Page 18 of Most Eligible Billionaire

She’d know about the deep friendships we have throughout the city. We don’t own judges and cops like a crime family does; we have something more powerful—friendship in high places. Friends in high places tend to see things your way.

“At least offer four point five,” Brett says. “It feels like five. She’ll go to ten, then, and we meet at seven.”

“It’s a good payday for her,” Kaleb says. “Assuming she’s not part of an organized team.”

“I don’t think she is,” I say.

“How do you know?” Kaleb says.

Because there’s an echo of loneliness to her. I hear it in her bravado. I see it in the way she straightens her spine. The cold steel you grow in your spine when nobody else is pulling for you.

I don’t say that, though.

“Because she’d use them to squeeze us. She’d come in like a tiger with some boiler-room financial guy or a shady lawyer. Not like…” I gesture at her. “Please.”

“Right,” Kaleb agrees.

The room has emptied. Some of our cousins still linger in the hall. Some of the younger ones probably nabbed a bottle of booze and went to the second-floor balcony to smoke.

Malcomb’s explaining things to the scammer and the rest of the guys are doing phone things.

She looks up as if she feels my attention.Yeah, you’ve got my attention,I think. I stroll her way. I cross my arms. “Let’s talk.”

She furrows her brows. “Okay.”

“We’ve called the police. They don’t have enough to make anything stick—yet—but they’ll have questions.”

She straightens. “But I didn’t do anything!”

Did she even hear theyet? The yet was the most important part of my sentence. It was the opening of our negotiation. “We’ll let them decide that. I don’t imagine they have enough to make anything stick—yet.”

Meaning once we dig into her background, we’ll find what we need. If she’s a scammer, there’s something.

She looks worried. “I have to pick up my sister.”

I frown. “Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you decided to defraud a vulnerable old woman.”

“I didn’t defraud—”

“It’s just us here, jelly bean, so you can stop with the pretense.” She starts to protest but I roll right over her. “The good news is that I’m prepared to hand over a cashier’s check this afternoon to get clear of all this. Malcolmb and his team will draw up papers and you’ll sign over the ownership. You can probably get more cash out eventually, yeah, but it would take years, and I think we both know the risks.”

She’s peering at me uncertainly.

I grab a pencil off the table and flip over a sheet of paper. You always write the big numbers for people to see. You always add the decimal point and the extra zeroes, too. The zeros have power. I write it out: $4,500,000.00.

She stares at the number, as though stunned. It’s a lowball, yes.

Brett drifts over. “It’s a good deal, and we walk away,” he says. Like he’s offering a helpful reminder. “This is a good deal. Let’s resolve it now.”

She turns to me, clutching my mother’s stupid dog. “Four point fivemillion?” she says incredulously.

The dog licks her chin.

I wait. Where is the counteroffer?

Where?

I tighten my jaw. Is it so low to her she’s not even bothering? Was she thinking in terms of billions? Is this an organized thing after all? Is there a team behind her?

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