Chapter 3: The Renegade Billionaire: Chapter 3

The scent of dirt permeates everything.

“Are you all right? You haven’t answered your phone for three fucking hours,” Greyson mutters.

I glance up at the sky and instantly regret it. It’s so damn hot that when I tilt my head, sweat rolls down the back of my neck. Even in the fall, it’s hot as balls here, a swampy heat I don’t believe I’d ever get used to.

“I spoke to you when I landed last night, Dad. I was exhausted and…” Images from my encounter this morning flash across my mind. “Sleeping. Then I spent the morning acclimating to Happiness, otherwise known as the devil’s asshole. Do you know that it takes two point five seconds before you sweat so much you need another shower? Two point five seconds outside. That’s it. I timed it this morning.”

His chuckle is comforting. “And where are you now?” he asks.

“Is that Braxton? Put him on the phone,” my mother demands. He must already be at the office because she hasn’t set foot in Ace’s home—our home—for years.

“No, it’s my food delivery order,” Grey says flatly. “I told you, I haven’t heard from Braxton since he followed the rules of the will and took off immediately.”

This makes me chuckle. Only Grey would dare speak to my mother that way, and it’s only because he knows a lot of dirt on her. He has an uncanny ability to learn and retain gossip.

“So.” He drags out the word, and I know he’s speaking to me again, then I hear the click of a door and his voice echoes as though he’s locked himself in a restroom.

“I used the Discreet Daily Deeds credit card and checked into the inn using my middle name. Braxton Mitchell slept like the dead, by the way, then I woke up to an interesting show, and stupidly walked three miles in armpit-sweaty air and ended up…” I glance around at my surroundings. “Here.” The air is so thick, I think I can taste the dirt. A faint breeze kicks up a dust storm that gets lodged in my nostrils and throat.

“And where is that?” He’s full on laughing now. “Do you even know?”

The sign over the falling-down garage says Blinky’s Used Car Sales. When I googled the closest car dealership, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it was within walking distance of the inn and the rideshare app had shown no available drivers for my area.

My thoughts immediately splinter, visions of the inn owner’s granddaughter filling my mind, and now I’m blinking as I imagine Blinky would do. There’s not even any dust to blame.

“Some place called Blinky’s.” I swipe at the sweat on my neck with my free hand.

I hear Grey clicking away on his phone, and then all falls silent. Even though it’s mid-morning, the lampposts shaded by a huge tree are flickering. It’s eerie as fuck out here and feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere—the chain-link fence trapping me in doesn’t help either.

The closest I’ve come to roughing it was with what my sister called glamping during her outdoorsy phase, when she thought she’d become a famous travel influencer, before I found out they were all running out of their trust funds but expecting me to support them. It was the only reason I’d been invited in the first place—to pay.

Familial manipulation is a special kind of hell.

“You’re…” Grey trails off, his voice sounding tinny and far away. “That’s a used car dealership. Did you know Happiness has less than five thousand occupants?” he whispers. “When the hell would Ace have been there?”

“No idea.”

“What’s it like?”

Madison’s face interrupts my train of thought. “Different.”

He laughs. “Well, that tracks.” He continues typing on his phone, and the click, click, click is oddly comforting. “Blinky’s is…something else. That’s where you’re going to buy a car? The place doesn’t even have a website.”

“If you saw it in person, you’d understand why, but I need to blend in for a while and figure out why the hell Ace wanted me here. Do you think my family will be able to trace the DDD account?”

“They would break every law if it meant they could keep the money train going, but no, the DDD isn’t something they’d ever think of, and we’re the only ones with access—well, and apparently Ace. Are you really going to purchase a used car?”

Glancing at the options, I frown. “No, I’m going to purchase a truck.”

More laughter has my fingers itching to hang up on him.

“Greyson,” I grumble.

“Fine, fine. No, I promise you they can’t trace it. But you should know, the gossip mill is salivating. Your family found out we’ve already removed Alistair from the board of Montgomery Media, and they’re threatening to plaster your face all over the internet if you don’t fix it.” Alistair is a fucking snake. “Oh, and he put out a story this morning calling you the renegade billionaire. All the other gossip sites picked it up in minutes. He has a source on the inside because our guys never would have approved that.”

