The Alastair Affair 2: Sylvain (A Billionaire Dark Romance) Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Alastair Affair, Book Two

  Book Description

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Epilogue

  The End.

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  The Alastair Affair, Book Two: Sylvain

  A Dark Romance by

  Scarlett Edwards

  www.scarlettedwards.com

  Copyright © 2015 Edwards Publishing, Ltd

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Cover design by Scarlett Edwards

  First Edition: November 2015

  Book Description:

  Sylvain Alastair.

  A man of darkness, power, and great wealth.

  A man of secrets.

  Showing Dani only small glimpses of his true self, he nonetheless snared her in his web.

  But what makes a man seek the dark and embrace it like a long lost lover? What makes him wrap it around himself and revel in its existence?

  What happened in his past that gave birth to his depraved desires?

  Seven years ago Sylvain emerged from prison ready to take his rightful place in the world. Instead the Alastair family estate called to him. He could not resist its pull. There, he found his sister broken by his father's hand. Bound to her by the promise he'd made long ago, Sylvain was thrust into the world he'd tried to leave behind.

  But betrayal lies close at hand. A new, unexpected love affair catapults him into a twisted game of passion and intrigue that pits him against his father... and brings him face-to-face with the true Alastair family legacy, which corrupts all men and leaves no one untouched.

  --

  The Alastair Affair, Book Two is told from Sylvain's perspective. The story begins with his release from prison seven years ago.

  Future books will alternate perspectives between Dani (in the present) and Sylvain (in the past). The timelines will converge for the climax and ultimate conclusion of the series.

  Book One: Dani

  Book Two: Sylvain

  Book Three: Dani

  Book Four: Sylvain

  Series Disclaimer:

  The Alastair Affair is a dark romance series that includes elements of psychological and physical abuse coupled with suspense.

  The characters are not meant to depict a BDSM relationship. In fact, there is no BDSM. There is only the darkness of one man's mind... and the pains a young girl will go through to break into his heart.

  The series ends in a HEA... but the journey there will be dark and twisted.

  Prologue

  Present Day.

  Sylvain Alastair, 40 years old.

  Love is a poison.

  It seeps into you and makes you weak. It is a disease, a scourge. It is insidious, it undermines who you are and what you might become. It is parasitic, and if a seed of it gets in your mind, it will take root and grow and spread and destroy you.

  Love makes you weak. Without question, without doubt, it makes you weak.

  That was one of the first lessons my father taught me.

  ***

  To the outside world, my father seemed an ordinary man. A distinguished professor holding one of the highest posts in the most esteemed educational institution in the world: Oxford University.

  He taught humanities and the arts. He was a philosopher, and his work was his only joy.

  He had a black, bleak heart.

  I do not know what made him that way. But it affected everything that he did. I was his first-born child. He had great expectations for me. From my first year of schooling, my life was set and structured for me to excel. When other boys played football, I was inside being tutored. When other boys ran outside and chased the girls, I was being chastised for not completing my work in time. When they grew older and were out in the pubs, I was locked indoors, bent over the latest proof or problem set I had to do.

  Of course, by that point I was so far ahead of them academically that they did not even seem my peers.

  I was always isolated. That was a given. My life was not my own; everything had been structured by my father’s strict hand.

  What he envisioned for me, I do not know, other than perfection and academic excellence. He saw that I excelled in mathematics and the hard sciences. My talent was identified at age ten. Four years later I had my first original proof. Two years after that I collaborated with others who shared my gifts. Together we developed a solution for something that university professors had been struggling with for decades.

  That earned me plaudits and recognition, and I thought it might earn me my father’s love.

  I thought wrong.

  He remained as detached and cold as ever. A smirked, “Congratulations,” was all the praise I got.

  He did not think I contributed to the group’s success. In truth, I had done most of the work.

  But I was only a child, really, and gaining my father’s approval was important to me.

  When I went to Oxford, I was the youngest amongst all applicants. Again, I was shunned and isolated. But I was there with a single-minded purpose and graduated at the top of my class.

  Only after Oxford did my own life begin.

  I was recruited by a group of graduates into a start-up they were planning. They recognized my talents and my worth. I was given a chance to prove myself in the real world, and I seized it.

  But that backstory merely lays the groundwork for who I am… and what I do now.

