Page 109 of Return Billionaire to Sender

I snort. “They won’t be when I’m through with him. He expects me to hit back, but insulting you like that? I’m going to go at him so hard. And I’ll find whoever he has on the inside and squeeze that person. And I have to get Gerrold to sign before my father gets to him. I have to move fast.”

“Do you have to?” she asks naively.

I take a strand of her hair between two fingers. “Should I sing ‘Kumbayah’ with him instead?”

She says nothing.

It’s here that I get a strange new idea. More diabolical than any I’ve ever come up with. “What if I did something truly drastic?”

She looks wary. “Like what?”

“Really unexpected,” I say.

She blinks. “Loving kindness and selfless generosity?”

It’s interesting how well she’s gotten to know me in this short time. “Loving and selfless might be a bit overboard,” I say. “But imagine this. What if I threw in training for the displaced workers? That would clinch the deal and seriously fuck with my dad. It would be so unlike me. He’d never see it coming, and he wouldn’t be prepared to counter it. The fact is, a few of my segments have expanding coding needs…”

“You would train and place the people who get let go?” she asks.

“Why not?” I say.

“What about the money?” she asks.

“What an interesting question from my empathy coach,” I say. “What about the money, my empathy coach wonders.”

She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I’ll still lose my shirt offering retraining and guaranteed positions, but if we do a PR angle on it, then the publicity might make it worth it. Which would in turn make future companies more receptive to my bids.”

“So you’re doing it all for the PR,” she says.

“And to screw my father. And because I’m a billionaire who gets to do whatever ridic thing he gets into his head.”

She snorts and shoves at my shoulder. I make a few phone calls. I get my HR VP out of bed and pitch it. I instruct him to work up a proposal. I get my PR agency to weigh in.

“This is absolute madness,” I say a few hours later when things are in motion. “And it could work. It’ll definitely put a ticking clock under Gerrold.”

“Look at you being good,” she says.

“Yeah, look at me being good,” I joke. “How incredibly boring.”

“Stop. It suits you,” she says. “Also, people will not see this coming.”

“I have something you didn’t count on,” I say darkly. “A destructive secret weapon—yeah, that’s right, it’s a program that helps these workers thrive in the future economy, and I am going to crush your fucking balls with it.”

She laughs and comes and sits on my lap and kisses me. How is it that this is so much fun? This kind of giveaway, I should be weeping.

My phone rings. It’s legal from back home, returning my call. I’m running this all through New York—no way can I trust anyone on the traveling team. Who the hell has been feeding information to my father? And did it just start when we arrived on the West Coast? Or has it been going on?

But Elle I can trust. Elle is on my side. I conscript her into serving as admin and liaison, pulling together PDF packets and communicating instructions to the different teams while I’m on with the lawyers.

She goes back to her room and comes back with her laptop. She settles in next to me on the bed and I press my lips to her shoulder, enjoying the silkiness of her skin, and the faint smell of rosewood to the coconut berry, which I think might be her deodorant.

“They’ll never expect this,” I say.

“’Cause you’re sooo evil,” she says.

She loves to say that like it’s a joke now. Wishing so fiercely with her army green eyes.

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