Three Billionaires Claimed Me Tonight novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Scoreboard
At the first-Friday dinner Cressida mocks Lena's empty place card and offers her an old married man, Lena names her three billionaires, and the calls go unanswered; as she sends her location to all three, Cressida pockets the key to Seaward House.
Ashtray wine ran down my face while two women held my arms.
That was the end of the night.
The start was a car key on a marble table.
It was the first Friday of the month, which meant the scoreboard dinner.
Our circle held it in a private room of a members' club in SoHo, and every girl brought her month to show.
Cressida Lyle, the queen of our circle, still saved me the seat by the door.
She went first and set a carbon-fiber key fob on the marble.
"Pagani Huayra Roadster," she said. "Four point two million. My patron gave it to me last night."
"You've only been seeing him two weeks," said the friend beside her.
"Money has nothing to do with how long a man knows you," Cressida said. "It's about what you're worth."
She looked at me when she said it.
The place in front of me was empty.
My bag hung from my chair, a canvas tote from a bookstore that cost nine dollars.
"Lena, honey," Cressida said, and she slid the bread basket toward me. "You skipped lunch again. Eat something before you show us your month."
I didn't answer her.
Last week Christian Aldous had signed the deed to a Hamptons estate over to me.
Dorian Faulk had finished renovating an island in the Bahamas, bought under my company's name.
Maddox Wynn had put ten percent of his company in my name, and it was worth over a billion dollars.
I never asked any of them for a thing.
I took it anyway, because my mother lost our house the year one man stopped paying for it, and I never stood on one man's floor again.
Cressida slid her phone across the marble.
The screen showed a man in his late fifties, thinning silver hair, a gut pushing at his shirt.
"Meet your future," she said. "His wife lives in Geneva. Eight thousand a month, an apartment on the East Side, and an allowance."
"Doesn't he only like girls under twenty-two?" her friend asked, delighted.
"So she knocks two years off her age," Cressida said. "He can't tell in the dark."
The table laughed.
Posey, the new girl beside her, looked at her plate and didn't.
A text from the man slid down over his photo: *Same ten percent as the last girl?*
Cressida turned the phone over before I could read the rest.
"Think of it as a lifeline," she said, and her voice was so kind. "You have a face and about two years left to use it."
"If he's such a catch, keep him," I said.
"I have my patron. I don't take leftovers."
"Then don't hand them to me. I already have someone."
"Oh? Who? What does he drop on you a month?"
"It isn't one man," I said. "It's three."
The room stayed quiet until Cressida started laughing.
"Names," she said, wiping her eyes.
"Christian Aldous. Dorian Faulk. Maddox Wynn."
Now the whole table screamed.
"The three most untouchable men on the East Coast," Cressida gasped, "and they're all yours? Call them. Right now, on speaker."
I knew what I was risking.
Each of the three believed he was the only man in my life, and I had spent a year making sure none of them found out.
Maddox had once run a background check on a coworker who walked me to my lobby, and the man's whole family tree was on his desk by morning.
If they met, it would not be an argument.
I called Christian first and set the phone face up on the marble.
It rang out to voicemail.
Dorian's line rang and rang.
On the third call, Maddox's rang seven times and cut off.
"The holy trinity," Cressida said, "and all three just hung up on you at once."
"They're busy," I said. "Christian is in a closed meeting. Dorian is at a premiere. Maddox has a funding round."
"How do you know that?"
"Last night all three of them texted me the same thing. Tomorrow is slammed, call me Saturday."
They were nearly word for word, minutes apart.
I had thought it was lucky.
In a year none of them had ever asked where I was on the nights I wasn't with him.
"It's tragic, honestly," Cressida said, and her friends made sad faces.
I was tired.
Tired of the schedules, the cover stories, the lies I had to keep straight for three men.
They were going to find out eventually.
If all three walked away tonight, I still owned enough to never worry about money again.
I sent my location to each of them with the same message.
*Pick me up within thirty minutes. Something happened. We settle it tonight.*
Cressida set a timer on the table.
"If one of them walks through that door, the Pagani is yours and I'll call you queen," she said. "If not, you stand on this table and tell everyone you're a broke liar who invented three sugar daddies."
"Deal," I said.
She had no idea.
I was not afraid they wouldn't come.
I was afraid that once they arrived, none of them would ever leave.
Twenty minutes later, her friend gasped at her phone.
"The premiere is still going. Why did Dorian Faulk just look at his phone and walk off the red carpet?"
Cressida snatched the screen, and her face went still for one second.
"Publicity," she said. "He has a thousand things a night."
I reached down for my lip balm, and her friend's foot hooked my tote strap.
The bag hit the parquet and everything slid out.
A heavy steel key stopped at Cressida's heel, matte black, with a crest on its head.
She picked it up and read it.
"Seaward House," she said slowly. "The Aldous estate in the Hamptons."
I held out my hand. "Give it back."
"It's a prop," she said, and she dropped it into her purse and snapped the clasp. "I'm confiscating it before you try to sell something that isn't yours."
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