Page 3 of Return Billionaire to Sender

Cued up on my iPad is a video that Jada put together as a digital keepsake for all of us to remember the place by. It’s mostly us telling the camera our favorite things about living in our building and talking about how much we love it, and love each other. She strung together footage she dug up of parties, building meetings, historical footage, all kinds of things. She screened it to the group of us the other night, and it made everybody weepy. There may have been bubbly beverages involved.

But it really was so emotional, this sweet video of everything that we’ll be losing when our beloved building is knocked down. I’ve only been there two years, and even I can’t imagine losing it.

And then at one point during the night, I stood up in front of the whole group and declared that if Malcolm Blackberg were to see the video, like if we made him watch the whole entire thing, he would never, ever, ever tear down the building.

“You are soooo cute,” Vicky said. Mia declared that I definitely needed to live in the city a while longer. Tabatha and Francine just thought it was sweet and sad.

I didn’t think it was sweet or sad or cute at all. I was dead serious and definitely on a freaking roll. In fact, I stood up there like Winston Churchill addressing the House of Lords. “When people know each other’s stories, their hearts change. And Malcolm Blackberg is no different. And I’m serious, you guys—if we made him watch the video, his heart would change, guaranteed.”

They all scoffed, but I felt so sure. Who could see it and not be moved?

“Didn’t Rex even say that there were other ways for him to execute his plan without demolishing this building?” I asked. “If Malcolm Blackberg knew what this building meant to us, I know he would rethink his plan. I would bet any amount of money.”

“Okay, Professor Higgins,” Francine had said, throwing popcorn at me.

“It has to happen,” I’d continued. “In fact, I’m going to make him do it.”

Lizzie joked that the only way he’d watch it would be if I tied him up and propped his eyes open with toothpicks. People laughed at the idea of me doing that.

“I don’t know how I’ll get him to watch it,” I told them, “but no way are you going to see me standing across that street watching the wrecking ball fly without having done everything humanly possible to stop it. The worst he could do is say no, right?” And I made a big show of having Jada send me a copy to put on my iPad. I would make him watch Jada’s commemorative video right on my iPad.

I unsnap my bag. There’s a little notecard in there where I wrote down my impassioned speech that would get him to watch Jada’s movie, but as Malcolm nears, the words on the card feel irrelevant as alien hieroglyphics.

“Can I help you?”

I turn and find myself face to face with a bushy-bearded security guard. Can he tell that I don’t belong here? “No, thank you,” I say.

“Do you have business in this building?” he asks.

“I…I’m here to meet with somebody,” I say.

The security guard motions toward the elevator area. “Visitor reception’s on two,” he says, seeming suspicious of me.“You’ll check in there and get a visitor’s lanyard.”

I back up. “Thank you,” I say.

“Miss!” He gets this alarmed look on his face. “Watch your—”

I don’t hear the rest, because I run smack into somebody.

I spin around. Stuff dumps from my open bag. “Oh my god, I’m so—” The apology dies on my tongue as I find myself face to face with the obsidian glare of Malcolm Blackberg himself. “S-sorry,” I say. “I didn’t see where I was going—”

“To be expected when one walks backwards,” he bites out in a cut-glass British accent, reminding me that I read somewhere he’s from England. The accent adds to his strange viciousness, and also to the rate of my banging pulse.

Malcolm Blackberg is beautiful from afar, but up close he’s heart-splittingly hot, full of dark allure with his regal, bird-of-prey nose and dark-rimmed eyes the color of iced tea.

I squat down to gather my things.

Much to my surprise, he squats down and helps. I’m nearly hyperventilating from what a larger-than-life presence he is—and madly muscular, too, judging from the way his pants tighten around his thighs.

This—this is my chance to say something. But my mind is blanking.

I place my things deftly in their exact-right slots in my bag, because even when I’m freaking out, it’s against my hyper-organized heart just to slam everything in.

I look up and again our eyes meet. He regards me with a look that sears me to the core, and then—slowly—his eyes lower to my neck. What does he want with my neck?

He’s staring at my dorky bow tie, of course. God, why did I not listen to Francine on the bow tie? What is wrong with me?

He has my phone in his hand, and he tucks it into the designated phone pocket of my bag.

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