Wrong Room, Right Billionaire: Ultimate Revenge

"Harder, Colin... what if someone from the gala walks in?"

The muffled whimper seeped through the crack of the mahogany double doors, accompanied by the wet slap of skin and rustling silk.

Gidget Mcfarland froze in the deserted VIP corridor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The champagne glass in her hand trembled. She had spent two hours dodging producers and smiling through pleasantries to secure funding for her indie project-money she needed for her younger brother's cardiac medication. Her fiancé of ten years, Colin Mueller, had excused himself thirty minutes ago for an urgent call.

She stared at the plain silver band on her finger.

She stepped closer. Through the gap in the doors, the dim light revealed the leather couch inside the private lounge.

Her step-sister, Dixie Hughes, was arched over the armrest, platinum curls spilling over bare shoulders. Colin stood behind her, tuxedo pants undone, hands gripping Dixie's hips.

"Let them hear," Colin grunted. "Gidget is still out in the ballroom making a fool of herself. She won't come back here."

Dixie giggled, tilting her head back. The beauty mark beneath her right eye caught the light.

"Be careful with my stomach, baby," she purred. "The clinic confirmed it this morning. Four weeks. When are you going to dump that penniless charity case?"

A folded paper slid from Dixie's clutch onto the rug. The black header of an ultrasound report was impossible to miss.

Colin kissed her sloppily. "Soon. Once I finalize the trust fund injection using her clean public profile tonight, I'll cut her loose. I've funded her sickly brother's bills for years. Done more than enough charity."

The blood in Gidget's veins turned to ice.

Ten years. Ten years of cooking his meals, ironing his shirts, giving up lead roles to protect his family's image, enduring his mother's sneers. And all along, he was sleeping with the woman who had made her life hell since their parents remarried.

Gidget did not cry. Her knuckles went white around the door handle.

She kicked the mahogany door wide open.

The crash echoed down the corridor. Dixie shrieked, scrambling for her wrap. Colin stumbled back, face draining, fumbling with his trousers.

"Gidget!" he gasped. "It's not what you think!"

Gidget walked in slowly. Her amber eyes were dry, burning with a lethal stillness. She stopped at the coffee table, gaze dropping to the ultrasound sheet.

"Four weeks pregnant," she said, voice eerily calm. "And you're waiting for the trust fund paperwork before you discard your charity case. Did I miss anything?"

Dixie recovered first. Her lips twitched with malice, then she leaned against Colin's arm, letting crocodile tears spill.

"Gidget, please don't be mad at Colin..." she sobbed. "We never meant to hurt you. Blame me. Don't ruin his reputation."

Colin's guilt instantly morphed into arrogance. He stepped forward, shielding Dixie, and smoothed his hair.

"Since you saw it, there's no point hiding it," he said, chin lifted. "Dixie is carrying my child. The Mueller family needs an heir. You've kept me waiting ten years, acting pure and untouchable. Dixie knows how to be a real woman."

He glanced at her simple makeup and bare neck with patronizing pity.

"Be practical, Gidget. You're an adopted orphan with no backing. Your brother Conway is draining hundreds of thousands in the ICU every month. Stay quiet, let us announce our engagement peacefully, and I'll still cover his surgery next week. Best deal you'll ever get."

Gidget looked at the man she had loved for a decade. Every memory rotted into filth.

"The best deal?" she repeated softly.

A cold smile curved her lips. She raised her arm and hurled the champagne into his face.

Golden liquid splashed over his hair and tuxedo shirt. Colin gasped, wiping his eyes, face turning violent red.

"Gidget! Are you out of your goddamn mind?" he roared. "Without my money, your useless brother will be on the street by morning!"

Dixie wept loudly from the sofa. "Colin, stop! It's my fault! I'll take the baby and leave New York!"

"Apologize to Dixie right now!" Colin barked, pointing a shaking finger. "Or I swear I'll freeze every dollar in Conway's medical trust tonight!"

Murmurs rose from the corridor as guests and photographers gathered near the open doorway.

Gidget stood straight, looking at them like vermin.

"You disgust me," she said.

She dropped the empty glass. It shattered between Colin's polished shoes.

