The Billionaire From Philly Read online

  THE BILLIONAIRE FROM

  PHILLY

  UNITED STATES OF BILLIONIARE SERIES BOOK 12

  LENA SKYE

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  Summary

  Coming from the dark side of Philadelphia meant that Danielle was no stranger to danger.

  But nothing could prepare her for the type of trouble that billionaire Victor Andersson was involved in.

  After a steamy one night affair with the most powerful man in Philly, she was surprised to discover that Victor wanted to see more of her.

  Much more.

  But did getting involved with a man this dangerous make sense? Especially when it seemed her own life would be endangered?

  Time would only tell but as they say, when it comes to love nothing ever makes sense...

  Copyright Notice

  The Billionaire From Philly © 2018, Lena Skye

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Contents

  Chapter1

  Chapter2

  Chapter3

  Chapter4

  Chapter5

  Chapter6

  Chapter7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  Chapter1

  “Why are we going here?” It was a club on Sansom Street, just opened maybe a month before, and Danielle’s sense of something being amiss had begun to tingle. The word on the street was that Vagabond was owned by someone in the Sokolov family, that it was a front for new operations they had going on.

  “It’s a hot new club,” Danielle’s brother Sam said. “You said you wanted a night out, right?” Danielle looked her brother up and down. He had dressed carefully, avoiding the usual family colors of green and black that would have identified him on the street. He was also strictly obeying the club’s dress code, his tawny-colored hands and face and neck peeking out from a maroon blazer and white shirt, and a pair of oxfords under his navy, trouser-cut pants. No colors that anyone associated with, but semi-formal nonetheless. She’d never spoken to him about his affiliation with the Bey family, especially after she’d vacated her minor role in the family “business,” but she was tempted to ask him if he’d chosen the club for something she didn’t want to be a part of.

  “You’re not going to get me shot, are you?” Sam rolled his eyes.

  “You’re my sis,” he said. “I’m not going to take you somewhere you’re going to get shot.” Danielle looked at her brother for a long moment, uncertain of whether to trust him. She didn’t know what he did in the “business” but she was fairly sure he wasn’t just some accountant or anything like that. He probably wasn’t a soldier—but he was definitely someone, Danielle thought, who’d had blood on his hands once or twice.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere else, Sammy?” Sam shook his head.

  “I promise you, you’re going to be perfectly safe,” he said. He lowered his voice slightly, looking around in quick, little glances. “This place is neutral territory. Everyone’s agreed.” Danielle pressed her lips together and weighed the amount of time she’d spent getting ready versus the risk of something bad happening in the club they were about to enter together.

  She was almost certain that she was “cover” for Sam, for whatever it was he was there to do; she was a civilian, who’d had a peripheral role in the Bey family years before and who had pulled out before she learned anything that would make it risky for her to walk around freely in the world. “I’m going to hold you to that,” Danielle told her brother as they advanced towards the entrance. I did not spend forty minutes doing my makeup to go home, she thought with a little resentment.

  Sam had never fully supported her transitioning out of the family and had pointed out more than once that she could be making way more money than she was in the receptionist job she’d taken, but Danielle had decided that she just didn’t like the lifestyle. She’d known that if she hadn’t gotten out soon, she would have been pulled in deeper—and that would be irreversible, short of becoming a nark.

  They went into the club, and some of Danielle’s apprehension began to fade as the EDM flowed around her. She could definitely see the signs of Vagabond being something the Russian family came up with: the decor was all shiny or plush, neon and glitter, ostentatious displays with ice sculptures set up in the VIP areas, lots of vodka with most of it bearing Russian print, and the bartenders all had the hard, stone-faced look that seemed to be a defining characteristic of the families in the Russian mob scene in Philadelphia.

  But if it was neutral ground, she could relax a bit; even if it was a cover operation—for money laundering, or for drug deals, or whatever else—it was public enough that it was safe. There were a ton of people in the club that Danielle could tell weren’t in the syndicates; nobody would want to risk a big, splashy situation.

  “Dance floor for a bit, or drink first?” She looked at her brother; Sam shrugged.

  “I could do with a drink,” Sam said. Danielle saw her brother eyeing the bartenders, and she thought he was mentally comparing them to a roster of known family members.

  “Don’t start anything,” Danielle told her brother quietly.

  “Not here to start anything,” Sam replied with a smile. The black lights tucked around the club ceiling made his teeth almost blue in the mostly-dark room. More people were coming in, and if they were going to get a drink, they’d better get a move on.

  “Okay,” Danielle said. She followed her brother to the bar and looked around while he waited for attention from one of the bartenders. She saw a man of about six feet tall, blonde haired and blue eyed, walk into the club and directly past the bar, towards the VIP sections.