  Chapter One

  2008.

  Sylvain Alastair, 33 years old

  Sylvain Alastair took a step over the threshold of the minimum security California prison.

  It was the first step he’d taken as a free man in five years.

  He squinted and looked up at the sky. The sun was shining bright. The rays felt good on his face.

  The sound of tires caught his attention. He looked back down.

  A black limousine was pulling up to the facility.

  He glanced at the guard accompanying him. Wordlessly, Sylvain was handed a package – his belongings, from when he’d checked in half a decade ago.

  Sylvain took them and looked away. The limousine was waiting.

  He filled his lungs with the dry air. Strange—it didn’t feel so very different from the air he’d breathed while incarcerated.

  Sylvain had never been a sentimental man.

  He hooked his pack
under one arm and began his approach. His steps were careful and precise. Precision—that was most important to him.

  The lack of precision had cost him five years of his life.

  Well. The people responsible would pay for that yet. Say one thing about Sylvain Alastair, say that he does not forget his debts.

  He opened the back door of the vehicle. He slid inside and placed the package at his feet.

  He doubted he would need anything within it. The clothes he’d checked in with wouldn’t fit. Five years was a long time to develop his body. He found time passed faster spent in the gym.

  He did not think his former acquaintances would recognize his new, muscular frame at a glance.

  Time enough for that later.

  “Hello, sir,” his driver, and probably the only man loyal to him, said. “It’s a pleasure to see you after all these years.”

  “Trust me, Anderson,” Sylvain grunted. “The pleasure is all mine.”

  **

  Some hours later the limousine pulled up to a grand estate. Anderson walked around and opened Sylvain’s door.

  “I’ve kept the place ready for your return,” he said. “Exactly as you asked. Not a thing has been touched, nor moved out of place.”

  “Good man.” Sylvain placed a hand on Anderson’s shoulder. “I knew I could rely on you.”

  “Your family’s been good to me,” Anderson said. “It’s only fair that I return the favor.”

  Sylvain’s dark eyes narrowed. “No,” he said softly. Not my family. Me.”

  Anderson swallowed and visibly tensed. “Of course, sir. Pardon me.”

  “It’s forgotten.” Sylvain strode by him. “The preparations have been made?”

  “Of course.”

  “Show me.”

  **

  They walked together to a large computer room on the second floor.

  Enormous screens filled the walls. Stock tickers ran across them. Numbers—all of them were filled with numbers.

  For the first time in a long time, Sylvain felt at home.

  He sat at the main desk and moved the mouse. All the programs sprang to life.

  Sylvian examined them briefly. They all looked to be working. Good.

  Anderson stood by his side. The other man waited. He would not be the first to break the silence.

  Slowly, precisely, meticulously, Sylvain went through the tallies of his accounts. He was impressed, though he did not show it.

  The algorithms he’d set up before being locked away had run to perfection. While he was gone, his net worth had more than…

  “...Tripled,” he breathed.

  He noticed Anderson give a small and smug smile.

  Sylvain rose. “Has anyone been here? Does anyone know?”

  “Just you and I, sir,” Anderson confided. “I’ve run them exactly as you told me to.”

  Sylvain nodded. Then he motioned off to the side. “Those computers over there. The interface is different from what I remember.”

  “Technology moves fast in five years,” Anderson said. “But your algorithms have anticipated every peak and valley in the market to date. They were all very—”

  “Precise,” Sylvain finished for him. “I know.”

  Anderson shifted slightly. “Shall I leave you here, then?”

  “No,” Sylvain said. “Not yet. Walk me through what happened. I want to know about—” he hesitated, just for a flicker of a second, “—those who betrayed me.”

  Anderson gave a solemn nod.

  **

  Sylvian stared at the running numbers on the computer screen for a long time after dark.

  Anderson had told him everything he’d wanted to know and more. He suspected the man had avoided mention of his own rise to fortune by no accident.

  But Anderson was indebted to him. Sylvain shared a sliver of his ongoing profits in exchanged for his loyalty. They were nothing to him—they came automatically—but to Anderson, the money meant the world.

  Money keeps people close. Not love, not family ties, not friendship. Money.

  That was a hard lesson Sylvain had learned many years ago.

  He clicked through his bank accounts. His share of the acquisition money IBM had given his start-up had grown splendidly.