She turned and strode toward the doorway, pushing past the whispering onlookers without a backward glance. The chandeliers of the grand lobby blurred as she broke into a run, shoved open the emergency exit, and plunged down the concrete stairs into the cold, torrential rain of the underground parking lot.

The freezing autumn rain swept across Fifth Avenue, soaking through Gidget's thin silk gown within seconds.

Her phone buzzed violently inside her clutch. Her stepmother's frantic calls. Colin's venomous texts threatening to pull Conway's life support.

Gidget ignored them all. Her vision swam with dark spots as low blood sugar gripped her limbs. Conway, nineteen, pale and fragile in the ICU. She needed shelter. She needed to think.

She stumbled through the revolving brass doors of the Four Seasons Hotel Manhattan.

The doorman cast a suspicious look at her drenched, clinging dress. Gidget lowered her head and slipped into the private elevator bank behind the grand lounge.

Her trembling fingers reached for the lobby button, but a sudden wave of dizziness hit her. Her palm struck the gold keycard pad, triggering the override for the top-floor presidential suite.

The elevator surged upward in silence.

Eighty stories above Manhattan, the imperial penthouse was pitch black.

A tall, broad-shouldered man sat motionless in the shadows of the velvet sofa, damp black hair clinging to his temples. A vein pulsed along his rigid jaw. On his left wrist, a worn pink scrunchie stood out against pale skin.

Thirty minutes ago, his friend Jamey Black had slipped a potent stimulant into his whiskey, laughing about testing whether the cold-blooded Wall Street tyrant was truly immune to female touch.

The heat tore through Ezequiel Finch's veins like liquid fire. For twenty-eight years, he had suffered from severe neurogenic hypersensitivity-any skin-to-skin contact with a woman triggered allergic urticaria, throat constriction, anaphylactic shock. Combined with two decades of chronic insomnia, his nervous system was on the edge of collapse.

He slammed his crystal tumbler against the wall. Glass shattered, scotch splashing across the wallpaper.

"Jamey..." he rasped. "You're a dead man."

A soft chime echoed as the private elevator doors slid open.

Gidget staggered out into the dim corridor. The suite's double doors were slightly ajar. Thinking it was an open guest lounge, she pushed inside.

"Hello?" Her voice was hoarse. "Is anyone in here?"

The scent of Cuban tobacco and cedarwood filled her senses.

Her voice was a spark in a pool of gasoline.

Heavy leather soles struck the floor. A towering presence moved through the darkness with terrifying speed.

Gidget's instincts screamed to retreat, but her soaked heels slipped. She gasped, tipping forward.

A scalding hand shot out and locked around her wrist like an iron shackle.

She cried out as a massive force dragged her inside, slamming the door shut behind her.

Before she could scream, she was spun around and pinned against the cold marble wall.

A towering shadow loomed over her, blocking out the faint neon glow of the skyline. His ragged breath was scorching against her collarbone.

Ezequiel waited for the familiar burn-the hives, the itching, the throat-closing terror that had haunted him his entire life.

None of it came.

No allergic reaction. No hives where his fingers dug into her wrist.

Instead, a delicate, rain-washed scent drifted from the trembling girl in his arms. The moment it reached his senses, the blinding headache that had tormented him for twenty years vanished.

His blue-gray eyes dilated.

"Who sent you?" His voice was a deep, gravelly rasp. His fingers slid up her forearm, his rough thumb pressing hard against the hollow of her jaw, forcing her face up.

"Let me go..." Gidget sobbed, pushing against the rock-hard wall of his chest. "Please... I walked into the wrong room..."

Her freezing fingertips brushed the bare skin at his open collar.

That slight touch shattered the last thread of his sanity.

He stared down at her pale, tear-streaked face, illuminated by a flash of lightning. A possessive, feral smirk curved his cold lips.

"Wrong room?" he whispered. "You walked into my cage, sweetheart. You're not walking back out."

Before Gidget could scream, his mouth crashed down on hers.

The rain finally ceased just before dawn, leaving the Manhattan skyline bathed in a muted slate-gray haze.

Inside the imperial suite, the expansive California king bed was a disaster of tangled Egyptian cotton sheets. The faint scent of crushed cedar and spent heat still lingered heavily in the quiet air.

