Bad Billionaire (Bad Billionaires 1)

He nodded. “Not for long, though. Ten more days, by my count.”

“Then for ten more days, I am not okay.”

Two years. I’d been in here for two years, watching my life drain away—though it could have been worse. They’d gotten all of us from the van in the end—Danny, Jam, Westerberg, me. They nailed us on the robbery count, but they didn’t find the TV’s with the Oxy. Danny, it turned out, had done some quick thinking and told Gray where the TV’s were right before the cops picked him up. By the time the cops figured out drugs were involved, the TV’s were long gone from the ditch where we’d dumped them.

So, only robbery, no drug charges. Thirty months, out in twenty-four for good behavior and because Ben was a very good lawyer.

They hadn’t nailed Gray Jensen, the dick who’d hired me, or Craig Bastien, the drug lord who’d hired Gray. They’d nailed Chaz, my old boss at the body shop. Chaz had had nothing to do with the robbery, of course. Most likely the cops had sweated Gray about it, and Gray had given up his brother. And his brother, in turn, had given up the rest of us, including me. While Gray skated the whole thing.

It was tempting to rat out Gray, but that went against my nature. My nature being that I don’t tell cops anything. I don’t tell them my own name unless my lawyer advises me to. Besides, when I got out I was sure Gray would find me. And then we’d have a word. In private.

“So if no one’s dead, what’s happening?” I asked Ben.

He opened his briefcase and pulled out some papers. He put them on the table between us, but didn’t turn them around for me to read. Instead he tapped his fingers on the table.

“First, let me say that I’ve vetted all this,” he said. “I took some time after it first came to me and did my due diligence. There’s no fraud here, Devon. This is fucking real.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He nodded. “How much do you know about your father’s family?”

“Nothing,” I said. My father had left when I was two and my brother Cavan was four.

“Did you know you had a grandfather?”

I shrugged. “Since it’s a biological requirement, I suppose I did. But that’s it.”

“Well, you did. His name was Graham Wilder, and he kicked the bucket six weeks ago.” Ben tapped the papers beneath his fingers again. “He named you the beneficiary in his will.”

I felt my eyebrows go up. “He knew about me?”

“He must have, because you’re named, and as I say, the will is legit. It’s all legit. You get everything, Dev.”

There had to be a catch. “Doesn’t my father have something to say about that?”

“No, because your father died five years ago.”

There was a beat of silence.

“We gonna have an Oprah moment?” Ben asked warily, looking ready to run from the room if I showed emotion.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t know him. It doesn’t matter.” Fuck, I should find a way t

o tell Cavan. If only I knew where Cavan was. Mom was already dead, so at least I didn’t have to tell her.

We weren’t big on family, the Wilders. A little more like feral cats.

“Right,” my lawyer said. “Your father, Pete Wilder, died of prostate cancer. That’s a pile of shit, I can tell you, so if you had any resentment against him, just wipe it away. Whatever he did to you, he paid.”

“Noted,” I said.

“Okay. So Pete died, and Graham rewrote his will to leave everything to Pete’s son. That’s you.”

“Cavan is Pete’s son.”

“Cavan gets a piece of this only if he un-disappears and shows up within six months. Even then, his piece isn’t as big as yours.” He shifted in his seat. Ben was usually confident, blunt, and a little cocky; I’d never seen him this uncomfortable before. It made me uneasy.

“Fuck, what did I inherit?” I asked. “Drug money? A porn business? A bunch of third world orphans? Just get out with it, Ben.”