Pucking Billionaire

1. Sophia

Chapter 1

Sophia

“ H e left me everything ?” I stare at Mr. Cohen, my late father’s lawyer, like he’s about to sprout pink squirrels from his eyeballs.

I thought my father would leave me some photographs, or my grandmother’s ring, or a creepy doll that comes to life at night. Not all his earthly possessions. Of which there were apparently many.

“Your father was an orphan and an only child.” Mr. Cohen gestures around his drab office as if answers might be written on one of the many degrees decorating the beige walls. “Whom did you expect to be in his will?”

I shrug. His new wife? Their kids, if they had any? Certainly not the daughter who’d refused to see him her whole life until a month ago. Even then, we’d only met once for a super-awkward lunch before he ghosted me. Or so I thought. Turns out he’d passed… and, for all I know, is an actual ghost now, watching us in this very room.

Okay, that was in poor taste. Just goes to show I probably shouldn’t be in his will. Hell, I didn’t even go to his funeral because I barely knew the guy, and I’m not good with death-related things.

“I’ve known Theodore since before you were born,” Mr. Cohen says softly. “He truly cared about you.”

“Then why wasn’t he in my life?” I ask bitterly.

It’s a topic we danced around during our one and only meeting, but my father kept steering the conversation toward me and my studies, so I never got any sort of real answers.

Mr. Cohen sighs. “Your mother had full custody of you and didn’t allow Theodore anywhere near you. She even got a restraining order—completely unnecessarily, I should add.”

“What? No! That can’t be true.” There’s so much to unpack there that I don’t even know where to start. “My mother is a drug addict,” I say. “I’m pretty sure she was back then too. How could she get custody over a wealthy father?”

Mr. Cohen shrugs. “Theodore wasn’t particularly wealthy back then, and judges often have a bias in favor of the mother. Your father knew Eleni was an addict, but she somehow passed her court-mandated drug testing. Then she twisted her history with your father to make him seem controlling and abusive. All of his attempts to get her help were made out to be examples of his controlling nature. She claimed he tricked her when he brought her to America from Greece, and that his ultimate goal was to separate her from her friends and family back there, so he could isolate her and keep her under his thumb. None of it was true, of course, but?—”

“But she doesn’t have any friends or family in Greece,” I say, latching on to the most glaring discrepancy.

At least that’s what my mother told me, back when we were on speaking terms.

Mr. Cohen nods. “I’m not surprised. She told many lies during the court proceedings, lies that hurt your father both personally and professionally. It took him many years to recover from the damage—both emotional and financial—that your mother inflicted on him.”

My head is spinning. Lies. So, so many lies. My mother told me that my father was awful. That he abandoned us for his other family. But clearly, there was no other family; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here as the sole beneficiary in his will. And the worst thing is, I’m not even particularly surprised to learn any of this.

My mother has always been a manipulative liar. Why did it never occur to me to question her claims about my father?

It’s like on some level, I was mad at him for not being there to protect me from her.

“So, anyway,” Mr. Cohen says. “As soon as you were old enough, your father tried reaching out to you.”

There’s a thickness in my throat when I think of all the times I rebuffed my father, thanks to the poisonous things my mother had told me about him over the years. Things that I’m now realizing are false.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t at the funeral,” I mutter.

Mr. Cohen waves that away. “Theodore wasn’t a religious man. Knowing him, he’d probably say that he was dead at that point, so who cares who showed up? Meeting you at that lunch truly brightened the end of his life, and I know he appreciated that. He told me so.”

My eyes water from all the stupid dust permeating this office. “I wish he’d told me that he was sick.”

The lawyer looks at me pityingly. “He probably didn’t want to burden you.”

I bite my lip. “All we talked about was my philosophy degree. Never about him.”

“I’m sure he enjoyed hearing about your studies,” Mr. Cohen reassures me. “He was paying for them, after all.”

I frown at him. “I have a scholarship.”

His smile is wan. “You mean the scholarship from the DIBT Foundation?”

I stare at him. “No… Really?”

“I helped your father do all the paperwork. That foundation was created with you in mind.”

My drab surroundings suddenly feel surreal. “If he cared about me so much and had that kind of money, why did I grow up so poor?”

Poor is an understatement. I once got a hand-me-down sock from the tooth fairy.

Mr. Cohen shrugs. “He sent exorbitant amounts of money as child support to your mother.”

My mother. Of course.

I grit my teeth. This explains so much. Like why Mom was so on edge on my eighteenth birthday. She knew my father’s checks, and therefore the drugs, would stop coming in. It must also be why she opened all those credit cards in my name around that time.

Not for the first time, I wonder how different my life would be if I’d managed to crawl out from someone else’s birth canal twenty-four years ago. Relatedly, has Mommie Dearest had free will this whole time—and therefore no excuse for her horrible parenting? Or is free will an illusion, in which case I could maybe give her a break?

“Would you like me to read you the will?” Mr. Cohen gently offers.

Huh. Another kind of will. “Sure.”

So he does, and as I listen, my head spins—especially when he gets to the part about ten million dollars in my trust fund.

I mean, when we met for the first time, my father did take me to a ritzy restaurant and didn’t seem too strapped for cash, but I didn’t realize he was a millionaire with a list of possessions longer than my recent thesis on Kant. It’s so long that I realize I tuned Mr. Cohen out for a few seconds, and he’s still going—which is insane.

“Lastly,” Mr. Cohen continues. “He wanted me to make sure you became caretaker of his house in Westchester, or more specifically, of his beloved turtles that reside there, Donatello and April.”

“Turtles?” I blink at Mr. Cohen, wondering if the reading of the will has short-circuited something in my brain.

“Or tortoises,” he says. “I’m not sure what the difference is.”

“Me neither.” What I do know is that Donatello is the name of one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who—as the name implies—aren’t tortoises. On the other hand, April is the name of a human reporter who befriends the Ninja Turtles, so, using the skills I learned in a course on logic, it would follow that I might have human wards crashing at my house, and not reptiles.

“Either way, you might want to visit the house soon and meet with your new charges, as well as the staff there. Also, you might want to think about the financial implications of your new situation.”

Feeling overwhelmed, I nod.

“Call me if you need anything.”

I nod again and stand, knees wobbly.

“Best of luck to you with everything,” he says.

In a haze, I turn to leave.

By all rights, I should be happy to have suddenly become rich, but I feel anything but.

Now that I have irrefutable evidence that my father cared about me, I feel terrible that throughout my entire life, I’ve thought otherwise. If money could buy a time machine, I’d spend any amount to go back and attend my father’s funeral. Better yet, I’d tell my younger self to actually get to know him because now I really wish I had, but it’s too late.

Also, the money I’ve just inherited comes with a lot of responsibility that I don’t feel prepared for—and I don’t just mean Donatello, who may or may not be a turtle who knows ninjutsu, and April, who may or may not be a human female who looks just like Megan Fox. Having always been poor, I worry that I’ll somehow end up squandering my newfound inheritance, like some lottery winners do.

Maybe I should take some classes in the personal finance department? Learn about smart investing?

One thing is for certain: for better or worse, my life has forever changed.