Page 56 of Trailer Park Billionaire (Distinguished Billionaires #3)

HELENA

W hen I wake up, the bed is cold.

It’s not dramatic, or poetic. It’s just cold. The kind of cold that creeps in through your skin and takes up residence in your bones. The kind that makes you reach out in the dark, even though you already know what you’ll find.

Nothing. No warm shoulder. No crooked, sleepy grin. No Ben. There’s no humming coming from the kitchen while he burns toast or makes the perfect omelette.

I stare at the ceiling for a long time. Too long. Until my eyes blur and my chest aches and the silence starts to press down on me like a weighted blanket I didn’t ask for. It should feel comforting in a way—I used to love this sort of stillness.

I don’t anymore.

Not right now.

Because something inside me misses him.

Like a fucking idiot.

And I hate that I miss him.

I hate that I still want him. Still want his laugh. His annoying cheerfulness. His strong arms around me. The way he looked at me like I was a masterpiece.

He was good at pretending, I guess.

And I hate that even after everything, my body doesn’t care.

So I start touching myself. Not because I want to. Not because I think it’ll feel good. Just because I need to feel something—anything—that isn’t this black, howling grief clawing through my ribs.

My fingers trail over skin that feels too cold, too raw. I shut my eyes and try to imagine it’s his hand instead. His mouth. The warmth of his breath across my stomach, the weight of his body over mine. I try to picture how he used to touch me like I was something sacred.

I press harder. I shift. I go through the motions.

But there’s nothing. No pleasure. No heat. No release. Just the stinging behind my eyes and the tightness in my throat.

And then I’m crying.

Pathetically. Stupidly.

Tears soaking into the pillow, into the sheets that still smell like him—scotch and sandalwood and something warmer beneath. Even his absence has better cologne than all the people I’ve had in my bed before him.

And now I can’t even touch myself without remembering how it felt when he did it.

How safe I felt.

How much I trusted him.

How badly I needed to believe that maybe—for once—someone would stay with me.

But he didn’t stay.

He played pretend.

He used me. Lied to me. Betrayed me.

I curl in tighter, fingers limp against my stomach, body hollow. All that’s left is anger and shame, layered over my grief like barbed wire.

I look at the empty bed next to me.

Who knew betrayal had such a talent for negative space?

God, I am a fucking idiot.

I knew better.

I have always known better.

This is why I don’t let people in. This is why I keep everyone at arm’s length. Because the second I drop my guard, they make you care and then they leave. Or lie. Or betray me in ways that make my skin feel too tight and my chest like it’s caving in.

Eventually I give up. I roll over. I stare at the ceiling some more. Then I sit up, slowly, like I am the same age as all my neighbors. I feel like it too.

I look at the forgery in the other room. Still propped on the easel like some kind of ticking bomb.

Maybe I’ve been standing too close to solvent fumes all my life. Maybe that’s why I keep making decisions like this. Bad ones.

I should destroy it. Rip it to shreds. Set it on fire and continue my next prison stint early. Because that’s where I’ll end up now anyway. Eventually. Just like my grandpa.

I don’t do that though.

Because… I’m scared.

Because I know what his brother—that terrifying bastard—might do to me. If I don’t finish the painting today, another black eye would be the least of my worries. Even prison might be a better outcome.

So I work on the forgery.

Because I don’t know what else to do.

By the time I’m done, my hands are shaking.

The forgery is perfect and it makes me sick.

I sit there on the floor, my back against the wall, and I just stare.

At it.

At the wall of paintings that my grandfather gave me.

At the portrait I did of Ben. He’s posing like one of my French gargoyles in it, draped across a couch in nothing but a silky bathrobe, holding a baguette at just the right angle.

It makes the knot in my stomach twist.

I pick up a paintbrush, grip it like a knife.

At least I can ruin this. Wipe that stupid smirk off his stupid, beautiful face. Scratch out the lying eyes I once thought saw me like no one ever had.

So I raise the brush?—

And am interrupted by a knock.

A single, sharp knock on the door.

I freeze.

My heart spikes. My breath catches. Every cell in my body screams run —but there’s nowhere to go.

I don’t move. I don’t breathe.

Another knock. And someone calling my name.

I know that voice.

It’s Alexei.

Of course it’s Alexei. It’s still too early for Maximilian St. Clair. He said he’d come tonight.

I sag, letting out a breath that sounds more like a laugh than a sigh. A short, cracked thing. I’m not sure if it’s relief or just my soul leaking out of my lungs.

“Helena,” he calls again, gentle this time. “I’d like to show you something. It’s important.”

I snort. “Yeah? So was not lying to me. Didn’t stop you.”

There’s silence on the other side of the door. I can’t believe he doesn’t even show up himself. Just sends his friend. I mean I wouldn’t want to talk to him but still.

“I know,” Alexei says finally. “That’s why I’m here. To come clean. So you don’t have to keep wondering.”

“Wondering what?” I bite back. “Why Ben used me? Why he treated me like he loved me when he had a knife hovering behind my back the entire time?”

“Look, I’m not here to defend what Ben or I did. I’m just here to explain,” he says calmly.

I look back at the painting of Ben. The smirk I want to punch. The eyes I want to forget. The baguette I’d like to bite into.

I open the door. “Fine,” I say. “But just because I need to kill time. And because part of me—a very stupid, very betrayed part—still has questions.”

Alexei drives us across the city in Ben’s RV. The thing smells faintly of him and I hate it. I wish it would smell like wet dog and puke instead. Neither of us speaks. I don’t ask where we’re going. He doesn’t volunteer.