Fuck me. I just had to go and call myself a renegade to Madison this morning.

It’s unusual for someone in my position to have near-complete anonymity—it’s one of the few things I can actually thank my parents for, even if they did it for self-serving reasons.

They’ve never missed an opportunity to let me know I wasn’t wanted, and when they learn that Grey and I don’t intend on supplementing their trust funds beyond what Ace put in his will, they’ll do whatever’s necessary to take me down.

Running my knuckles over my heart, I close my eyes and count to ten. Just long enough to hear a bell chime and a door slam shut.

“I hate to say it, but Happiness might be the perfect place for you to lay low for a while.” Grey chuckles. He’s having way too much fun with this.

“We’ll see. I have to go buy a—a something. Maisie’s Hideaway Inn isn’t so bad, but I don’t need to draw unnecessary attention to myself either.”

Madison standing in the kitchen with a foot in the sink flickers to life in my mind, and I couldn’t stop my smile if I tried.

“Ace truly was a mastermind,” Grey says, dragging my attention away from the inappropriate thoughts. “Your father will never look for you at a run-down inn. Do you know he already tried to bill a ten-thousand-dollar-a-month rental to the company? When that didn’t work, he hired a helicopter to take him from El Paso every day, but I don’t know where that money came from yet.”

I grunt in response just as a man far too young to be as bald as he is saunters up with his thumbs hooked into the loops of his dirty-kneed jeans.

Ending the call, I hold out a hand that he stares at with barely contained disgust. Well, that’s a new one for me. I drop my hand.

“Name’s Harry Terdsley, how can I help you today? Sir.” The “sir” drips with condescension.

Okay, he’s not a fan. Got it.

“Brax R—Mitchell.” I’d better get used to using my middle name really quickly. “Braxton Mitchell. I’d like to purchase a… Honestly—” I look past him to the heaps of metal that surround us. “What’s the most reliable vehicle you have on the lot?”

This man snorts in my face. “We sell used cars, Mr. Mitchell. Walk around and take your pick. How do you plan to pay? We don’t finance out-of-towners.”

“That’s fine. I’ll pay for it outright if we can get it done today.”

He makes a show of looking at his watchless wrist and whistles.

“Well, ya better choose quick then. We close for lunch soon.” Harry Terdsley spins on his heel and leans against the building, watching as I scan the small lot.

Some of the trucks are rusted, and some look to be in good condition, but if my instincts on Harry are correct, I’ll be spending a lot of time at an auto repair shop either way. Considering I know next to nothing about cars, I’m guessing I’m about to get screwed, but this is my only option for now.

My phone dings with an incoming text.

That’s true. I can hear my mother’s voice now. “A Montgomery in a small-town inn in the middle of nowhere? How dare you?”

Except I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a Montgomery, regardless of my Montgomery DNA.

My shoulders hitch up around my ears. The Whisperloop is Alistair’s baby. A so-called news site that reports, and I use that term loosely, all gossip all the time with little care about unveiling the actual truth.

He gets away with it by using tiny unreadable letters that say allegedly that no one ever sees or pays attention to. He does whatever’s necessary to grab clicks, regardless of who he hurts along the way.

It’s why Grey and I started full-time at Omni-Reyes in college. One exposé and I never looked at my father the same way again.

I zoom in on the screenshot. The image says: Where have all the Montgomerys gone?

He’ll never believe me if he doesn’t see it for himself, so I take a quick photo of my options and send it to him.

Chuckling, I thank my lucky stars for Greyson Reyes and pocket my phone, but I swear I hear the slimy excuse for a salesman clicking his tongue as if he were a second hand on a clock somewhere behind me.

I hurry through the next few rows and stop when I see a polished, but old, Chevy pickup with a large blue stripe down both sides. It’s something straight out of the old eighties movies I had to watch in my film and entertainment course in college.

And I love it.

Tearing the tag from the window, I walk back to Harry Terdsley. What a fucking name. He acts like a high school quarterback who’s still living in his past.

