BILLIONAIRE is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental. Cover art photo used under license from Shutterstock.com First Edition: November 2013 $ BILLIONAIRE (Part 7) Lila He looked so much like Alexander. His hair was a glossy dark brown instead of midnight black and his expression was less controlled, more youthful in the emotion it revealed. But no less intense. Alexander’s intensity was disciplined, masked by cool, skillful awareness. Jake’s was wilder, much closer to the surface. And I could read the thoughts running through Jake Wolfe’s mind as his rapt gaze locked onto me. A few of his friends laughed and called to him, throwing out a lewd comment or two as he shut them out, focusing his undivided attention on me. He was shocked to see me here, intrigued and also wary, not of me but of everything around me. Like Alexander was, too: protective in an over-zealous way. I understood this. Maybe that’s what childhood traumas do to a person and the people who care about them, who know about the layer-upon-layer of damage inflicted. You get wary. You get suspicious and distrustful. You end up morphing into a hyper-vigilant mess of untouchable yet deeply vulnerable paranoia.