Eventually, we stop in front of a new building complex surrounded by cracked pavement, freshly planted flowers, and kids playing with chalk on the sidewalk. It’s not much to look at—until you do.

Colorful window frames. Decorated mailboxes. A community garden. It’s warm, in that way buildings can be when someone cares to make them a home.

“What are we doing here?” I ask when we step out of the car.

“This is one of our projects,” Alexei says. “Funded with old scores. Mostly paintings.”

A mural of a trailer park is painted across the south-facing wall. Alex notices me looking at it.

“Yeah, that’s what it used to look like once upon a time.”

“Like the one you’re living in?” I ask and he nods.

Then he leads me inside. It’s… nice. Clean. Bright. Colorful doors everywhere. There’s another mural in the lobby that looks suspiciously like it was painted by the kids playing outside.

An older man who introduces himself as Dusty Rhodes greets us. His smile splits his face like a sunbeam through cracked blinds. Alex gives him a hug and asks about the apartment he’s apparently moved into recently.

“We let the new inhabitants here add to that mural,” Alex explains when we move on. “Also their doors. They can paint and decorate them themselves. Part of making it feel… less sterile, more like home. And by ‘we’ I mean the community. Everyone owns their own unit in here.”

He tells me about how they paid for the HVAC systems with money from a stolen Kandinsky, how the communal kitchen got equipped and stocked with the spoils of a tiny landscape lifted from a private collector who probably never noticed it was gone.

“We put a bit of a dent in his wine cellar too,” Alexei mutters when a bunch of kids swarm him before he can respond.

They know him by name. They hug him like he’s their uncle.

One girl tugs on his hand and tells him she’ll need to fix his nails because they’re not sparkly enough.

Another kid hands him a piece of paper. “This one’s for Ben,” the little girl says.

“Tell him I drew the sun with extra teeth this time.”

I go still.

Because I’ve seen that drawing before. Not that one specifically, but others like it. Taped to the ceiling of Ben’s trailer and RV. He’d kept them. All of them.

He’d stolen for them . For this.

For something good.

Alexei watches me after he tells the kids to go back to playing. “We’re building another one,” he says. “At the current trailer park. Once we have the necessary funding.”

I look down at the kids’ drawing in his hands. The sun is smiling in the creepiest way possible. And I don’t know whether I want to scream, or cry, or both.

“Why didn’t he just tell me? Why keep such a thing secret? It would have made it a lot harder to hate him.”

“He wanted to,” he adds after a beat. “He wanted to. But I made him promise not to. Told him he could only tell you what you needed to know for the job—nothing more. Because I was scared. If something went wrong, if you turned on us, if the job failed and the wrong people came sniffing around… it could blow this whole thing up. This place, the kids, everything. People would start asking how we funded it. Who we stole from. Who we really are. And then it’s not just Ben and me in danger.

It’s all of them.” Alex glances toward the lobby, where a child’s laugh echoes off the mural-painted walls.

“He kept the secret to protect them. And because he made a promise to me. Never to hurt you.”

“And you’re not worried anymore? You trust me now?”

“I am worried. Believe me, I’m always worried. But he trusts you, so…”

I stare at the creepy sun drawing in Alexei’s hand. It looks a little like Ben.

“What an asshole,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “He could have at least told me about his last name.”

Alexei exhales through his nose for a long second. “Remember when you held us at knife point in Ben’s trailer? Would you have agreed to work with him if you had known his last name then?”

I shrug. “If he had told me about the relationship he has with his family… maybe,” I continue.

“I might have, possibly, tried to consider it. Under the right circumstances.” I turn to face him fully.

“Fine. I probably wouldn’t have.” God, this fucking sucks.

“What’s the deal with his family then? The vendetta. What’s it about?”

Alexei shifts his weight. Looks at the mural instead of me. “That’s not my story to tell.”

“Of course it’s not,” I snap. “God forbid anyone give me a straight answer around here.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, quieter now. “He should be the one to tell you.”

I chew the inside of my cheek. “Fine,” I say, eventually. “Then take me to him. Right now. I want to hear his excuses. I want to hear all the bullshit straight from his mouth so I can stop imagining it in my head.”

Alexei doesn’t move. Just shifts his jaw like he’s grinding his own teeth. “Right now? Well, right now is… not a good time. Maybe later.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I huff, exasperated.

He glances at his watch like it might save him, the sky outside dimming, the edges of evening curling around us, the building casting long, tired shadows.

“Let me take you to dinner,” Alex says instead. “I’m guessing you haven’t eaten today.”

I shake my head. “Not hungry.”

“Drinks, then? You’re good at drinking.”

I level a look at him. What’s he doing? “Are you seriously trying to get me drunk before I get to talk to Mr. Saint Clair. You know I might end up stabbing him then, right?”

Alexei winces. “Yeah, okay. Fair.”

I narrow my eyes. “What’s going on, Alex?”

“Nothing,” he says too quickly and three octaves too high.

Something fishy is going on.

“Alexandre!” I warn.

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then scratches the back of his neck with the same hand that’s holding the creepy sun drawing.

“You’re stalling,” I say. “Which means something’s going on.”

He shakes his head like a kid caught in a lie. I take a step closer.

Alex exhales. “Okay, okay, fine. But I’m not supposed to tell you.”

I step even closer. “Tell me what?”

He hesitates again. Then reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a folded envelope.

My name is written on the front in Ben’s handwriting.

“He made me promise to give this to you,” Alexei says, his voice careful.

“But, technically, I’m not supposed to hand it over until he’s done. Until it’s… over.”

I stare at it like it’s something that might explode. “Until what is over?”