Free Bad Boy of Wall Street: A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance by Samantha Westlake Page A

himself to put on a smile. There, that would win her over. "I'm here looking for the head asshole, whoever that might be. Mind telling me where I can find him?"
    The receptionist hadn't been trained to handle this. She'd spent most of college shutting down the advances of drunk, oversexed and overly masculine fraternity boys. Stockbrokers, she'd soon discovered, weren't much different, except that they wore more expensive suits.
    This man in front of her now, however, was definitely not a stockbroker.
    She'd developed a good eye for suits in her short time at Cartmann Securities, and the cheap fabric wrapped around this man's bulky, muscled body looked like it had come from the bargain bin at an outlet store. The man's big, broad features, along with a crooked and slightly flattened nose, made him look more like a bare-knuckle boxer than anyone who dealt with vast amounts of other people's money.
    Something about his crooked grin didn't quite reach his flat, gray eyes, she thought to herself. This was a man who was legitimately dangerous, and shouldn't be given the runaround.
    So instead of giving the usual cutting response that put most stockbrokers or uppity clients in their place, she nodded, trying not to swallow in fear. "Er, would that be Mr. Cartmann?" she asked, making one last attempt to remain professional.
    "I suppose so," Hook replied with a shrug. "If he's got his name on the place, he's probably the head asshole. Does he have any idea what shit is going on at this place?"
    The receptionist wasn't sure how to answer that question. For a moment, she considered telling this newcomer that Mr. Cartmann wasn't in at the moment, but she suspected, rightly, that this sentence wouldn't be well received. Something in the way that the cheap fabric of the suit jacket bulged up around his biceps told her that this man wasn't afraid of using his brute strength to get what he wanted. He reminded the receptionist a little of her former modeling manager, and she shivered at the memory.
    "Mr. Cartmann's office is down at the end of the hall," she told Hook. "I can buzz him if you'd like, tell him who's here to meet with him-"
    "Nah, don't bother," Hook interrupted her. He gave her what he intended to be a reassuring smile, although it came out as more of a leer. "I'll let it be a surprise, whaddaya say?"
    "Of course," agreed the receptionist, who would have said yes to practically anything by that point, just to get rid of him.
    Hook breezed past her desk, searching for Cartmann's office, and the receptionist breathed a sigh of relief - and then reached under her desk for her purse. She could tell when something bad was about to happen, and she strongly suspected that she didn't want to be in the area as a potential witness to whatever came next.
    Hook didn't have any trouble locating Cartmann's office, at least. One of the offices at the end of the hall was twice as big as all of the others, and Cartmann had a nameplate mounted next to the door. No understated little black metal plaque here - the nameplate was bright gold, and something about the way the metal glinted suggested to Hook that it wasn't just plated. If he wrenched the thing off the wall, it could probably pay for a new car, something quite a bit nicer than his unremarkable rental.
    Without bothering to knock, Hook barged into the office.
    Chad Cartmann, head of Cartmann Securities, looked up past his feet, propped up on his desk in leather wingtip shoes, as some idiot came in without knocking. What the hell was going on? Wasn't his secretary supposed to keep out idiots like this?
    "Who the fuck are you?" he snapped out, glaring back at Hook.
    Hook smiled. This idiot, in a fancy suit with leather shoes, sitting behind his big desk, had the right attitude. Brash and blustery, certain that he was the most important person in any room he entered. This was the kind of man who would probably have the answers that Hook's bosses sent him here to get.
    "You the head of this