Betting on the Brainiac: a Sweet Romantic Comedy

24. Chapter Twenty-Four

“The trust. Where do I start?” I ask as I lead us to the bar. “The case went to court. He paid millions of dollars to delay. He ran out of stalling tactics. He lost. He appealed. Finally, he lost his last appeal three years ago, and Jeneze paid a four hundred-million-dollar settlement. Then they paid twice that as part of a plea deal that allowed everyone to avoid jail time.”

Oliver finds a box of disposable gloves in one of the bar cubbies and begins filling one with ice.

“The whole time this is going down, I’m living in the Matrix, starting to see everything about my life differently. How my parents used money and guilt to control everything, including me, my entire life. I felt helpless to do anything about it, so I made this vow that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t grow up to be them. I decided the second I could guarantee my financial independence with my trust, they wouldn’t get a say in my life. I would become their opposite in every way.”

He picks me up and sets me on the bar counter like I’m Sami-sized, but I most definitely am not. He doesn’t even seem to register my gasp as he bends to look at my aching knuckles. His touch is gentle as he prods, and I fall quiet, watching him.

He looks up. “But the chess game is in play and you’re ten moves ahead.”

I flash him a grin. “I realized, why wait? I might need my trust fund to make any big moves, but it’s time to show the king and queen that their dethroning is inevitable.”

“I’m a big fan of Kingslayer Madison, but out of curiosity, isn’t taking the trust fund sort of . . .”

“Hypocritical? Tainted?” I smile. “I thought so at first too. I spent the first year punishing them by rebelling every chance I got, and if they found a way to corner me, then it was about malicious compliance. They wanted me to go to college and major in business. That’s what I wanted to study, but there was no way I was giving them the satisfaction, so I majored in economics. My dad said it was a waste, a pretend business degree for cowards who don’t have the guts to build a company. Told me he wouldn’t pay for it.”

Oliver flinches.

“Yeah, fatal error. I told him I’d drop out and work as a flight attendant and never come home again. He paid the tuition. I wouldn’t join my mom’s sorority, but I played them and got Sami in. I showed up to every family dinner they made me come to wearing shirts for all the nonprofits working on fair trade in Bangladesh.”

“What changed the game for you?”

“The NGO that exposed his email? They decided Austin is the perfect place to open a fair-trade store to sell the work of artisans who can’t compete with the distribution of Jeneze-sized behemoths. Several of their makers are victims of the collapse considered too disabled for work in other factories. They earn more from the sale of a single item in the store than they would make in a week at the factory.”

“That is so satisfying.”

“The best part is how mad it makes my dad. My favorite artisan makes collages out of fabric scraps from another Jeneze factory. This is art. Intricate, gorgeous, with a singular way of seeing the world. I bought one and gave it to my parents for Christmas. They loved it and displayed it over the sideboard in their dining room until they had a dinner guest who asked them whether it was a statement of public accountability or a middle finger to the verdict.”

“I never want to be your enemy,” he says, tying off the second glove to keep the ice in.

“No problem. Don’t buy your way into stuff. Earn it. Don’t buy your way out of trouble. Own it.”

He nods and starts wrapping the second glove.

“So anyway, I work there now.”

“At the NGO store?”

“Yep. Well, volunteer, really. They were happy to support my rebellion. At first, I only helped in the stockroom, but you don’t grow up like I did without developing an eye for good design. And I understand Austin shoppers, so now I’m their buyer, basically. I curate what we bring in to sell.”

This makes him laugh. “Let me guess, while you were working there, you realized there was a way to use your trust to wreak more havoc?”

“Kind of. That trust was set up by my grandmother when Armstrong Industries didn’t suck. It was set aside from profit earned when my grandfather ran the company as an American powerhouse, proud of having global appeal but local roots where Armstrong Industries did right by its people. He nurtured the company the right way. The money feels untainted to me.”

I’d grown up thinking that’s who we still were, not understanding how shortly after my grandparents’ death my father had pushed the company into profit over quality. “When I found out about the investigation, I’d dreamed for a couple of months of all the ways I could spend ‘the good money’ in my trust to enrage my parents. My grandmother had put a few stipulations on the terms, but as long as I got a college degree, I would inherit when I was twenty-five. But plot twist, I’m twenty-six and I’m not a millionaire. Want to guess who she made the executor?”

