HE IS A RED FLAG I'M A PYROMANIAC

HE IS A RED FLAG I'M A PYROMANIAC

Nancy Alfred

5.0
Comment(s)
3
View
44
Chapters

He's a walking red flag with too much money, too many secrets, and the kind of eyes that ruin a woman's self-respect. But I've never been one to run from fire. I'm Raven Moretti. I set my world on fire the moment I signed that deal with Jaxon Vega ,New York's most untouchable billionaire and the rumored kingpin of the underground. He says I'm reckless. I say I'm free. He says I'll burn everything down. I say I'll start with him. And when I find out what he's really hiding... We'll see who makes it out alive.

HE IS A RED FLAG I'M A PYROMANIAC Chapter 1 Sell Me the Truth

"If you're going to shoot me, do it now. I hate waiting."

The man in the velvet chair didn't blink. He just sipped his whiskey like we weren't two seconds from killing each other.

I didn't flinch, even with four armed men behind me and the burn of a Glock digging into my ribs. If anything, the longer he stared, the calmer I got.

Control is always quiet.

"Raven Moretti." His voice was low, lazy, lethal. "The ghost herself. You've been busy."

I smirked. "I multitask."

He set the glass down. No ice. No noise. Just power in human form.

God, I hated him already.

Jaxon Vega.

The billionaire with blood on his boots and a bank account soaked in war crimes. Tech mogul. Mafia-born. Former heir to the Vega cartel if rumors were true and the man my mother had once warned me about with trembling hands and a bottle of vodka.

And now, the buyer of my last piece of leverage.

"I assume you've looked at the files," I said, chin high. "So you know what's on them."

"I know what they're worth," he replied, nodding once to one of his men.

A thick envelope slid across the table toward me.

I didn't move.

"You're not curious?" he asked.

"I don't trust anything wrapped in elegance. Especially not from a Vega."

His mouth quirked like he wasn't sure whether to be amused or offended.

"Smart girl."

"No," I said. "Just burned."

The envelope was light. Too light.

Inside: one single photo. Of me.

Taken that morning.

"Cute, right?" Jaxon said, almost bored. "I like the one where you're wiring explosives to your laptop under a diner booth."

My heart dropped and I masked it with a glare.

"You were never selling those files, Raven," he continued smoothly. "You were baiting the sharks. Trying to see who would swim toward you."

"You're not denying that you're one of them."

"Oh, I am one of them." He stood. Tall. Dark suit, darker eyes. "But I'm the one that keeps you alive."

"Why?"

The word fell out before I could stop it.

His reply?

"Because, sweetheart, you just walked into my web. And I'd rather trap you than kill you."

Flashback, 2 days earlier

Two nights ago, I'd gotten a message.

Blocked number. Encrypted email. Simple terms.

Meet me at The Vesper Club. Bring the files. No copies.

J

I should've run.

Instead, I wore my mother's black coat and loaded a pistol into my boot.

Back to Present

I didn't sit. Didn't blink.

"You think I won't blow this whole place just to take you down with me?" I asked.

Jaxon raised an eyebrow.

"I think you don't want to die," he said. "And I think you're desperate enough to gamble."

He stepped close. Close enough to smell his cologne cedar and smoke.

Close enough to feel the heat bleeding off his skin.

"I'm offering you protection," he said. "A deal."

"No one offers protection for free."

"You're right. I want something."

He reached into his pocket.

Pulled out a small, black flash drive.

Not mine.

But I recognized the engraving.

El Diablo. My father's codename. The last thing tying me to the family I abandoned.

"I've had this for five years," Jaxon murmured. "Encrypted. Uncrackable. Until now."

He held it out.

"You give me your files. I give you this. And we call it even."

I hesitated.

Because the only person who ever touched that drive... was dead.

Or so I thought.

"Where did you get that?"

"I killed the man who was holding it," he said, simply. "But the real question is... do you want what's on it bad enough to trust me?"

