Hollywood Princess (Hollywood Royalty 2)

“I texted Cori,” she says. “She is going to find out what I have left.”

“You have everything left,” I tell her, and she shakes her head.

“He blew all my money and took out loans on the houses. I have nothing.” I shake my head. “I have the house in Nashville only because my mother co-signed.”

“Baby, you aren’t losing anything,” I tell her, and then I tell her what she is going to find out soon anyway. “Cori stayed in New York to go talk to my lawyer.”

“Your lawyer about what?” she asks me.

“About buying all your stuff back,” I tell her. “You aren’t losing everything you worked hard for because of a piece of shit like Tommy.”

“What?” she asks, confused.

I look up at the ceiling. “My father is Harold B. Kitch the second,” I tell her, and she just looks at me. “My older brother is Harold B. Kitch the third, and lucky for me, my mother got to choose my name and went with plain old Brian.”

“Hold on one second,” she says, getting up. “Your father is the oil tycoon who was in the newspaper just last week for acquiring the biggest tech company in the world?” she asks but doesn’t wait for me to answer. “It was all over the papers last week.”

“That would be him,” I confirm. “I don’t have anything to do with the business. When I turned eighteen, my father was ready to give me a larger role in the company, but I ran away and enlisted.” She opens her mouth in shock. “My big brother went to Warton and graduated at the top of his class, and my father assumed I would be following the same path, but just the thought … I couldn’t do it.” I hold up a hand. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have stocks in them, or that I don’t have a trust fund that has more money than I know what to do with, and even if my children’s children spend stupidly, there is much more.”

“He’s a billionaire. Your brother was on the cover of Forbes.” Her voice is monotone as she gets all the information I’m throwing at her, and she is putting all the pieces together. “The company was worth over a hundred and forty-five billion dollars.”

“I know. Trust me, I know. He sent me the article in a frame,” I tell her. “You’ll see he’s a cocksucker, but he took the reins, and for that, I owe him. He got to go to stuffy boardrooms while I got to play with guns.”

“Oh my God,” she says, putting her hand in front of her mouth. “That is what Dante meant. You paid to rent the houses we stayed in?” I nod my head.

“All of them,” I tell her. “I also did this case pro bono.” She smiles.

“You,” she whispers out, stuttering. “You.” Her eyes fill with tears.

“You did all that for me.”

“No,” I tell her, wiping away the tear rolling down her cheek. “I did it for me. I did it for us.” I kiss her. “I did it because you’re mine.”

“How long were you working pro bono?” she asks me, and I smile.

“Since the second time I picked you up.” I kiss her now, and when her tongue slides into my mouth, I feel like I’m home. I feel like my heart can start beating again, and I feel like I’m finally alive again.

Chapter Thirty

Kellie

“So how much?” I ask Cori, who sits at the island in the kitchen, as I pull open the fridge and grab a water bottle. She finally arrived this morning after spending five days in New York with Brian’s lawyers going over everything.

I wasn’t just broke. I had nothing left. Well, I would have had nothing left if it wasn’t for Brian and his lawyers, who got everything back.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” she says, and I glare at her. Brian comes into the room, walking straight to me and kissing my lips.

Then he turns to say hello to Cori. “What are you guys talking about?” He stands next to me. Ever since we got to this house, I never go more than ten minutes without him.

“She was asking how much you paid to get all her things back,” Cori tells him, and he just shakes his head while I look at Cori and mouth, “Traitor.”

I move away from Brian, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why can’t I know?” I ask them both. “I don’t want to be kept in the dark about anything.”

“Fine,” Brian says and looks at Cori. “Tell her.”

“Well, the good news is that nothing was in foreclosure, so all we had to do was pay off the mortgages again,” she says, and I start to calculate that it must have cost him close to twenty million.