  The man was dressed in a tailored suit, sharkskin pattern, with a snowy white dress shirt underneath and a black tie. Danielle couldn’t help but stare a bit as he walked past where she and Sam stood at the bar. He had a look on his face like he knew exactly where he wanted to go—not exactly mean, but focused. That is a man on a mission, Danielle thought.

  She dismissed him out of her mind as Sam got her drink: vodka-cranberry. He’d gotten a Jack and coke for himself, and Danielle thought that depending on how long they were there, she might switch up later. She sipped and moved gradually out towards the dance floor, listening to the music and keeping an eye on her brother. Danielle thought to herself that whatever Sam’s reason was for coming to Vagabond, she was going to do her best to have a good night.

  As Danielle danced a bit and sipped her drink, she spotted Sam talking to some of the other people who had com
e in and felt that vague sense, again, that she was being used; of course, since Sam was paying for her drinks and had paid the cover for her to get into the club, so she didn’t have much room to complain. She kept an eye on her brother, but started to mingle more, wondering in the back of her mind what had happened to the guy she’d seen striding through the club on some kind of mission.

  Danielle went for another drink, getting a Jack and coke on her brother’s tab, and looked around, feeling the indescribable tingle in her nerves that came from spending more time than she liked around organized crime. Vagabond might be neutral territory, but that didn’t mean that things weren’t happening on its premises, she thought, with a little bit of resentment at her brother for bringing her there. She’d been legit for two years, and something like this might put her in a position to have to do more mob work—something she didn’t want. She took a deep breath and sipped the sharp, bittersweet concoction she’d ordered, her gaze traveling around the big main area of the club.

  To a trained eye, it was obvious that there were deals going on in the different corners of the club, off the “beaten path,” so to speak: guys talking quietly and a little too close to each other, folks in the VIP area who looked ever so slightly out of place but who carried themselves with the confidence of millionaires. Women who looked a little too exactly to the specifications of the club dress code.

  Drugs and probably sex work, Danielle thought. She’d dabbled a little bit—not the full thing, but she’d been an upscale “date” for a few of Sam’s friends once or twice, to give them someone legit-looking to go to important “business dinners” with. She’d never had sex with anyone, but she’d eaten her meal and been arm candy and helped, with the other women present, to make the deals that were going on at the table they sat at seem as legitimate as possible. Probably the Sokolovs get a cut of things—that’s why Sam wanted to make sure he had the tab, so he could put the cut he’s paying them on it.

  Danielle spotted the mystery man again as she let herself be coaxed out onto the dance floor. He seemed to be trying to leave, but some of the VIPs in the section he’d gone to were obviously making things distracting for him, trying to show him as much attention and honor as possible to make him stay. Must be someone important, she thought absently as she danced. If he was important to the Sokolovs, he was definitely someone she should stay away from; even if she wasn’t in the business anymore, it would create too many conflicts. Even if he was almost stunningly good-looking, even from a distance.

  She once more pushed the concerns she’d been feeling out of her mind, getting into the spirit of a night out as Sam took a break from whatever he was doing to join her on the dance floor. “Find any good-looking men, sis?” Danielle rolled her eyes.

  “Plenty of them, but none I want to go home with,” she told her brother. “So you’d better be planning on being my ride at the end of the night.” Sam laughed and they danced together like they had from childhood, impressing a few of the people around them with their coordinated moves.

  She had gone to the bar again to get another drink when she heard the beginnings of the commotion. There was shouting towards the entrance of the club, and at first Danielle thought that maybe the neutral territory concept was being violated—but an instant later she realized the reality of the situation: the police had come to raid Vagabond.

  And just after that it became apparent to her that the criminals doing business in the club were not about to let themselves be raided without a fight. Her heart started pounding in her chest and Danielle instinctively ducked down, mentally trying to figure out where the emergency exits might be—or, even better, the unmarked exits.

  Danielle headed towards the back of the club, where the employee areas would be, and thought twice about it when she was halfway there. Shots fired, and she caught the first acrid wafts of flashbangs and the insidious, eye-tightening whiff of tear gas. They would want to be careful, she knew; if people had meth on them, tear gas would be a bad idea in any large volume, since it could cross-react and take out at least relatively innocent bystanders just out for a night of fun.

  She collided with something—no, someone—who felt very solid, and looked up to see the sharkskin print spread over a wide, muscular back. The man she’d seen a few times that night, from the VIP section, turned around to face her. “You aren’t part of any business here, are you?” he asked. The DJ had stopped playing, and shouts and shots filled the air instead, making it hard for Danielle to hear.

  “No! No,” she said, shaking her head. The man looked around and she felt his hand close on hers.