“Is there any chance your dad is Lex Luthor, genius supervillain?”

“He’s villain-lite. His weakness is how much he needs to be in control. Most of the time, I can figure out how to flip it on him.”

“I’m conflicted,” Oliver says. “I am sucked into this story, but since I walked in during today’s chapter, I know how it ends, and I kinda hate it.”

“I’m aware my life is a one-season TV show that gets canceled because of its two-star average rating and a viral Reddit review that calls it a bad reality show where a poor little rich girl has petty arguments with a villain who couldn’t be more contrived if his name were Evil McBadguy.”

“That’s not why I’m conflicted,” he says. “I need the hero to win. Tell me you win, Madi.”

“TBD, Oliver. But I like my chances.”

“Then I can make it through this part. I’ll help you down, and you tell me the rest.”

I can slide from the counter, but I let Oliver lift me and set me down again. It’s such a novel feeling that he can do it so easily. “How tall are you?” I ask him as he settles me on my feet. “Six one?” It’s not a guess. I never get height wrong, except for when I had somehow registered Oliver as shorter when I met him.

“Yeah. Six one. So Evil McBadguy messes with your trust,” he prompts.

I head to kitten territory. “My grandmother’s will left sixty million dollars to be divided evenly among her grandchildren. At the time, there was only me and my one other cousin. She built in her provisions, like wanting each of us to earn a college degree before we could inherit, but she knew there might be future circumstances she couldn’t predict, same as she couldn’t know how many grandchildren she might end up with. So she empowered the executor—”

“Mr. McBadguy.”

“Good old Mr. McBadguy. The will gives him some discretionary power to build in additional stipulations in case he has concerns about an heir’s fitness.”

“Who decides if he’s right?”

“He does.”

“So this is unilateral? There’s no check on him?”

“Yes and no. I could sue him for access, but he’d drag it out until I spent it all fighting him to get to it. Not worth it. But unless any of us is under a conservatorship, we each inherit at thirty no matter what.”

“Why was he talking about how you could have it now if you were married?”

“You heard that, huh? My dad would have changed it to thirty and said it was because I needed to grow up or something. No way to get it sooner. Like a flex. My mom, on the other hand, had other motives.”

“Lady MacBeth enters the chat.”

“Eerily good guess. My mom is a master manipulator, but she’s not bad. Just very invested in the Armstrong image.”

We’ve reached the office, and the kittens are done nursing, but they’re not asleep for once. Without discussing it, we both settle on the floor to watch them play slo-mo demolition derby.

“My mom tried to get me to quit Teak Heart—that’s the store—for weeks. Depending on the day, me volunteering there gave her arrhythmia, pneumonia, botulism, age spots, and one time, scurvy.”

“Sounds medically complicated,” he says politely.

“When it didn’t work, she went to the nuclear option. Said that they had some concerns about my emotional development, so they were adjusting the terms of the trust to make sure I was really ready for it at twenty-five. They were adding a new metric. Arranged marriage.”

He tugs on his ear. “Thought you said arranged marriage. Or did I fall back in time two hundred years?”

“I did say arranged marriage. Not that she used those words. She said my lack of direction had disrupted her health, and the doctor said the only way she could recover was to limit her stress. They decided my ‘pattern of recklessness’ was grounds to limit the damage I would do with too much money before I was ready and got the estate attorney to amend the trust. So no inheritance until I’m thirty, unless . . .”

He narrows his eyes. “Unless you quit embarrassing the family by telling them that criminal negligence is a bad look?”

“Correct. Don’t worry, though. They made it totally fair. For example, I can sign an NDA that gags me from publicly criticizing the company or my dad, including the symbolic criticism of volunteering for Teak Heart. This would prove that I am mature enough to get my trust fund at twenty-five.”

“Shut up and quit your job or we’re holding all your money?”