I snatched the drive from his hand.

My fingers shook.

Not from fear.

From fury.

From fire.

He smiled.

"You're staying with me now," he said, like it was already decided.

"Excuse me?"

"Security reasons. You just put a target on your back the size of Chicago."

I laughed. Cold.

"I've had a target on my back since the day I was born."

He didn't argue.

Just turned and walked toward the elevator.

"Come willingly, or I'll carry you out," he called over his shoulder. "Your choice."

I stayed rooted.

Because the drive in my hand buzzed twice.

Encrypted message detected.

I knew that pattern.

Only two people in the world had that signal.

Me.

And my brother.

Who was supposed to be dead.

The moment I stepped into Jaxon Vega's elevator, the flash drive lit up and blinked red.

Incoming message: DON'T TRUST HIM.

The letters flashed red once before vanishing from the screen like they'd never existed.

I stared down at the drive in my palm, cold metal warming against my skin.

Impossible.

Only one person used that encryption key.

And he'd been buried in pieces.

I made sure of it.

Unless...

"You okay?"

Jaxon's voice cut through my spiral like a scalpel.

I snapped the lid on the flash drive shut and forced my face blank. "Peachy."

The elevator hummed upward. Fast. Quiet. Dangerous.

Just like him.

"Who did you kill to get this?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

Typical.

I studied his profile instead. Strong jaw, blood-born calm, and the kind of presence that made everyone else in a room forget their name. His suit was sharp. His mouth was sharper. But his eyes?

Dead. Absolutely dead.

Until they landed on me.

"You're not afraid of me," he said. Not a question. An observation.

"No." I shifted slightly, one hand still on the inside of my coat, where the knife sat.

"I'm afraid of what you make me want."

His eyes flicked down to my lips, then to my fingers curled in steel.

"Violence?" he asked.

"Control."

The elevator dinged.

Penthouse. Of course.

Doors slid open, revealing a wide, dimly lit space of black floors, dark windows, and chrome everything. Like stepping into the belly of a wolf.

A woman in a fitted suit greeted us. "Ms. Moretti," she said, bowing her head.

I didn't correct her. Didn't remind her I stopped using that name the day I set fire to the Moretti estate.

Jaxon stepped aside and gestured for me to enter first.

"After you."

Gentlemanly. If the gentleman in question could also casually order a hit over dinner.

I stepped in.

Three things hit me immediately:

The cameras. Hidden well, but I could feel their gaze.

The silence. Like the apartment was waiting for something to break.

The piano. A single grand piano in the center of the room, untouched but polished, like a memory someone didn't know how to let go of.

"This is where you keep your prisoners?" I asked, walking past him.

"This is where I keep the people I don't want dead."

He brushed past me. Close. Not touching. But enough to make every hair on my neck rise like it recognized its predator.

He handed his jacket off to the assistant. "Room's ready?"

"Security system updated. Vault moved."

Vault?

He didn't elaborate.

I turned back. "Where's my room?"

He smiled.

"Left hallway, last door. No locks on your side. Three on mine."

Of course.

"And if I try to leave?"

He paused.

"Then I'll assume you want me to chase you."

I rolled my eyes and walked to the hallway. Found the room.

Clean. Minimal. Grey sheets. Camera in the corner.

I flicked it off with one button and slid my bag under the bed.

Then I pulled out my second flash drive.

Not the one he gave me.

Mine. The original. The one I'd been trying to trade.

And now?

Now I had two.

And two problems.

I sat on the edge of the bed and synced the drives together. Cross-encryption.

The red light on the second drive blinked once. Twice.

Incoming File: PLAY ME

My heart slowed.

That voice again.

Same key. Same code.

I pressed play.

"If you're seeing this... he already has you."

"Don't let him near the vault."

"He's not after your files, Raven. He's after you."

I slammed the laptop shut.

My hands were shaking.

No.

No.

That voice.

It wasn't my brother.

