Without Warning: A Billionaire Romance (Playboys of New York Book 5), JA Low [book suggestions .TXT] 📗

to the corner bar and grab the bottle of scotch, open it, and take a giant swig. I’m going to need to drink this entire bottle to erase the memories of what I’ve just witnessed in my own home.

2

Rhys

“What do you mean Madison wants fifty percent of my company?” Staring blankly at my overpriced lawyer, six months after finding my wife fucking my best friend, I am perplexed that she has the nerve to want anything from me.

“There’s a problem with the prenup,” my lawyer tells me, but it’s more like a murmur.

“What do you mean there’s a problem with the prenup?” Anger begins and starts to climb to the surface with an explosion about to erupt like a volcano.

I have an iron-clad prenup.

We both signed it.

There should not be a problem.

“Yes. We have the paperwork. All that is correct,” he adds.

“Then what the hell is the problem? I need this divorce done.” Losing my patience with the man, I take a deep centering breath.

“It looks like the paperwork was not filed correctly.” The words are like lead in my stomach.

“What did you say?” Surely, I can’t be hearing this correctly.

“The clerk who usually files this type of paperwork was absent on that day. So another, more junior clerk, filed it, but they didn’t do it correctly,” he explains.

“And what the hell does that mean?” My blood is boiling.

“It means the prenup was never filed,” my lawyer tells me slowly.

The words sinking into my soul.

No.

No.

Shaking my head.

This cannot be happening right now.

“Okay, so what the hell does that mean, then?”

He better not say what I think he’s about to say.

“It means she is entitled to everything.”

My hand comes down and slaps the desk hard. “What the fuck!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Davenport. We have no idea what happened. The clerk who filed it that day is missing,” he explains.

“Missing?” He nods his head.

“Can we not backdate the prenup somehow, seeing as it was supposed to be lodged. Surely, the signature dates will help?” I ask.

“We would need to redo new paperwork and relodge it, but it’s probably too late for that now,” he tells me.

Basically, I’m fucking screwed.

There is no way Madison is going to settle, not when she knows there’s no prenup.

Fuck. I’m going to lose everything.

“And that’s why she wants fifty percent?”

My lawyer nods his head. “Mrs. Davenport states that for the years she worked for you while you dated, she helped you with your business,” he states. “That you sought her counsel on certain business opportunities,” he explains.

Of course, she does.

“She thinks because we had conversations after we fucked that it constitutes her counseling me on my business?”

My lawyer nods his head in agreement.

“The courts can’t seriously think this is legit? She was my fucking assistant.” My voice raises with every word that’s spoken.

“Unfortunately, due to you not having a prenup in place, she may be entitled to it all.”

“Which was your fault!” I yell. My stomach somersaults, wanting to bring up the contents of my lunch at the thought that I could lose everything I’ve worked so damn hard for.

Madison knows how hard I’ve worked to separate myself from my father. I guess knocking up your assistant, who’s forty years your junior, was a step too far after years of his infidelity to my mother. Of course, I sided with my mother during the horrendous divorce, as did my sister.

On the other hand, being the second born, my brother always hated that I would inherit the family business over him because of our birth order.

The thing is, I never wanted to be an architect, unlike him.

I never wanted the damn company.

But when the family split, he made his move and sided with our father and is now second-in-charge at Davenport Architects. I wanted to create my own empire, where I was in control, because I would have to pry it from the cold, dead hands of my father before he ever gave it to me.

That wasn’t the life I wanted for myself.

When my trust came into my hands at the age of twenty-five, after I finished my double major in Architecture Design and Business, I launched the Davenport Group, securing my first property in Palm Springs. Finding the worst house on the best street to build my luxury vacation rentals and boutique hotel empire, and now, I own a hundred luxury properties around the world as well as twenty boutique hotels.

My stomach sinks again at the realization that I’ve followed in the old man’s footsteps falling for his assistant, the old cliché not falling far from the tree. Still, instead, I’m the one being fucked over by my assistant.

“I’m not giving Madison a cent more outside of what I have already generously offered to her,” I tell my lawyer. I think the home in The Hamptons, as well as the apartment in Paris and an estate in Malibu, as well as a considerable cash lump sum, should be enough for two years of marriage.

“She’s willing to fight you on this?” my lawyer explains to me carefully.

“Then, if she wants a fight, I’ll give her a fight.” Standing abruptly, my chair scrapes across the marble floor of his office.

“I’ll do my best,” he tells me.

And with that, I turn on my heels and storm out of his office.

“What the hell do you mean she wants half of your business?” Stirling Hartford, my Chief Operations Officer, the second-in-command at the Davenport Group, asks. He warned me, the only one who warned me not to hook up with Madison because she was a gold digger. He was right. I should have heard him all those years ago instead of listening to my dick and heart. Maybe then, I wouldn’t find myself in this predicament.

“Some fucker didn’t file the paperwork right, and the prenup is null and void.”

“They did what?” Stirling’s voice raises.

“Some fill-in clerk, and now the asshole is missing,” I explain to him.

Stirling frowns. “Missing?” he questions.

I nod my head.

“That sounds a little suspicious, don’t you think?”

Those