Page 64 of Her Billionaire Boss
“I heard about that,” I said.“But you entirely fund it?That has to be astronomical.”
“It isn’t.And that’s another part of the problem.”El-Mudad gestured around the kitchen.“This house?Is fully paid for.Our cars?All paid for.We don’t have loans or debts, and we have more money than we can spend in our lifetimes.Pouring a few billion a year into feeding people, housing people, it’s nothing at all.”
“It only takes a few billion?”That shocked me.My properties brought in more than that, annually.Could I do something similar?
“Try to see things from Charlotte’s point of view,” Neil advised.“You think everyone wants the Cinderella story so they can live in luxury.But they really want the fantasy so that they can care for others.”
Fantasy.Now, they were speaking my language.Fantasy, I could deliver.
And if all it took was a few billion a year to fulfill a fantasy of stability for people who needed it...why hadn’t I been doing that all along?
* * * *
After a relaxing swim and a walk along the beach that did not involve getting into the water—Sophie had recently learned from a marine biologist friend that great whites were heading closer to the shore these days—we all went inside and got changed.
“This is some place,” Charlotte said, swinging her feet off the edge of the bed.She surveyed the sheen on the guestroom’s black wallpaper and the hexagonal pattern of gold lines across it.“Do you think they had a famous designer do it?”
“It seems like it would be signed somewhere if they had.”I lifted up one of the pillows and pretended to look for a logo.
“Stop,” Charlotte admonished.After a long moment, she said, “Do you think you’d ever want to live in a place like this?”
Away from the city, full time?Never.The thought of the commute was enough to make me dizzy with panic.“I don’t know.Maybe as a vacation home?”
She snorted.“Yeah.This is a totally normal vacation home.”
“Would it be a totally normal family home?”I asked.
Her expression fell.“I’m not criticizing them.I’m not a snob.”
“I didn’t think you were criticizing them.”I sat beside her.“I had a conversation with Neil and El-Mudad about what it’s been like for Sophie, with the becoming suddenly rich angle.”
“I’ve had plenty of conversations about that with her.”Charlotte gave me a cute, close-lipped smile.“She’s my mentor.She’s teaching me how to fit in with your kind.”
Neil’s words came back to haunt me.I paraphrased them for Charlotte.“Turns out, I made a mistake.You weren’t supposed to adjust to my world.I was supposed to adjust to yours.”
“You don’t exactly live in ‘my world,’” she reminded me.“Just because we make dinner at home sometimes—”
“That’s not what I mean.”“You’ve talked a lot more lately about how not ‘normal’ I am.And I took offense to that because, for me, this kind of life is normal.Being able to own a house that’s way too big, with the ocean steps away?This is my normal.And I thought you would be happy to abandon everything you used to know and jump straight into living the way I do.Neil and El-Mudad made me realize something.”
She sat through my pause for a moment, finally asking, “Are you going to share this realization with me?”
“Our life together is never going to work if I keep assuming I can force you to understand and accept stuff like multi-million dollar mansions and private islands and, yeah, private jets, even though I don’t have one.”
“Whoa, whoa.”She put her hands out in front of her.“Let’s not be too hasty.I’m not so proud that I wouldn’t accept a private jet.”
The corner of my mouth twitched.That was an extravagance I wouldn’t bend on, and she knew it.“I don’t need one.But as you’ve pointed out before, that doesn’t mean I understand how the other ninety-nine percent live.When I went to college and insisted on staying in the dorms and eating commissary garbage, I was doing that to prove that I was as good as anybody else.That I wasn’t as stuck up and spoiled as the people in the social circles of my youth.And, okay, to bug the fuck out of my mom.”
“She didn’t want you to go to college?”Charlotte sounded skeptical.
I shook my head.“No, she didn’t want Catherine to go to college.At least, not to get anything other than a husband.Mother wanted me to go to college, but she wanted me to live the way a lot of legacies lived.Private homes with chefs and a staff, ‘slumming it’ by having roommates who were the children of people as rich as my parents, but without the pedigree.I thought I was going to be different.I was going to understand the common people.I’ve spent almost two decades truly believing that I’d pulled it off.But I’m never going to pull it off.”
“Truly, you live in a gilded prison.My pure peasant’s heart bleeds for you.”
“I’m baring my soul to you here.Can you not make jokes?”That sounded too defensive.“Sorry.This visit has been eye-opening.”
“For me, too,” Charlotte agreed.“I want to get rid of the full-time staff at our place.It would feel so much more private.”
“They give us our privacy—” I started to argue, then cut myself off.“You know what?I agree.No more staff.Just a cleaning crew that comes in every now and then.”