It was my mother's.

And she died right in front of me.

The door opened.

Jaxon stepped in without knocking.

Of course he did.

"Dinner's ready."

I stood, keeping my expression still. "I'm not hungry."

He didn't move. "That wasn't a question."

"I'm not one of your bodyguards you can order around."

"No," he said, stepping closer. "You're not. You're the wildcard I let into my house. And I don't like surprises."

We stood close. Too close.

"You're hiding something," I said.

"So are you."

"Why am I really here?"

He studied me.

Then, low and quiet, almost like he hated the words

"Because if I didn't bring you here... they would've killed you."

I blinked. "Who?"

He hesitated. Just for a second. But I caught it.

"The people who paid your father to kill your mother," he said.

My stomach turned.

"What did you just say?"

"I've known since the day I got that drive. And I've been waiting for you to figure it out." He leaned closer. "You're not a loose end. You're the trigger."

A scream echoed from down the hall.

Jaxon turned fast, hand already at his gun.

"Stay here," he snapped.

But I was already moving.

I wasn't the kind of girl who stayed behind.

Not anymore.

Continue Reading

You'll also like

The Surgeon's Vow: Healing My Billionaire Husband

The Surgeon's Vow: Healing My Billionaire Husband

Qing Shui
4.3

I sat in the gray, airless room of the New York State Department of Corrections, my knuckles white as the Warden delivered the news. "Parole denied." My father, Howard Sterling, had forged new evidence of financial crimes to keep me behind bars. He walked into the room, smelling of expensive cologne, and tossed a black folder onto the steel table. It was a marriage contract for Lucas Kensington, a billionaire currently lying in a vegetative state in the ICU. "Sign it. You walk out today." I laughed at the idea of being sold to a "corpse" until Howard slid a grainy photo toward me. It showed a toddler with a crescent-moon birthmark—the son Howard told me had died in an incubator five years ago. He smiled and told me the boy's safety depended entirely on my cooperation. I was thrust into the Kensington estate, where the family treated me like a "drowned rat." They dressed me in mothball-scented rags and mocked my status, unaware that I was monitoring their every move. I watched the cousin, Julian, openly waiting for Lucas to die to inherit the empire, while the doctors prepared to sign the death certificate. I didn't understand why my father would lie about my son’s death for years, or what kind of monsters would use a child as a bargaining chip. The injustice of it burned in my chest as I realized I was just a pawn in a game of old money and blood. As the monitors began to flatline and the family started to celebrate their inheritance, I locked the door and reached into the hem of my dress. I pulled out the sharpened silver wires I’d fashioned in the prison workshop. They thought they bought a submissive convict, but they actually invited "The Saint"—the world’s most dangerous underground surgeon—into their home. "Wake up, Lucas. You owe me a life." I wasn't there to be a bride; I was there to wake the dead and burn their empire to the ground.

