Page 57 of Trailer Park Billionaire (Distinguished Billionaires #3)

BEN

Helena,

If you’re reading this, then it’s over.

Not just the job. Not just the plan. Everything.

The lies. The pretending. The damage I did—some of it without knowing, most of it while trying not to look too closely.

I don’t expect you to forgive me. I don’t even expect you to finish reading this.

But I need to say it anyway. Because I owe you the truth. All of it. For once in my goddamn life.

I should’ve told you from the start.

At first, I didn’t because I was afraid.

Afraid you wouldn’t want to work with me.

That you’d hear the name St. Clair and slam the trailer door in my face.

And I couldn’t afford that—not just for the sake of the plan, or the people it would help—but because the second I saw you, really saw you, I felt something I had never felt before.

I don’t even know when exactly it happened first.

Maybe it was when you painted me getting beheaded on a guillotine. Or it might have been when you threatened me with my own kitchen knife after I kidnapped you. Or when you knocked my brother out with a cutting board. Or when you were brandishing your panties at me like a weapon.

What I do know is that it’s been happening every hour since.

That’s why somewhere along the way, I stopped lying to protect the plan, to keep my promise to Alex, and started lying to protect myself.

Because I fell in love with you.

Madly.

Stupidly.

Hopelessly.

And I knew the truth would ruin everything.

But you deserve it anyway.

So here it is:

When I was little, life was… good. My parents were generous, eccentric, and we traveled everywhere. Rome, Cairo, Istanbul, Kinshasa, Ho Chi Minh City. I saw more art before I turned ten than most curators do in a lifetime. It was magical. Until I got old enough to understand how the magic was made.

What, from the outside, looked like a life of art and culture, was really just theft with several passports and seats on a private plane.

They were looting. Not just private collectors—though there was plenty of that—but community museums. Shrines.

Family legacies. Pieces stolen from people who would never see justice.

My parents would happily take a painting from a museum in a war-torn country and sell it to some other rich asshole who wanted to hang something ‘exotic’ over his fireplace.

When I understood what we were doing, I tried to get them to stop. I asked them, begged them, pleaded with them. I told them that we had enough, I acted out, I did whatever I could think of.

Only for them to laugh at me and to tell me to keep quiet.

And so, once I got older, I did the only thing I could think of that was left to do: I called the cops.

But I didn’t know what kind of cops I was calling.

Because some of them were in my father’s pocket.

They couldn’t sweep it under the rug entirely, since word had gotten out after my call, but instead of arresting my parents, they decided to make a show of it.

And they needed someone to blame, someone expendable.

That someone was your grandfather. He had worked for my parents in the past, so they set it up to look like he was going to exchange his forgery with the real painting. And with the police and prosecutors bought off, he didn’t stand a chance.

They framed him. And I let it happen. I caused it.

I didn’t know it would be him. I didn’t even know his name, not then.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it was my call that sent him away. And it was my cowardice that kept me from speaking up once I realized what they had done.

When the waters had calmed again, my parents disowned me. They sent me off to boarding school like I was a dog they didn’t have any use for anymore. We haven’t spoken since.

I only learned about what had happened to my brother years later when I ran into him by chance. And I never even heard about what had happened to you, until you told me over ramen.

So after losing my family, my friends—everything—I decided that if I couldn’t get them to stop from the inside, I’d do it from the outside.

I dedicated my life to righting their wrongs. I became an expert in the field, and then started to steal their paintings. Quietly. Carefully. I always went after ‘their’ property.

I returned whatever was publicly owned before they got their hands on it, and kept what used to belong to other rich assholes.

Somewhere along the way, I met Alex. He helped me flip all those paintings that were still in my possession.

He helped me use their blood money to build something that might actually mean something.

Something real. Which is how the trailer park started, or rather what became of it.

And then I found you.

And for the first time, I thought maybe I could have both—revenge and redemption. That maybe I could take down the people who hurt us both, and still find a life worth living with someone who made me feel like I had never felt before.

But I kept lying. Because I was afraid of you finding out, and of it all crashing in on itself. Because I was weak.

And while I may have lied about who I am, I need you to know that this thing between us was real.

It might have been the only real thing about me.

It changed me. More than anything ever has.

It made me wish for a future, it made me dread the thought of being on the run again.

You made me feel like maybe I could be someone better.

You made me feel like I wasn’t just a mistake.

Like I wasn’t the sum of my family's sins. You made me happy. You made me feel… home. Something I’ve never had, not really. Not even as a kid.

And I ruined that.

I betrayed you. I betrayed your trust. I betrayed what we had.

And I am so, so sorry.

I know what you’ve survived. What you’ve endured.

And I never should’ve added to it.

Now, all that matters is that you’re safe.

That no one—not my father, not my brother, not me—ever gets to hurt you again.

In the end, I just need you to know one thing, and I wish I could have told you in person sooner, but?—

I love you.

I know you have no reason to believe me, but I really do love you.

I hope, one day, you’ll find someone who is deserving of you.

I hope you’ll find someone who tells you the truth even when it’s ugly.

Someone who will stay with you. Forever.

Because you deserve that.

You always have.

—Ben

P.S. You’ve got custody of Reuben now. Please look after him and his kids and make sure they know that I love them (by giving them his favorite potato chips).

P.P.S. Alex will be fine, but if you can please make sure he doesn’t eat the raccoon’s leftovers.