“No one is that unfair, Oliver. They gave me another generous provision too: if I marry before thirty, as long as my betrothed passes a rigorous screening to prove he isn’t a gold digger, I get a five-million-dollar payout after the wedding, and if we stay married for a year, I get the rest.”

“What in the bad Jane Austen plot rip-offs . . . ?”

“I’ve established that knockoffs are my dad’s specialty.”

“Let me guess, they can make up whatever criteria they want for this screening, but somehow, only the husband candidates they choose for you will pass? So if they can’t buy your silence, they’ll bribe you into letting them install a permanent supervisor?”

“That was when I threatened to sue. They knew I’d have a case, so they specified their screening requirements in writing. Now it’s legal and binding, no moving target, and it’s way better now.”

“It is?”

“No! But they had to take the worst stuff out. It still gives them way too much veto power, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not getting married until they have zero say in it.”

“What’s on the list?”

“Their perfect son-in-law, plus a bunch of conditions to prove I’m not marrying to gold dig my own money, I guess?”

“Must wear Copperhead boots and have graduated from any Texas college but AM,” he guesses. “Polo shirts in every color, golf handicap under fifteen, only domestic beer in his fridge, and at least one ancestor who was at the Alamo?”

“Oh, you’ve seen the will,” I deadpan.

“How close am I?”

“Pretty close, but it’s more about the stuff they don’t say. For example, I must marry someone who has completed his undergraduate degree and has no student loan debt.”

“To rule out the gold diggers?”

“To rule out poor people. No student loans means you’re more likely to have parents who could pay for your college. They created a minimum financial threshold to avoid middle class in-laws.”

“Slick, by which I mean evil.”

“The whole list is like that. Must submit to a credit check so they can get a sense of your salary and make sure you have an excellent score. No criminal record so you can’t embarrass the family. Must never have registered with the Green Party.”

“Dental x-rays to verify proof of age?”

I scoff. “No. They want to see your birth certificate.”

“To make sure I’m not marrying you for a green card?”

“You aren’t scheming enough. They’ll want to do background checks on your family and make sure you can legally run for office if they decide to groom you for Congress.”

Oliver makes a delighted face. “I’m going to Congress?”

I’m not sure when we switched to him being my hypothetical marriage candidate, but it makes me laugh. “Not you,” I tell him. “You have too much golden retriever energy. They’ll want a horse with impeccable bloodlines who is already trained.”

“Joke’s on them,” he says.

“What?”

“Nothing. Also, I’m not a golden retriever. You have golden retriever energy.”

“I do not. That’s only for guys.”

“It’s not an insult,” he says. “When you’re not having a meltdown because your dad sucks, you’re out there loving life and having a good time. You love to love on people, all huggy and stuff. That’s you.”

He’s got me there. “Then what are you?”

He presses his lips together and stares at the ceiling, for five seconds, then ten. “I’m a beaver spiderbee.”

“Excuse me now?”

“I picked spiders and bees because they’re hard workers and good at building, but I wanted something that doesn’t bite or sting, so I added a beaver.”

“Beaver spiderbees aren’t a thing.”

He shrugs. “You’re looking at one. I’m a genius.”

“You’re something else, all right.”

“What else is on this husband list?”

“It’s not bad enough already?” I shrug. “That’s the gist of it.”

“So either marry someone who fits every single check mark now or you have to wait until you’re thirty to get your inheritance?”

“Yeah. Pushes the clock back in a way that looks like it’s benefitting me on paper. But at least making me wait means more time to plot. I have a long list of charities to donate to on their behalf that they will hate. Candidates from fringe parties. Controversial art I’ll donate for loan in their name.” I smile, thinking of all the delightful ways I’ve come up with to make my dad pay.

Oliver does not smile. He doesn’t look disapproving or anything. More . . . confused.

“You don’t think that’s perfectly perfect?”

“Those things all sound personal,” he says. “You’ve mostly talked about how you hate his business practices. I was expecting something about that.”

I give a brittle laugh. “You think I’m shallow enough to blow it all on petty revenge? You really don’t think I would try to put some good back into the world?”

