The more I look, this Oliver isnotthe same man I knew. On top of appearing twenty years older than he is, complete with premature gray hairs dotting his scalp, the arm musclesI 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,boringdude 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, andI’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.