  “Follow me, then,” he said, pulling her behind him. Danielle would have wrested her hand free, remembering her brother still in the melee going on further towards the front of the club, but then reminded herself that Sam had promised her he wouldn’t get her shot, and that she wasn’t a part of his business, anyway. Whatever fate he would meet that night, she had a responsibility to herself not to get caught. She followed the man down an unmarked corridor and wondered at the fact that she actually trusted him—she didn’t know his name, had only seen him, and after all he was a Sokolov, clearly; he’d been a favorite in the most exclusive VIP area of the club.

  Darkness swallowed them up and Danielle started to doubt her decision to accept the man’s help, right up until she heard the mechanical clunking of an emergency door opening, and then—all at once, it seemed—they emerged outside, behind the club, in an area that was almost stunningly silent.

  None of the cops in the raid had managed to find the little hidden exit, which told Danielle that it was a serious secret. Whoever he is, he’s high up, clearly. She stopped, taking a deep breath to try and slow the pounding of her heart. The door slammed shut behind them, separating them more firmly from the chaos, and Danielle tried to get her bearings.

  “Did you come with anyone?” Danielle shrugged.

  “My brother,” she said. “Pretty sure that’s not an option for a ride home now, though.” She smiled at the pale, blonde man wryly.

  “I can give you a ride,” he said, and she expected him to leer—she expected a Russian accent, an “offer” of some kind in the next breath. Instead he just met her gaze levelly. “But I think we both need a drink after that.”

  “I’ve had drinks already tonight,” Danielle said cautiously.

  “I think we both need another one—unless you’re drunker than you look right now.” Danielle chuckled softly.

  “No, definitely not drunk,” she admitted. “But I’m also not the type to just go along with someone I’ve never met to somewhere I don’t know. I can get an Uber.”

  “And you’ll get caught up in whatever blockade they’ve set up,” the man countered. “I can guarantee your safety.” Danielle stared up at the tall man speculatively.

  “And how can you do that?” The man smiled slightly.

  “Believe me, I can. Let me call my driver and we’ll get out of here—unless you’d like to take your chances?” Danielle considered it for maybe two seconds before shaking her head.

  “If you can guarantee my safety, I’ll go with you,” she said.

  Chapter2

  Victor had seen the woman long before the raid had started, and he’d thought about talking to her if he could ever break free of the loving embrace—so to speak—of the Sokolov family members he’d come to Vagabond to speak to, but when the police had shown up to break up the business going on, that had more or less slipped out of his mind.

  “You don’t need to get caught up in this,” Nikolai had said, rising to his feet. “You don’t need your name in the papers about this bullshit.”

  “I won’t be arrested,” Victor had pointed out.

  “No, but it’ll put your name in the mud, and we don’t want that,” Nikolai had insisted. “There’s a secret exit—not even these cops should know about it—back near the end of the VIP section, behind a curtain there. Even most of the staff don’t know about it. They think it’s a closet. Get
out of here.”

  It had been a stroke of luck when he’d felt someone collide with him and turned around to see the exact woman he’d thought of talking to earlier in the night: maybe five-seven, with glowing, light sepia colored skin and her hair done in two braids, wearing a gorgeous blue dress that highlighted her curves and looked absolutely stunning on her—covering more of her body than more than half the women in the club seemed to have seen fit to cover. Clearly, she wasn’t “working” in the sense that many of the other women were; that much he knew.

  He’d acted on impulse, telling her to come with him, and as he followed the alley towards the street, removed from the action, Victor took out his phone to call his driver. “Alan,” he said when the call connected. “I need you to pick me and a friend up on the street. Give me a second to find out where we’re coming out.” He looked at the woman again, realizing that he hadn’t even asked her name. She was just as beautiful in the orange light in the alley as she’d been in the club, and he thought she would be as beautiful anywhere at all.

  “I think we’re coming out on Moravian,” the woman said quietly. Victor looked around as they came to the end of the alley and tried to find something that would let him determine if she was right. She cleared her throat and directed his attention to her phone, which she’d taken out. She held it up, and he saw that she had the GPS app going—and that they were, indeed, coming out on Moravian Street. How the Sokolovs had managed that with the club squarely situated on Sansom Street, he wasn’t sure—but it was good to be far enough removed from the raid that he couldn’t be connected with it.

  “Anywhere you want to go for the drink in particular?” Victor had already gotten the impression that the woman with him was wary of his intentions—but he could, he hoped, remedy that pretty quickly. Someone that beautiful would have learned to be wary pretty young—lots of men would have bad intentions for her. His only intention in that moment was to get her away from the chaos, and maybe have a conversation with her. Beyond that he only had vague hopes, and then only if things worked out during the conversation. Victor smiled, he hoped coming across as friendly rather than creepy.