He reaches beneath his glasses to rub his eyes. “It sounds incredibly crappy when you put it like that. I had a morning that made me think about what even a tenth of your inheritance would do to change lives. Of course I don’t think you would fail to consider that.”

The sudden lines bracketing his eyes and mouth do look like regret.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t imagine trying to grow up with your parents.”

Some of the starch goes out of my spine. “I could tell you about my restitution plan to pay back factory workers for wage theft and lost earnings potential. Am I boring you yet?”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” he says. “Tell me the plan.”

“I’ve done a lot of research, and here’s what kills me: if Jeneze charged twenty cents more per garment, every factory worker could get a living wage. That’s it. Twenty cents. But my dad wouldn’t and won’t consider it.”

He cracks his knuckles, letting me know he still has punching goals.

“I’ve gone through all the court filings. It took me almost eighteen months, but I was able to piece together the data I needed. I figured out how much additional pay Jeneze would owe the employees at that factory at a fair rate from the time it opened to the time it collapsed, plus the lost earnings potential for those permanently disabled and for the families of those who were killed. And it turns out, I can cover it.” I sigh. “In four more years, anyway. I turned it in as my senior capstone project at UT, then won the economics department Distinguished Scholar Award for it.”

“Madison?”

“Yes, Oliver?”

“Every time I think you can’t impress me more, you do.”

Oliver’s gaze is steady and full of admiration. I can’t meet it; I feel too exposed. My roommates know I’m not as shallow as I pretend to be, but they don’t know all this.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I tell him. “I still have plenty of princess tendencies.”

“Is this where you try to trick me into believing you’re high maintenance again?”

“Oh, make no mistake, I am. Salon every six weeks for my hair, mani/pedis every two weeks, luxury car, and extravagances I can’t break myself of. Like the stupid-expensive bed Ruby is trying to win from me. Unicorn hair and fairies, I’m telling you. It’s a magic bed. A high maintenance bed.”

“Sorry, Madi. I see through it now. Not a princess.”

This is why I haven’t ever told anyone about the inheritance or my whole plan before. To most people, it’s unthinkable to give up twenty million dollars. I know they’ll think I’m a saint or a lunatic. I’m neither. I grew up with wealth. I walked away from it, and I’m happier for it. But some of it spoiled me permanently, and trying to act like it hasn’t feels dishonest with Oliver.

“I’m addicted to quality,” I tell him. “I’ll always have a luxury car. I will always have nice clothes and shoes. I’ll always have an indulgent beauty routine. But I expect to earn it, not be given it, so I guess that’s my redeeming quality.”

“You’ve got more than one, Madi. But why not go into a different career now? You would kill it in finance.”

I shrug, trying not to show that I’m pleased he sees that. “I could, but for eighty hours a week and no time to give to Teak Heart. Right now, I’m focused on waiting out my trust. Once this is done, I have so many paths I want to explore in the nonprofit sector.”

Oliver doesn’t answer. He studies my face, gives the tiniest nod, and sighs. “Can I borrow some of whatever makes you awesome?”

“Bottle Blonde in a medium shade of Texas Cliché? No offense, but it’s not your color.”

He smiles. “Stop. That’s not it. I meant whatever keeps you moving forward despite the constant obstacles.”

“You don’t have that much rage.” He rolls his eyes, and I reach out to touch his arm. “For real, the gross fog of my self-pity is evaporating enough for me to see that you have your own problems weighing on you. What’s up?”

He climbs to his feet and holds out his hand. “Nothing that a Madison hug can’t fix.”

His hug is good medicine too. He’s not scrawny. He’s lean, but his chest is broad and satisfyingly warm and solid as I rest against it, holding him tight around the waist. “I’m squishing you with contagious rage to help you fix whatever is stressing you out.”

In a fake strangled voice, he gasps, “Thanks. The anger is definitely coming through.”

I revel in the hug for another long moment, and finally Oliver clears his throat. “Are you good now?”

“I’m good.”

“So I can leave you with the kittens and it won’t feel like abandonment?”

“Nope.” I step back and point to the exit. “Get out of here. I have cat friends to hold me down.” It’s true that I’m fine now.

But I miss him when he goes.