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
5.0

I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

The Convict Heiress: Marrying The Billionaire

Rollins Laman
5.0

The heavy thud of the release stamp was the only goodbye I got from the warden after five years in federal prison. I stepped out into the blinding sun, expecting the same flash of paparazzi bulbs that had seen me dragged away in handcuffs, but there was only a single black limousine idling on the shoulder of the road. Inside sat my mother and sister, clutching champagne and looking at my frayed coat with pure disgust. They didn't offer a welcome home; instead, they tossed a thick legal document onto the table and told me I was dead to the city. "Gavin and I are getting engaged," my sister Mia sneered, flicking a credit card at me like I was a stray dog. "He doesn't need a convict ex-fiancée hanging around." Even after I saved their lives from an armed kidnapping attempt by ramming the attackers off the road, they rewarded me by leaving me stranded in the dirt. When I finally ran into Gavin, the man who had framed me, he pinned me against a wall and threatened to send me back to a cell if I ever dared to show my face at their wedding. They had stolen my biotech research, ruined my name, and let me rot for half a decade while they lived off my brilliance. They thought they had broken me, leaving me with nothing but an expired chapstick and a few old photos in a plastic bag. What they didn't know was that I had spent those five years becoming "Dr. X," a shadow consultant with five hundred million dollars in crypto and a secret that would bring the city to its knees. I wasn't just a victim anymore; I was a weapon, and I was pregnant with the heir they thought they had erased. I walked into the Melton estate and made an offer to the most powerful man in New York. "I'll save your grandfather's life," I told Horatio Melton, staring him down. "But the price is your last name. I'm taking back what's mine, and I'm starting with the man who thinks he's marrying my sister."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book
HE IS A RED FLAG I'M A PYROMANIAC HE IS A RED FLAG I'M A PYROMANIAC Nancy Alfred Billionaires
“He's a walking red flag with too much money, too many secrets, and the kind of eyes that ruin a woman's self-respect. But I've never been one to run from fire. I'm Raven Moretti. I set my world on fire the moment I signed that deal with Jaxon Vega ,New York's most untouchable billionaire and the rumored kingpin of the underground. He says I'm reckless. I say I'm free. He says I'll burn everything down. I say I'll start with him. And when I find out what he's really hiding... We'll see who makes it out alive.”
1

Chapter 1 Sell Me the Truth

14/08/2025

2

Chapter 2 Never Tell Me to Stay

14/08/2025

3

Chapter 3 Ghosts with Guns

14/08/2025

4

Chapter 4 Every Devil Has a Smile

14/08/2025

5

Chapter 5 Collateral Hearts

14/08/2025

6

Chapter 6 The Girl in the Surveillance Tape

14/08/2025

7

Chapter 7 The Blood We Don't Claim

14/08/2025

8

Chapter 8 Midnight in Verona

14/08/2025

9

Chapter 9 Ashes Don't Lie

14/08/2025

10

Chapter 10 The Throne Was Never Empty

14/08/2025

11

Chapter 11 The Dead Offer

14/08/2025

12

Chapter 12 The Name That Burns

14/08/2025

13

Chapter 13 Smoke in His Veins

14/08/2025

14

Chapter 14 The Line Between Love and War

23/08/2025

15

Chapter 15 Tangled in Fire and Smoke

23/08/2025

16

Chapter 16 The Safehouse Isn't Safe

25/08/2025

17

Chapter 17 Fire in His Veins

25/08/2025

18

Chapter 18 The Devil's Playground

25/08/2025

19

Chapter 19 Upstairs, Where the Fire Waits

25/08/2025

20

Chapter 20 Velvet Chains

25/08/2025

21

Chapter 21 The Morning After the Fire

26/08/2025

22

Chapter 22 The Morning After the Fire

26/08/2025

23

Chapter 23 The Edge We Keep Stepping Over

27/08/2025

24

Chapter 24 The Penthouse Lockdown

27/08/2025

25

Chapter 25 Safehouse Shadows

28/08/2025

26

Chapter 26 Blood in the Shadows

29/08/2025

27

Chapter 27 Friends and Foes

29/08/2025

28

Chapter 28 The Scarred Warning

29/08/2025

29

Chapter 29 Bloodlines and Broken Promises

31/08/2025

30

Chapter 30 Heat in the Shadows

01/09/2025

31

Chapter 31 When the Walls Break

01/09/2025

32

Chapter 32 Under Lock and Key

01/09/2025

33

Chapter 33 The Key and the Lock

01/09/2025

34

Chapter 34 The Estate of Ghosts

01/09/2025

35

Chapter 35 The Price of Loyalty

03/09/2025

36

Chapter 36 Through Fire and Glass

06/09/2025

37

Chapter 37 Shadows on the Stairs

09/09/2025

38

Chapter 38 Blood Knows Your Name

09/09/2025

39

Chapter 39 Choose Your Poison

09/09/2025

40

Chapter 40 Run Until We Burn

10/09/2025