Am I judgmental? Yes. Am I wrong? Not generally.

“I’ll take this one,” I say, handing him the tag.

He stares at me as though I’m handing him a bag of dog shit, and am I imagining it, or are his lips already curling into a snarl?

“Why that one?” he asks. Everything in his tone is confrontational.

Shrugging my shoulders, I feign indifference. “It’s the one that caught my attention. Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” an older gentleman says as he shuffles around the building. “That truck belonged to his high school sweetheart’s grandfather. And this jackass ruined that relationship spectacularly, twice.”

“Dad!” Harry clenches his fists as he snarls at his father.

“It’s true,” his father says with an annoyed shrug. There’s no mistaking the disappointment in his features. “Come along, son. I’ll get you going on your paperwork.”

“But, Dad, I’m gonna buy that truck.”

The older man glares, yes, glares at his son. “With what? The money you’re borrowing from me every month? It’s over, Harry. I’m selling it.”

My gaze ping-pongs between the two men before me, then I dutifully follow the older Terdsley into the run-down building.

“It’s a good rig. It’ll last you a long time. And don’t pay no mind to Harry out there. He runs his mouth all over Georgia, but not here. I don’t run a dirty shop, and he knows it. If he wasn’t the only one his grandmama remembered, I’d’a pushed him outta here a long time ago.”

“Ah, well, I’m glad to hear the truck will last.”

The older man glances out the window with such sadness I feel bad for him. “Harry wasn’t always this way, ya know.” He chokes out a cough, obviously upset he let that slip. “How you payin’?”

I keep my gaze lowered—something tells me he needs a minute to collect himself. Removing my wallet from my front pocket, I sort through the credit cards until I find the one I’m searching for.

“You lookin’ to make a deposit?”

“No, sir. I’ll pay in full.”

His gaze narrows, scanning my face as though he doesn’t know if he should trust me or not.

“Well, son. We don’t get many of your kind around here. Are you planning to stay a while?”

I don’t get the sense he’s gossiping or that he has any idea who I am, so I lower my guard a little.

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Word of advice then?”

I wait while he runs my card for $4200.

“You’ll want to hit up the Walmart on Main Street and buy some regular clothes. Walking around as some sort of fancy pants is the fastest way to get the gossipers circling for your story.”

Walmart. Right. I’ve seen their commercials—I’ve just never actually been in one.

“Thank you. I’m trying to keep a low profile.”

He laughs a thick smoker’s laugh that tugs at my sadness. Ace used to laugh that way.

“Good luck with that around here.” He hands me a stack of papers to sign. “You ever lived in a small town before?”

“No, sir,” I say while reading the contracts.

“Well, you ever need some advice, you come see me. This town will eat you up and spit you out, but they’ll also be first to pick you up when you stumble—after you’ve proved yourself loyal.”

“That’s quite the oxymoron.”

“You got no idea,” he says. The nametag sewn into his overalls says Roger, and it suits him. “Let me get you the keys. And ignore my son—he has a fairy tale planned around that truck that ain’t never gonna happen.”

Great, making enemies on my first day in town. Not exactly the way to fix a broken heart and soul now, is it?

Roger returns and walks me to the truck, presumably to keep Harry from picking a fight. But he’s right about one thing, I’m going to need some new clothes—I wasn’t exactly thinking when I packed a suitcase yesterday. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be needing many suits around here.

“Good luck.” He knocks on the side of the door and walks away. Glancing around at the interior, I’m thankful for my minor obsession with sports cars in my early twenties, and even more grateful I was determined to learn to drive a stick, or I’d have just bought a truck I can’t drive.

I open the map app on my phone before I start the truck, then press down on the clutch and gas as I shift into first. There’s a violent lurch that has me reaching for my seat belt as the engine stalls.

Well, shit.

I try again, and this time manage to get out of the parking lot, but in the four-mile drive to Walmart, I stall six more times.

Exhaustion slaps me across the face, but I force myself into the store. I only hope I can recover from the loss of Ace and figure out what he wanted me to do here before the Montgomerys attempt to destroy everything I’ve ever worked for.