Page 119 of Most Eligible Billionaire

Slowly she turns, but the warmth is gone from her eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’ll still give it back. I’ll sign and deliver those papers I drew up. For half a million.”

“Don’t,” I whisper, when I realize the significance of the number.

“That’s my offer.”

“Henry—” Brett starts to say something. I shut him up with a quick look. He widens his eyes. He wants me to take it. It’s way cheaper than the millions we offered a few weeks back.

“This isn’t you,” I say. “You fight for things.”

“I didn’t get the half mill the last time around. So you’ll pay it to me, and if you don’t, the world will learn that Vonda O’Neil and Smuckers run your company.”

“Vicky.”

“It’s Vonda,” she says. “I’m Vonda O’Neil. And I have to say, keeping me on good behavior with the good cop act while you gather evidence for the hearing? Very effective. Who knows what I would’ve done. Maybe even painted those cranes pink, with Smuckers’s face—”

“We’ll pay!” Brett says.

“I don’t want you to go,” I say. “Brett is going.”

“A bank transfer.” She fishes out a checkbook and tears off a deposit slip. “Five hundred thousand and you’ll never hear from me again.”

“I wasn’t pretending—you know I wasn’t. Feel the truth of that. Of us.”

Her eyes are cold. “If you follow me or try to contact me, I’ll tell theNew York Tribunethe story of Vonda O’Neil and a dog and their hold over Locke Worldwide.”

I get between her and the elevator door, but I don’t touch her. I’m not Denny. Except it’s too late. “I know what this looks like to you.”

“Do you?” she asks. “Please understand when I ask you to leave me be. Respect me on that. Have the money in my bank account by bank open tomorrow. With that you’ll get my silence and your company back.” She stabs the elevator button. “If the money isn’t there, you can kiss the stability of the Locke name goodbye. You’ll learn firsthand about the power of the Vonda name.”

“Screw the company. I want you,” I say.

Brett grabs my shoulder. “Dude.”

I shake him off. “We got this, Vicky.”

Her eyes shine as she backs into the elevator. She stands in there alone, finger stab-stabbing the button like she always does.

“It doesn’t actually go faster when you do that,”I whisper, but the doors are already closed.

Thirty

Vicky

“The day after tomorrow?”Carly is inconsolable when I tell her we have to leave. Her eyes shine wild. “It’s my junior year,” she says. “We can’t justleave!”

“We have to.”

“But we can’t! Please…”

“I’m so sorry.”

She collapses in a heap on our ratty green couch. “And our show just went up. And Bess…oh my god, I’ll never see Bess again!”

“You’ll see her again.”I hope. I think.I wrap my arms around myself.

“All my friends. Our whole life. If I leave school they’ll never let me back in.”

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