Page 115 of Trailer Park Billionaire
Eventually, we stop in front of a new building complex surrounded by cracked pavement, freshly planted flowers, and kids playing with chalk on the sidewalk. It’s not much to look at—until you do.
Colorful window frames. Decorated mailboxes. A community garden. It’s warm, in that way buildings can be when someone cares to make them a home.
“What are we doing here?” I ask when we step out of the car.
“This is one of our projects,” Alexei says. “Funded with old scores. Mostly paintings.”
A mural of a trailer park is painted across the south-facing wall. Alex notices me looking at it.
“Yeah, that’s what it used to look like once upon a time.”
“Like the one you’re living in?” I ask and he nods.
Then he leads me inside. It’s… nice. Clean. Bright. Colorful doors everywhere. There’s another mural in the lobby that looks suspiciously like it was painted by the kids playing outside.
An older man who introduces himself as Dusty Rhodes greets us. His smile splits his face like a sunbeam through cracked blinds. Alex gives him a hug and asks about the apartment he’s apparently moved into recently.
“We let the new inhabitants here add to that mural,” Alex explains when we move on. “Also their doors. They can paint and decorate them themselves. Part of making it feel… less sterile, more like home. And by‘we’I mean the community. Everyone owns their own unit in here.”
He tells me about how they paid for the HVAC systems with money from a stolen Kandinsky, how the communal kitchen got equipped and stocked with the spoils of a tiny landscape lifted from a private collector who probably never noticed it was gone.
“We put a bit of a dent in his wine cellar too,” Alexei mutters when a bunch of kids swarm him before he can respond. They know him by name. They hug him like he’s their uncle. One girl tugs on his hand and tells him she’ll need to fix his nails because they’re not sparkly enough. Another kid hands him a piece of paper. “This one’s for Ben,” the little girl says. “Tell him I drew the sun with extra teeth this time.”
I go still.
Because I’ve seen that drawing before. Not that one specifically, but others like it. Taped to the ceiling of Ben’s trailer and RV. He’d kept them. All of them.
He’d stolen forthem. For this.
For something good.
Alexei watches me after he tells the kids to go back to playing. “We’re building another one,” he says. “At the current trailer park. Once we have the necessary funding.”
I look down at the kids’ drawing in his hands. The sun is smiling in the creepiest way possible. And I don’t know whether I want to scream, or cry, or both.
“Why didn’t he just tell me? Why keep such a thing secret? It would have made it a lot harder to hate him.”
“He wanted to,” he adds after a beat. “He wanted to. But I made him promise not to. Told him he could only tell you what you needed to know for the job—nothing more. Because I was scared. If something went wrong, if you turned on us, if the job failed and the wrong people came sniffing around… it could blow this whole thing up. This place, the kids, everything. People would start asking how we funded it. Who we stole from. Who we really are. And then it’s not just Ben and me in danger. It’s all of them.” Alex glances toward the lobby, where a child’s laugh echoes off the mural-painted walls. “He kept the secret to protect them. And because he made a promise to me. Never to hurt you.”
“And you’re not worried anymore? You trust me now?”
“I am worried. Believe me, I’m always worried. But he trusts you, so…”
I stare at the creepy sun drawing in Alexei’s hand. It looks a little like Ben.
“What an asshole,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “He could have at least told me about his last name.”
Alexei exhales through his nose for a long second. “Remember when you held us at knife point in Ben’s trailer? Would you have agreed to work with him if you had known his last name then?”
I shrug. “If he had told me about the relationship he has with his family… maybe,” I continue. “I might have, possibly, tried to consider it. Under the right circumstances.” I turn to face him fully. “Fine. I probably wouldn’t have.”God, this fucking sucks.“What’s the deal with his family then? The vendetta. What’s it about?”
Alexei shifts his weight. Looks at the mural instead of me. “That’s not my story to tell.”
“Of course it’s not,” I snap. “God forbid anyone give me a straight answer around here.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, quieter now. “He should be the one to tell you.”
I chew the inside of my cheek. “Fine,” I say, eventually. “Then take me to him. Right now. I want to hear his excuses. I want to hear all the bullshit straight from his mouth so I can stop imagining it in my head.”
