Page 124 of Return Billionaire to Sender

“Iambeing truthful.” He pops right up out of his chair, as if he’s outraged at the very thought. But his denial is thin. Weak. I’ve been in enough business negotiations to know a weak denial when I hear one.

“Come on,shethought it up?” I ask.

The look on his face tells me I’m on the right track.

“Look, I just want to know,” I continue in a friendlier tone. “Be honest with me about what happened, and we can part ways. Lie to me, and Iwillpress charges. Now, which one of you came up with the idea that she should be handing over her stipend in exchange for your silence?”

He takes a few beats too long to think about it; that alone tells me what I need to know.

“Well, maybe it was my idea,” he says. “But she was the one pulling the scam on you, and I had nothing to do with it.”

“So you figured it out,” I say.

“Purely by accident.”

I nod. And he calls her. Blackmails her. Noelle is such a Girl Scout, she was probably scared to death of this guy. My accountant had said she used only little bits of her per diem at first, far less than any of the rest of the team; some days she used none of it, and then suddenly she was sending him gift cards. The timing makes sense now. She was trying not to take too much at first, and then this one blackmailed her. Scared her enough that she gave him all of her lunch money.

Something dangerous stirs in my gut.

“And what was she to live on?” I ask. “Did you inquire as to whether she had any money for food? Did it ever occur to you that she might’ve spent every penny she had on a sick relative or something, and that the per diem was all she had to live on? Did it occur to you that she might be going hungry because of you?”

“Maybe she should’ve thought about that before deciding to pull a scam,” he says with a sniff. “Maybe the little bitch’ll think twice next time she decides to—”

My fist finds his jaw before his sentence is out. He staggers briefly, then comes at me with a roar. He’s about my size, but I’m a lot angrier. I block his blow and shove him off.

He wants to come at me again. “Do it,” I taunt. “I’ll give you a free one.” I drop my hands. “Go ahead.” I want to hit him some more—I just do. It’s wrong but I can’t stop thinking about Noelle, staring at that pastry tray. Eating hotel fruit-bowl fruit. And this jackass making her give him the per diem. Squeezing my girl for her lunch money.

I want to do some damage. And I think he knows that I could.

“What the fuck? I told you the truth,” he whines.

“She didn’t have anything to eat, asshole,” I say. “And if you give me or her any more trouble, I am going to haul your ass to jail so fast you won’t know which way is up.”

My security guy comes in. “Need any help?”

“Get him out,” I say.

The irony of my behavior doesn’t escape me. I’m the one tossing her out onto the street. AJ only made her miss a few meals.

33

Noelle

New York is a massive city.Manhattan itself—massive.

Even so, I feel him out there. I’m sure Malcolm doesn’t live anywhere near where we live, but still.

Sometimes when I’m looking out my window at the scroll of street traffic, I feel sure that he’s down there.

His limo looks like anybody else’s limo, but still I sometimes think that I see his. Maybe it’s stupid, but we spent those weeks together and I feel so connected to him. It was more than getting to know each other; he brought out a new side of me; a side of me that I don’t show other people. A side of me that I don’t even show myself. Me as a woman who says real things and asks for what she wants. A woman who has the affection of the most amazing guy in the world.

Meanwhile, my friends and I are freaking out. We don’t know where we’re going to go. All the good places are snapped up; who can get a decent apartment in less than thirty days?

John’s moving in with relatives. Maisey has a sister upstate. Antonio is talking about taking a room in a house of guys that he’s not a huge fan of, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Francine and I take the train out to Queens to investigate a large Airbnb rental for some of us who haven’t found places yet.

We walk around it and decide that the picture on the website made it look 30% nicer than it is in real life—that’s the way we’ll put it to Jada and the others. We decide that the neighborhood is probably good enough as long as there is no nighttime walking, which sucks—in our Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, we know everybody, and you can walk any time of night and feel safe because there’s always a whole lot of people out and about. Even at three in the morning, there are cars and people right there. Everything is lit up.

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