Chapter 4 #3
He does. But I let it go. “Have you ever been inside a ValuKart? Do you know how to use the self-checkout lanes in a grocery store? How are you going to get housing when you don’t have any credit history under your new name?
You can’t pay for a house with cash. People ask questions.
They asked me all of the questions when my father cut me off, and I didn’t even need to get my own place for a while after that.
Just a new phone line and bank account. They’re going to ask you so many questions. ”
He's still glaring at me.
The old Oliver would roll his eyes, but he was too passive to glare.
This Oliver is telling me with his eyeballs that I have underestimated who he’s become after four years of being a CEO and he doesn’t need me.
So I switch tactics. “Listen, I truly don’t give two craps if you want to run away.”
“Don’t you?”
“Nope. Not a bit. Don’t care why. Don’t care where you go.
Don’t care what you want to do. But I’ve been there, Oliver.
I’ve started over. I know how to navigate the world.
I can anticipate problems you wouldn’t even dream could exist. I can help you the same way that—that people helped me when I suddenly didn’t have a dime left to my name.
I know you’ll have your money to make it easier, but the world without security and drivers and chefs and executive assistants—that takes some adjusting.
I can help you. And I’m probably the only person in the world who can. ”
His poker face stops pokering.
“You’re wearing white linen boat pants with a flannel shirt. You’ve picked literally the only kind of pants in the entire world that don’t go with flannel. You are not prepared for the world outside of the C-suite in Manhattan. Let me help you.”
His solid jaw that’s far more defined than it was the last time I saw him works back and forth while his eyes bore into me. The barest hint of dark scruff covers his cheeks and jawbone. I’ve never seen him with a beard. Or more than two days’ worth of growth back when he was with Margot.
The man even shaved on vacation.
I wonder if he’ll grow out his facial hair as part of his disguise.
Or if he’ll even need to.
The more I look, this Oliver is not the same man I knew.
On top of appearing twenty years older than he is, complete with premature gray hairs dotting his scalp, the arm muscles I glimpsed when I was trying to get my phone this morning weren’t there when I last saw him shortly before I was disinherited.
The scowls, the grumpiness, the fury that I swear I feel simmering below his surface—he’s nothing like the passive, agreeable, safe, boring dude that I knew when he dated Margot.
And it’s unlikely he’ll settle anywhere that anyone would recognize him anyway.
How much money has he shifted to offshore accounts in his new name already? Where’s the next place he’s going to find another suitcase of cash? Will that cash be American dollars, or will it give me a clue where he’s headed next?
Will he set himself up on a beach in Mexico with a small staff?
He speaks Italian, which would be a non-boring thing about him if he’d learned it so he could go live in Italy rather than because we all had to take foreign language classes in school and he was a pompous windbag who made a big deal of keeping up his education.
He could pass himself off as an eccentric forty-something-year-old Italian millionaire who retired young from the banking industry.
He was good for the world as CEO of Miles2Go, but I don’t think the world of being CEO was good to him.
I mean, obviously, if he’s running away from it.
“And what’s in this for you?” he asks. “If I take your help, what do you want?”
“One favor.”
“How much?”
I do quick math, knowing full well we’re both talking dollars and cents for payment now.
Yes, in fact, I can be bought. But it’s for a good cause. “A number under a million.”
“How much under a million?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not for me.”
“Who’s it for?”
“I’ll tell you when I cash in the favor.”
He’s still studying me like he can see right through me. “Why?”
“Why don’t I trust you? I’d think that’s pretty obvious.”
“Why do you want to do this? Was this your plan all along? Is my family paying you to be here? What’s in this for you?”
“Your family can eat a bag of dicks. Mine can too. Except Margot. That’s all I wanted.
All I wanted was to tell you to leave Margot alone, that she deserves someone who will treat her like she invented cheesecake, not someone who loves her just for her brain and her connections.
Those are the least interesting things about her. ”
“I didn’t—”
“Didn’t tell your father you were going to propose to her again last night?”
“I fucking lied and told him what he fucking wanted to—never mind. Doesn’t matter.”
That would be reassuring if he hadn’t made Margot think he was interested too.
“You’re right. It doesn’t. What matters is that we’re here, and part of my life is pretty good for reasons that unfortunately have to do with you, and I’d like it to stay good, and it won’t if you’re not at Miles2Go.
That’s the whole truth. You did something that gave me a purpose, and I don’t want to lose that. ”
“What are you talking about?”
“You let me help you until I’m sure you won’t get yourself murdered or kidnapped or worse, and then I’ll tell you more.
Right now, all you need is my offer. Once you’ve got the basics under control or until you get to wherever you’re going where someone else is waiting to help you, you’ll transfer some amount of money that’s under a million dollars to where I ask you to, and I’ll take the secret of where you are and anything we did here to the grave. ”
The only sound in the car is the buzzing of a fly that somehow got inside.
It zips between us crookedly like it’s been swimming in lemon drop martinis while Oliver continues to glare at me.
I’ve resigned myself to having to climb out of the car in this horrid dress and no shoes—like hell I’m hiking to the next town in those Louboutins that I stole from Margot’s closet the last time I saw her before the great disinheriting—when he speaks.
“Three days.”
Yes.
Three days.
I can work miracles in three days.
I hold out a hand. “Shake on it.”
His hand is clammy when he puts it in mine, and he’s still staring at me like he wants to strangle me, but he shakes firmly without trying to murder my hand bones, even though I’m convinced he could. Dude must’ve spent a lot of time in the gym the past few years. “Three days.”
“A sum of money under a million to be deposited into an account I name at the end of three days.”
“For your silence.”
“And my help.”
“Mostly your silence. Get in the back seat. And be quiet.”
If he’s expecting me to get out of the car to get into the back seat, he’s going to be very disappointed.
He can’t get rid of me that easily.
I unbuckle and wiggle between the front two seats to climb into the back.
Probably flash him my ass cheeks on the way.
I do not miss wearing thongs now that I go to work in boots and thick denim every day, and I’d prefer to not be wearing one now.
He makes a strangled noise. “And I’m buying you new clothes.”
“Perfect.” I flop into the back seat beside the lone suitcase he brought out of the cabin this morning that’s half-full of protein bars, turn to face forward, and strap myself in, noting that his cheeks have gone a shade of pink.
He definitely saw my ass. “I’ll teach you how it’s done.
Hand me my phone, and I’ll direct you to the nearest farm goods store. You’re gonna love it.”
He doesn’t hand me my phone.
He does heave another sigh though.
Fine.
Whatever.
I’ll get it soon enough.
We’ve declared a truce, and I have three days.
This…might actually end okay.