The Billionaire's Pet

3. Ash

The rain hammered against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my study, a chaotic percussion that usually irritated my sense of order. Tonight, however, it felt like applause.

I poured myself another drink, though I didn't need it. I was already intoxicated. Not by the Macallan, but by the scent that still lingered in the air of the room,the smell of rain, expensive soap, and the sharp, metallic tang of Leo Thorne’s fear.

I sat behind my desk, the surface a slab of polished obsidian, and opened the leather-bound folder that had lived in my top drawer for three years.

Inside were the photographs.

Leo at the conservatory, his head bowed over the keys. Leo walking home in the snow, his coat too thin for the New York winter. Leo crying in the hospital cafeteria after his father’s diagnosis.

Most people would call it stalking. I called it due diligence. I don't invest in assets I haven't thoroughly vetted, and Leo was the most exquisite asset I had ever encountered.

"He’s in the West Wing, sir," Hendricks said, appearing in the doorway. He didn't ask questions. He knew better. "He’s currently standing in the center of the bedroom. He hasn't moved for ten minutes."

"He’s processing," I murmured, my eyes fixed on a photo of Leo laughing,a rare expression I intended to see in person, and only for me. "He thinks he’s made a deal with the devil. He’s waiting for the pitchfork."

"And will he find it?"

I looked up, my gaze sharpening. "He’ll find a cage, Hendricks. But it will be a cage so comfortable he’ll eventually forget the door was ever locked. Inform the kitchen,no citrus, no caffeine after six. His fingers are prone to tremors when he’s overstimulated. I want him steady."

"Yes, sir."

When Hendricks left, I stood and walked to the window. In the reflection of the glass, I looked exactly as the world saw me, Mr. Perfect. The billionaire with the pristine reputation and the surgical precision. They didn't see the rot underneath. They didn't see the jagged edges of a man who grew up with nothing and decided he would eventually own everything.

I had waited three years for the Morenos to slip up. I had waited for Leo’s debts to pile up until they were a mountain he couldn't climb. I could have paid them off anonymously. I could have been his patron.

But I didn't want his gratitude. I wanted his life.

I walked out of the study and down the hall toward the West Wing. My footsteps were silent on the silk runners. I stopped outside his door. The wood was heavy oak, thick enough to muffle a scream, though I hoped it wouldn't come to that.

I pressed my palm against the door. I could almost feel him on the other side,his heart rate, his heat, his beautiful, terrified soul.

He was a masterpiece of broken parts, and I was the only one with the hands stable enough to put him back together.

"Sleep well, Leo," I whispered to the wood. "Tomorrow, you start realizing that you weren't bought to be a musician. You were bought to be mine."

I turned away, a ghost of a smile touching my lips. My world was finally in order. The center was no longer empty.

**

I walked away from Leo’s door, but the pull was insistent. Like a phantom limb, I felt his presence, a new anchor in my perfectly ordered chaos. Sleep would be a long time coming. My mind was already racing, planning. Hendricks would ensure his schedule was meticulously managed, but some things required my personal touch.

My inner sanctum,a smaller, more secure office adjacent to my study,was where I kept the true controls of my domain. I went there now, past the shelves of rare books and the hushed glow of the antique maps on the walls. The air here was thicker, saturated with the quiet hum of technology.

I settled into the leather chair before a bank of monitors. Each screen showed a different feed from the sprawling estate, the gates, the perimeter, the various wings of the mansion. My gaze, however, gravitated to the feed labeled WEST WING, SUITE 3.

Leo's suite.

He was still standing in the center of the vast bedroom, exactly as Hendricks had reported. He was looking out the panoramic window, his shoulders hunched, the rain still clinging to his hair, making it appear darker. He was silhouetted against the stormy night, a lonely figure in a gilded cage.

I zoomed in.

His lips were moving. He was talking to himself, or perhaps to the reflection of the storm outside. I wished I had the audio feed for that room, but I had removed it months ago. Too intrusive, even for me. I wanted to hear his music, not his panicked whispers.

He moved then, slowly, as if his limbs were heavy. He walked to the massive four-poster bed and sank onto the edge, his head falling into his hands. His posture screamed defeat. Good. He needed to understand the finality of his choice.

