How to Belong with a Billionaire

by Alexis Hall

  But that was fine. We’d hit the motorway, and would be on it for hours, so I was more than happy to sink into the problems faced by lonely governesses in crumbling mansions. It was a welcome break from my own, which were blackening the horizon like pollution. God, I’d made nothing but appalling decisions since the beginning of the year. Here’s hoping confronting Jonas wasn’t another one.

  Chapter 35

  The Leeds Morley Travelodge was…I guess you could charitably call it quaint? A cream-painted lump of a building, with a set of twin gables that looked like squirrel ears poking out the top. We parked round the back and headed inside.

  “So,” I said, scurrying to keep up with Finesilver’s uncompromising pace, “do you think Raoul was involved in the murder attempts?”

  But the only answer I got was, “Wait here a moment, please.”

  Mindful of what I’d agreed with Caspian, I tucked myself obediently into a corner next to the entrance while Finesilver approached the front desk. I was too far away to hear what he said, and his manner throughout was as mild as ever, but in less than a minute the receptionist was handing over a keycard. Finesilver thanked him politely, beckoned me over, and we made our way to the next floor in silence.

  Well, apart from my heart, which was going like a snare drum at a metal concert.

  About halfway down a white-painted, blue-carpeted hallway we came to a door. Just your basic, ordinary Travelodge door. Finesilver gave me a look that seemed to say, Are you ready, and I wasn’t in the slightest but I nodded anyway.

  He knocked. Didn’t wait for an answer. Just ran the card through the reader and went in. I followed—standard Travelodge room, sparse, clean, more blue carpet, more white walls, inoffensive abstract on the wall—and there was Jonas with his suitcase open on the bed. For a moment, a sliver of a second, he didn’t react at all. Like when a MacBook crashes and the little beach ball spins and spins. And then he looked startled.

  “Arden?” He nudged his glasses further up his nose. “What are you doing here?”

  And I know I’d promised Caspian I wasn’t going to get involved. But the words “You took my phone, motherfucker” burst out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  His eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, you’re right, I did. You see, there was an emergency at work—”

  “A library software emergency.”

  “We do get them, believe it or not. Universities depend on their libraries, and their libraries depend on us. Anyway”—one of his dimples glimmered and then vanished—“I’m so sorry I had to rush off without saying goodbye. I was going to call you and explain, but I must have picked up your phone by accident as I was leaving.”

  I’d been talking to him for less than a minute and already my head was a Catherine wheel. “Just. Give. It. Fucking. Back. Right the fuck now.”

  “Well, why on earth would I want to keep it?” A bewildered expression flittered across his face like a wounded gazelle. Then he dipped into his case, plucked my phone from its depths, and held it out to me.

  I snatched it. Swiped to wake it up. It was undeniably my phone. Nothing had changed on the home screen. But it felt different. Turned over. Opened up. Delicately combed through. Urgh.

  “So you took it by accident,” I said. “Then accidentally got it unlocked. And accidentally went through all my stuff.”

  Jonas shrugged, endearingly sheepish. “That’s some interesting pornography you’ve got on there.”

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  “Arden, come on. Of course I had to get it unlocked. How else was I supposed to get it back to you? I couldn’t ring you because I had your phone and I didn’t know how else to get in touch.”

  “What, you couldn’t post it to the work address you already knew on account of having randomly turned up at it in order to see me?”

  “I should have thought of that, shouldn’t I?” His hand went to his hair, fluffing it up even further. “Look, I can see you’re upset because I left without telling you, and I’m sorry I took your phone by mistake, but I was going to contact you as soon I could. Although I’m not sure why any of this makes it okay for you to, well, I suppose I might say stalk me across the country and break into my hotel room.”

  My mouth dropped open. I was about to protest that I hadn’t stalked him, just come to get my phone back, when Finesilver cut smoothly over me. “Mr. Jackson, before we go further, I would advise you against mischaracterizing the circumstances of this conversation. My associate and I are here with the full knowledge and permission of the management, and should you be so foolish as to claim otherwise in a public setting, you would be opening yourself to a suit for slander.”

  “Slander? I don’t understand. Who are you?” Jonas’s eyes darted to Finesilver and then back to me. “Arden, what’s this about?”

  “You will address me,” returned Finesilver, his tone as sheer and blank as glass, “not my associate. As for who I am, I represent a wealthy and influential client who wishes to ensure that your future behaviour remains within certain parameters.”

  Jonas sat shakily on the edge of the bed. “My…my behaviour? I’m just a salesman. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Oh my God. He was so completely full of lies. It made me furious. With a side salad of even more furious because, based on actions alone, it was hard to tell the difference between someone completely full of lies and someone terribly upset because you’d got your billionaire ex-boyfriend to send his scariest lawyer after them. And I hated that there was even a lemon rind of a question in my mind.

  “What you have done or not done is not my concern.” Finesilver remained standing, though his slightness meant it didn’t come across as a power move, his hands folded neatly in front of him. “I’m here to execute my client’s wishes, and my client wishes the following: that you sign these divorce papers immediately and that you undertake to have no further contact of any kind with Mr. Arden St. Ives, Ms. Iris Jackson née St. Ives, or any persons associated with either of them, signing these additional documents to that effect.”