  As he expected, of course. Neither Anderson nor anybody else knew the truth of what he was doing.

  Except… for one other person. One former lover.

  Alicia.

  Time enough for her later.

  Sylvain did not think Anderson suspected him of anything. He was smart enough not to ask probing questions, after all. You do not bite the hand that feeds—even if that hand had been absent for five years.

  The truth of how Sylvain made his money was much more… sinister… than anybody knew.

  The automated stock-trading program that ran on the screens now was just a cover. A well-made, well-defined, and almost bullet-proof cover.

  But no program alone could triple an already rich man’s net worth in five years by itself.

  The truth of it? The technology IBM had bought, and implemented in all their data servers world-wide—and will continue to run, as the very basis of all their hardware, for years and years into the future?

  It was in part a Trojan.

  He’d implanted a Trojan into the code. He’d done it at Alicia’s insistence. All of it was her idea, at the start. She and he were the only ones who knew about it. He was the only one who could have hidden it so deep and so well into the code IBM bought that nobody would uncover it… perhaps ever.

  IBM servers ran a fair portion of the world’s data traffic. His stock market algorithm was not so much predicting future movements as getting a glimpse of transactions a fraction of a second before they happened.

  All the traffic that flowed through IBM’s servers was caught by the Trojan, which transmitted the data to Sylvain’s own computer network, hidden off the grid.

  The location of that network? Deep, deep underground in England, beneath the Alastair Estate.

  A chill passed through Sylvain at the thought. He would have to make his return there sooner than later. His sister was there… as was their father.

  He would go. But not yet. First, he had to take care of things here.

  So, back to the Trojan? Every single transaction, every single buy and sell order that was made on the New York Stock Exchange and was theoretically secured by the experts running the place? Every single one?

  Sylvain knew what it would be a split-second before it happened.

  So tripling his fortune was no big feat. He could have quadrupled it. He could have made it ten times more. But what was the point?

  Greed could get him caught. Like this, for now, he was invisible. What he was doing was invisible.

  That was how Sylvain liked things.

  And as of this moment? On the entire planet, there was only one other person who knew what he was doing. One other person who had not yet betrayed his trust… but who could be his downfall at any moment:

  Alicia Sinclair.

  Chapter Two

  1997.

  Sylvain Alastair, 22 years old

  I lay on a large bed in the top suite of an exquisite, beautiful hotel.

  There were straps around my wrists. Straps around my ankles. They bound me to the four pillars of the bed and ensured I could not move.

  There was a red blindfold over my eyes.

  The door creaked open. My body tensed. Every muscle constricted and tightened as I heard her walk in.

  She wore those ten-inch stilettos she liked to torture me with. I could hear their clap-clap-clap against the marble floor.

  She came closer. She lowered herself onto the bed.

  I could smell the essence of her sex.

  Right away my cock began to grow. She loved eliciting this reaction from me.

  She called me her most responsive lover.

  Something that felt a lot like a feather ran over my skin. It tickled me from the neck down. It circle
d around my bellybutton. I could feel the lightest touch of it against my flesh.

  Blood surged into my cock.

  I heard her throaty chuckle. “Excited to see me, yes?” she asked, in that richly delicate accent of hers.

  “Alicia…” I breathed. My chest strained.

  “No.” She slapped me. Not hard, not enough to hurt. But enough to sting. “You will not speak to me as we play, oui, little one?”

  I bit my lips together and nodded.

  “Good,” she murmured. “Very, very good.” She crawled a little bit closer and began to circle that feather around one nipple. First one, then the other.

  They tightened, too.

  She came closer. She leaned across and over me, so I could feel the lightest brushing of her breasts against my face. “You will be a good boy for me, oui? Tonight…” her tongue made a slow and sensual exploration of my earlobe, “…tonight is reserved just for me.”

  I so desperately wanted to open my mouth and feast on her breasts. The heat, the smell, the warmth… her scent… all of it was too much. Being denied the freedom to move, the freedom to speak, the freedom to see… all of it made the few senses I was granted all the stronger.

  Alicia straightened. How I wanted to rip the bondage off and ravish her then and there. I could see her in my mind’s eye, the French beauty. She had golden, curling hair. Full, flawless lips. Eyes the color of sapphire that could swallow a person whole.