All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) by Olivia Thorne

royally, but that I hadn’t been absolutely, 100% clear, and now I was going to be: she had one last chance. She could choose me or my family. Simple as that. She told me not to be so dramatic. I think she specifically said, ‘I don’t do ultimatums.’ I told her she better do this one: choose, or get the fuck out and never cross my path again.
    “She just sneered and said, ‘Now I see… all along I thought it was some sort of immature phase, this obsession with getting back at your family. I hoped you’d get over it, but now I see you’re just a fool. It’s business . It’s all just business. It’s not personal.’ And I told her, ‘That’s where you’re wrong. It’s all personal, especially the business.’ And then I told her she’d obviously made her choice a long time ago, so get the fuck out.”
    I stared at him. “What did she do?”
    “Didn’t say another word. Just stared me down like I was a piece of shit… and then she took off her engagement ring, tossed it at my feet in contempt, and then she turned around and walked out. Had a couple of assistants come by the next day and collect her things.”
    I sat there, my mouth open.
    Before I’d met Connor, I’d thought I had a lot of drama in my life. Turns out I didn’t have any , not by comparison. From his parents to his sociopathic fiancée, I’d never met anybody with as much fucked-up-ness in their lives.
    He looked over at me with a little grin. “Fun stuff, huh?”
    “That’s not the word I would have used.”
    He drained the last few drops from his glass, then set it down on the coffee table. “What are you thinking?”
    “I can see why you didn’t sleep with anybody else for the last eight months,” I said. “In fact, I’m kind of astounded you didn’t go gay.”
    He burst out laughing, his head leaning back on the sofa. When he stopped, he wiped a tear from his eye. “Ohhh… that was good… I’m sure Sebastian would have approved, but no, I love women way too much for one bad one to turn me to the other team.”
    I reached out a hand and stroked his hair. “Thank God for that.”
    “Yeah… well… besides not going gay, there was a lot of fallout,” he said, suddenly getting quieter. “I didn’t trust anybody for the longest time. In fact… and if you tell him this, I’ll deny it… but one of the reasons I didn’t tell Sebastian about the Nevada deal was I worried if maybe he’d worked with Miranda behind my back.”
    “What?! You think he helped Miranda? He HATES Miranda!”
    “And always has.” Connor closed his eyes and shook his head. “I was being paranoid. But by the time I’d begun setting it up, I couldn’t exactly tell him, ‘Oh, by the way, I didn’t trust you three months ago, but now I’ll tell you everything.’”
    I stared at him. “You don’t honestly think – ”
    “I know he didn’t.”
    “How? How do you know? ”
    “Because I had him checked out thoroughly by third parties.” Connor opened his eyes and saw my dismayed reaction. “Lily, you have to remember, I’d just gotten betrayed by the woman I was planning to spend the rest of my life with. I didn’t trust anyone. ”
    “But you told me last night,” I whispered.
    He smiled. “Because I trust you.” Then the smile disappeared. “And that’s what’s scaring me.”
    “That’s why you flipped out?” I asked, totally confused. “Because you can trust me?”
    “No.” He stood up and walked over to the window, stared out into the darkness. “Because I was going to cut you loose. I was going to toss you overboard and let the chips fall where they may… but then I realized I couldn’t. That’s when I flipped out – because I couldn’t do what I needed to do. What the situation demanded I do.”
    As soon his words registered in my mind, my heart seized up and the blood froze in every one of my veins.
    It’s not every day that you hear, Yeah, I was going to let my psycho-bitch ex destroy your life, and then I