  “I’m still not quite sure what’s happening but”—and here Jonas’s voice steadied, as though he was drawing courage from confusion—“but I do know I have rights. You can’t come in here and threaten me.”

  “I have made no threats, Mr. Jackson. I am simply telling you what my client requires.”

  “Your client? You mean Caspian Hart.” Jonas’s gaze settled on me again and there was something…I don’t know…unsettling in his eyes, a kind of slick gleam like oil on water. “I thought you broke up with him.”

  “I remind you,” murmured Finesilver, “to address me, not my associate.”

  “I find it sort of funny”—one of Jonas’s fingers stroked idly at the edge of his jaw—“that Caspian Hart is so interested in me all of a sudden. Because I actually know quite a lot about him, isn’t that right, Arden?”

  I basically exploded. “You fucking…fucking…I can’t believe I trusted—”

  Finesilver’s fingers closed tightly around my elbow. “Once again, address me, not my associate. Whatever you think you know, I highly recommend against saying anything you will regret later.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Jonas with the monkish mildness that made me want to punch him in the face forever, “it’s my regrets we have to worry about here.”

  Okay, this was bad. And it was my fault it was bad. I’d spilled my guts to Jonas over my breakup with Caspian, except I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d told him. I hadn’t mentioned Caspian by name, I knew that—though it was scant fucking comfort when the fact we’d been a thing was all over the Internet. With photos. And I definitely hadn’t gone into details, at least not about anything that wasn’t my own stupid feelings, but Jonas could probably have joined the dots. He was way too good at that—especially if the dots were vulnerabilities and he got to join them with a knife.

  Oh fuck. If Caspian’s past got out…I had no idea what that might mean. He’d hate it, obviously. But how much w
ould it damage him? He’d barely come to terms with it for himself. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than seeing it splashed across the papers. Thrown about on social media like the latest fucking meme. Was this the deal, then? No matter what, someone I loved got hurt? All because I’d been weak and stupid enough to let Jonas Jackson stick his dirty fingers in my life.

  I glanced at Finesilver. Maybe he didn’t know what Jonas was hinting at or maybe he did and had balls of whatever Wolverine’s claws are made of, but either way his poise hadn’t faltered. For all his self-effacing mannerisms, there was something in the way he held himself that reminded me of an untipped fencing foil.

  “If you sincerely believe,” Finesilver said, “that you have correctly identified my client, who, I should stress, I am not at liberty to name, and should you further truly believe that you are more capable of harming their interests than they are of harming yours, then we have little more to discuss. I cannot, after all, legally prevent you from telling whatever it is you think you know to whoever it is you think will listen.”

  Jonas put his palms on the bed behind him and leaned back, almost insolently. “Then I guess we’re done here.”

  “On that matter, certainly. Now, as to the papers—”

  “I’m not signing any papers. And Caspian Hart can’t make me.”

  “For the record, I will remind you that I have never stated that I work for Caspian Hart. But”—Finesilver inclined his head, very slightly—“you are correct, my client has no power to dictate your actions. Just as you have no power to, for example, dictate whether my client purchases a controlling share in your employer. Which, I am at liberty to inform you, they have, in fact, done.”

  A brief but scratchy pause. Nails on a blackboard inside a silence. “I thought you weren’t making any threats.”

  “I’m not. I’m simply outlining the choices that certain parties are free to make. You are free to go about your business as you always have and my client is free to purchase the freeholds of certain buildings in Carlisle, acquire certain portfolios of debts from certain creditors, and do with those commodities as he or she sees fit. Which, again, my client has already done. Meaning he or she is also free to call in those debts and evict any persons living in houses on that freehold should he or she wish.”

  “So you’re saying…” Jonas was speaking very slowly, the words heavy in his mouth somehow. “Unless I do what you want, I’m going to lose my job, my home, and my savings.”

  Finesilver’s eyes widened fractionally with the faintest hint of indignation. “I’m suggesting no such thing. We’re just making conversation while you decide how you wish to proceed in this matter.”

  Another of those nasty silences. And then Jonas started to cry, the tears rolling under the frames of his glasses in this procession of orderly woe. It was hard to watch because it was always hard to watch someone in distress, and a guilty feeling squirmed wormishly inside me. But I also couldn’t help noticing the way he did nothing to hide his face or wipe his eyes—as if the moisture falling from them in fat, round droplets didn’t quite belong to him.

  “I don’t understand,” he wept, “why this is happening. I don’t know what I’ve done. All I wanted was to find my son and—”

  “Sign the papers, Mr. Jackson.” Finesilver delivered the words with a trace of impatience—his first since we’d entered the room—although it could have been as much performance as my father’s tears.

  Jonas turned to me, taking off his glasses to reveal his naked eyes, red and wet and hurt. “Arden, please. I don’t know what you’ve been told about me but you’re making a mistake. I’ve been searching for you since you were taken from me. I’ve done nothing but try to know you. And look what you’re doing to me.”

