Free Because of His Heart (For His Pleasure, Book 27) by Kelly Favor

and The Vanderbilts.
    If you said the name Liam Houston, you were essentially talking about New York royalty, and they didn’t come any richer.
    But as Chloe read some of the news items about Grace Knowles, she quickly realized that this girl hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. To the contrary, she’d been the classic outsider.
    A normal girl who’d fallen in love with a prince.
    Chloe felt a surge of absurd jealousy as she thought about the luck this girl had, the good fortune to have met the love of her life, and he just so happened to be wealthy beyond her wildest dreams.
    Now that they were married, Grace was as powerful and rich as Liam Houston.
    The two of them were a true power couple.
    Chloe’s eyes were wide as saucers as she realized that this was the same woman who owned the bag sitting right now on the sunken mattress of Chloe’s crappy Brooklyn studio apartment.
    “Shit,” Chloe muttered.
    She had to return this thing immediately.
    These people were not to be messed with. Quickly, she grabbed the cell phone from inside the Birkin and looked at it.
    There was text message staring her in the face.
    If you found this phone, please call me ASAP.
    Gulp.
    And the name attached to the message was LIAM .
    Double gulp.
    Already, Chloe could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat.
    She wasn’t ready to call Liam Houston, one of the richest men in the country, and tell him she had his wife’s belongings.
    Instead, she used Grace Knowles’s cell phone to reply to his text. She said she had found the bag and phone and was happy to return it right away.
    Seconds later, the reply from Liam.
    Who is this?
    She responded with her name, and now the sweat was flowing freely. Chloe felt like she’d just been running for two or three miles.
    There was no forthcoming response after that.
    Chloe wondered why he’d stopped responding. Maybe he just got busy. Perhaps he and his wife were discussing how to handle the situation best—whether to have her meet them somewhere, what to give her for a reward…
    And shouldn’t she get a reward of some sort? Between the bag and the phone and all of the identification and credit cards, she’d saved them thousands of dollars by returning everything safe and sound to them.
    Of course, she hadn’t returned anything just yet.
    But she was going to, that was the point.
    Still, time ticked by and Liam Houston wasn’t responding anymore. Chloe couldn’t understand what had happened. Why had he gone silent?
    On the other hand, she didn’t want to engage with the man. He frightened her and she didn’t even know him—had never spoken to him. But something about the situation scared her.
    These were powerful, wealthy people of immense privilege. She didn’t want to upset anyone.
    So she went into her tiny kitchen—which was hardly big enough to turn around in—and grabbed tome tortilla chips and then guac from the fridge.
    Dipping the chips in guac and sitting on the edge of her bed, she waited for more information to come through the cell phone.
    And then, before she knew it, there was a loud, insistent honking from the street outside her apartment.
    It went on and on, to the point where she went to the window and looked outside. There was a long stretch limousine parked out in front of her apartment building.
    Her brow furrowed.
    Could that be…but no. They never even asked her where she lived.
    A moment later, the cell phone buzzed as if a text message had come through. Chloe walked over and picked it up.
    It was from Liam and the message sent a chill up her spine.
    Outside. Please bring the bag and all belongings.
    That was it.
    No thank you, nothing.
    She felt an icy grip of fury clenching her spine and then her jaw. How dare he treat her like a nobody? He hadn’t even thanked her for keeping his wife’s things safe, nothing that showed an ounce of appreciation.
    I should’ve kept it all. Asshole.
    But it was too late to think such things, and in any case,