal to him at all.

Nobody on that street was laughing at Jensen Pike anymore.