  “You used me.” It came out as a wild howl, full of anger and pain and this helpless exasperation that he hadn’t stopped fucking with me for a single second I’d spent in his company. “You’re still trying to use me. You—”

  Finesilver squeezed my elbow even harder, maybe hitting some kind of pressure point, because it sent a bolt of clicky lightning all the way to my shoulder. “Shall I inform my client that you do not, in fact, intend to comply with their requests.”

  Jonas sat. Stared at us. Said nothing. Tears still falling, easy as April showers. And then, at last, “Give me the papers.”

  Finesilver pulled an envelope from an interior pocket along with a pen and handed both to my father. Who made a brief show of scrutinizing everything carefully before turning to the final page so violently it almost tore the staple out. Resting against the edge of his suitcase, he jabbed the pen against the dotted line. His hand trembled.

  “She’s my wife.” There was a note in Jonas’s voice I’d never heard before. I think it was something he thought was truth, and it was terrifying. “I can’t let you take her from me.”

  Something cold was slithering round my heart. Squeezing so tight I couldn’t breathe.

  But Finesilver only lifted one shoulder in the suggestion of a shrug. “Once again, the choice is entirely yours. Although I would remind you also that placing any person in immediate fear for their safety, even your wife and even in the absence of physical contact, fits the definition of common assault. So should you be so reckless as to risk the civil suit my client will bring against you for breach of contract in the event of your going back on these agreements, do be assured that Ms. St. Ives would have my client’s full support in any criminal case she wished to bring against you. And while law enforcement sometimes lack the resources to pursue such matters as diligently as they might, my client suffers no such restriction.”

  “What the fuck is this?” snarled Jonas, anger breaking through him like some horrible fish from the deepest, squoogliest oceans. “I love her. I’ve never laid a hand on her.”

  He sounded so sincere that, for a disgusting, treacherous heartbeat, I almost forgot I’d seen him do it.

  “I’m merely providing information.” Finesilver’s voice brought me back to the moment. “Sign the papers.”

  Jonas signed. He was breathing hard and the rasp of the pen against the paper was too loud, almost human-sounding, like it was scraping over skin. But at the same time, it was all super anticlimactic: a few seconds of ink. It didn’t seem enough to change a world.

  Without a word, my father passed the documents back to Finesilver, and he tucked them back into his jacket. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson. You’ve made the correct choice. My client will, of course, be monitoring the situation in order to ensure you continue to make correct choices.”

  Jonas stared at us. Still said nothing. The tears had gone and so had the rage. But behind his eyes I could see the shadows of seething things.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Jackson.”

  A nudge from Finesilver got me moving, jerky as run-down clockwork. I didn’t look back.

  Chapter 36

  I made it to the car before I turned into squidge, sweating and trembling in the front seat. Finesilver pulled a bottle of water from the footwell and passed it to me.

  “Sorry,” I said, when I could get the words out. “That was…that was…”

  He gave me a look which I chose to interpret as genuinely sympathetic. “Please don’t worry. I understand how charged such situations can be.”

  “I…I talked when I wasn’t supposed to.”

  “I was not, in all honesty, expecting otherwise.”

  I took another gulp of water. “You were amazing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No, but…like. That was like proper superhero lawyer shit.”

  “At the risk of repeating that most obvious of clichés, I was just doing my job.”

  “For which”—I mustered a soggy smile—“you are more than proportionally compensated.”

  He laughed. “Exactly.”

  My body seemed to be calming down again—though I was still a bit floaty and wobbly—and I took the opportunity to poke at my feelings. I found gratitude for Caspian and Finesilver, but
not much else. Surely I should have been elated. At the very least relieved. Instead, there was just this fading hum, like a tuning fork going past the edge of hearing.

  “Do you think…” I asked. “I mean, he’s not…he won’t try anything, will he?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’ve dealt with far more dangerous and far more unpredictable people than Jonas Jackson.” Finesilver smiled, not his usual smile, urbane and careful, but a predator’s smile, full of teeth and relish. “Always successfully. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll go away quietly. If he does not know what’s good for him, he’ll go away noisily. There are no other options.”

  “Yeah, it’s”—I squirmed anxiously—“the noisy I could do without. I mean, what if he does try to come for Mum? What if he does go to the papers?”

  “If he approaches your mother, he’ll be intercepted minutes after he arrives in Scotland, and then he will suffer all of the terrible consequences with which I most certainly did not threaten him. If he goes to the papers, the story—like so many others—will never see the light of day.”

  I gave a stagey shudder, half in play, half in earnest. “I hope I never piss you off.”

  “On the contrary, it’s crossing my clients that should concern you.”

  Hopefully I was way too irrelevant for that. “What happens now?”

  “I need your mother’s signature on these papers. But otherwise my part in this is done.”

  Oh God. Mum. It was like everything inside me, blood, bones, organs, my fucking mitochondria, lurched with the shame of what I’d done, and nearly done, to her. How the fuck was I going to tell her? I mean, she’d forgive me. Of course she would. She was Mum. But, somehow knowing that just made it worse. It briefly occurred to me that I could run away to France and become an itinerant baguette seller.

  “I’ll take them.” I forced out the words in a garbled rush. “If you don’t mind dropping me off at the train station.”