A slow, deliberate sip of my whiskey. I watched him through the lens, the low-light camera painting him in shades of grey and silver. He looked small in the opulent room, dwarfed by the antique furniture and the high ceilings. He looked… vulnerable.

A primal urge, hot and swift, coursed through me. To go to him. To wrap my arms around him. To tell him he was safe, protected, mine. But that would be a mistake. He needed to understand his place, his purpose. He needed to know that while I would offer him every luxury, his freedom was a privilege I would never grant.

He eventually pushed himself up. He moved to the private bathroom, and I watched as the light flickered on behind the frosted glass. I saw the blurred outline of his form as he shed his clothes. My grip on the glass tightened. The heat of him, even through the impersonal lens, was palpable. I allowed myself a moment of pure, unadulterated possessiveness as I imagined those hands, those supple fingers that commanded music, now tracing lines on his own skin, washing away the remnants of his old, pathetic life.

When he emerged, a towel wrapped low around his waist, he walked back to the bed. He pulled back the heavy silk duvet, revealing crisp, white sheets. He hesitated for a moment, then slid beneath them.

He curled into a tight ball, facing away from the window, away from the camera. His shoulders still trembled slightly. He was crying.

My smile, cold and satisfied, stretched across my face.

Good.

The storm outside raged, but in my inner sanctum, there was only a profound sense of peace. The world was chaotic, but Leo Thorne, my perfect, beautiful acquisition, was finally where he belonged.

He was in my house. He was in my bed. He was in my control.

And tomorrow, when the sun rose, he would begin to understand that his new life, his perfect life, had only just begun.

***

I set the whiskey glass down on the obsidian desk. The amber liquid caught the light of the monitors, glowing like a dying star.

My mind drifted back three years. To the Juilliard recital hall.

I hadn’t gone there to find a person, I had gone to find silence. My business was mid-merger, a bloodbath of litigation and corporate sabotage, and my head was a storm of numbers and threats. I had stepped into the back of the auditorium just as a nineteen-year-old Leo Thorne sat down at the piano.

He had looked different then. Softer. He hadn't yet been hollowed out by his father’s medical bills or the predatory interest rates of the Moreno family. But when he played, the world didn't just go silent,it stopped existing.

He played Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It was a piece about struggle, about coming back from the brink of madness. I watched his hands,long, pale, and impossibly agile. They moved with a desperate precision that made my chest ache with a sensation I hadn't felt in decades, want.

Not just s****l want. I wanted to own that precision. I wanted to be the only reason those hands moved.

I had walked out of that hall and immediately called my head of security. “Find out everything,” I had told him. “His debts, his family, his failures. I want to know what it takes to break him, and what it takes to keep him.”

I had been the architect of his misery for three years. I had subtly blocked smaller scholarship opportunities. I had ensured the banks were cautious about his loans. I had steered the Morenos toward him like a shepherd guiding a lamb toward a wolf, knowing that eventually, he would have nowhere left to turn but me.

Cruel? Perhaps. But in my world, you don't wait for things to be given to you. You create the vacuum, and then you fill it.

I looked back at the monitor. Leo was still curled up, a small, shivering knot under the silk sheets.

Tomorrow, the framing would begin. I had already ordered a wardrobe of silk and cashmere in shades of charcoal, navy, and cream,colors that would make his pale skin look like fine porcelain. I had scheduled a nutritionist to repair the damage of months of cheap ramen and stress. And I had a custom-built Steinway waiting for him in the conservatory, a twin to the one he had played tonight, but better.

He would hate the control at first. He would fight the boundaries. He would call me a monster.

I leaned back, my eyes narrowing as I watched the steady rise and fall of his breathing through the screen.

Let him call me a monster. As long as he called me his.

I reached out and touched the screen, my fingertip resting right over the curve of his shoulder. The glass was cold, but in my mind, I could feel the heat of him.

"You have no idea how lucky you are, Leo," I whispered to the empty room. "The world would have chewed you up and spat you out. But I... I am going to make you eternal."

I clicked the monitor off. The room plunged into darkness, leaving only the sound of the rain against the glass.

I walked to my own bedroom, my mind already composed. The hunt was over. Now, the keeping began.