Gidget opened her eyes against a wave of dull, agonizing aches that radiated through every bone in her body. Her thick eyelashes were still clumped with dried tears.

As her vision focused, her heart seized in her chest.

A heavy, heavily muscled arm was slung possessively across her bare waist, anchoring her firmly against a broad, scorching-hot chest.

The man beside her was fast asleep. His breathing was deep, slow, and completely even. In the soft morning light, his razor-sharp jawline and aristocratic features lacked the terrifying savagery of the night before.

Fragments of the night flooded Gidget's mind-the darkness, the overwhelming weight of his body, her desperate pleas, and the sharp, tearing pain of her stolen innocence.

Tears pricked her eyes, but she bit her lower lip so hard she tasted iron, refusing to let out a single sound.

She carefully reached down with trembling fingers, taking hold of the heavy wrist draped over her stomach, and eased it off millimeter by millimeter.

Ezequiel's dark brows knit together in his sleep, his jaw tightening slightly as if displeased by the loss of warmth, but he did not wake.

Gidget held her breath until she was certain he was still under. She rolled off the other side of the mattress, her bare feet sinking into the plush Persian rug.

Her knees buckled the moment her weight hit the floor. She had to grip the edge of the mahogany nightstand to keep from collapsing.

On the nightstand lay a platinum Patek Philippe watch beside a pair of black-and-gold cufflinks engraved with the intricate Finch family crest.

She had no idea who this man was, and she didn't care to know. The only thing consuming her mind was raw, suffocating shame and the desperate need to run.

She looked down at her ruined evening gown lying shredded on the carpet. It was completely unwearable.

Spotting the walk-in closet door slightly ajar, Gidget slipped inside, grabbed a long, charcoal-black cashmere overcoat from the rack, and wrapped it tightly around her shivering frame.

The coat smelled distinctly of him-cold woods and expensive tobacco. It made her skin burn with humiliation.

Taking one final, terrified look at the sleeping silhouette on the bed, Gidget pulled open the heavy suite door and slipped into the empty hallway.

She rushed into the waiting elevator and pressed the lobby button.

The mirrored walls of the elevator cab reflected her ghost-pale face. Her neck and collarbones were marked with dark, bruising red hollows.

She pulled the coat's lapels higher, tears finally escaping down her cheeks. "Forget it... Conway is still waiting for you. You have to stay alive for Conway."

When the doors opened, she kept her head down, breezing past the concierge and disappearing into the crisp morning air of Fifth Avenue.

Ten minutes later, the massive bed on the top floor went cold.

Ezequiel's eyes snapped open.

The icy blue-gray irises instantly filled with lethal, turbulent fury when his hand reached out and touched nothing but empty, cold linen.

For the first time in twenty-eight years, Ezequiel Finch was sleeping without high-dose sedatives.

He pushed himself up, his gaze dropping to the center of the white sheet.

A stark, bright smear of crimson stained the fabric.

He lifted his left forearm. The pale skin was completely clear-no hives, no swelling, no trace of the neurogenic allergy that had crippled him since childhood.

For the first time in his life, a woman had touched him for an entire night, and he had slept uninterrupted for six full hours.

She was not some cheap escort sent by Jamey. That crying, fierce girl who had begged for mercy in the dark was his only biological cure.

Ezequiel grabbed the bedside landline and punched a single key.

"Owen." Ezequiel's voice was low, icy, and lethal. "Lock down all hotel surveillance. Call security."

On the other end of the line, his chief personal assistant, Owen Foster, stiffened. "Mr. Finch? What happened?"

Ezequiel swung his long legs out of bed, throwing on a dark silk robe, and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city.

"The woman who just left my penthouse," Ezequiel said, his thumb aggressively rubbing his signet ring. "Tear New York apart if you have to. Bring her back to me."

"Understood, sir!"

As Ezequiel ended the call, a tiny glint of silver on the carpet near the nightstand caught his eye.

He bent down and picked up the small object.

It was a cheap, generic silver hair clip. Engraved near the hinge was a tiny, faint initial: G.

Ezequiel closed his fist around the metal, letting the sharp edge press deep into his palm. A cold, possessive smirk slowly curved his lips.