"You’re just another billionaire." Cecilia accused.
Seeing her undisguised look of mock disgust, Arkai chuckled. Cecilia truly had so prejudice against billionaires... And for a lot of good reasons.
"Actually, I am not." Arkai smiled sheepishly. "I pay my people, even at entry level, handsoly. And I pay my taxes without trying to wiggle out of them with financial technicalities."
"I don’t use loans either. You know Eastiel’s family, right? We are... we are kind of the sa thing, system-wise. A lot of assets. Not a lot of hoarded cash. The money moves and it goes to people. It builds things."
"Are you trying to say that billionaires are evil, money-hoarding demons?" The corner of Cecilia’s lips twitched despite herself.
"I actually am." Arkai said sincerely. "Also, I use a lot of money to build an actual, strong, millions-strong community of skilled and wonderful working-class people, alright? I am not like those snobby pieces of—ahem."
He stopped himself abruptly. Cecilia had, technically, made soone a billionaire and married him. Before divorcing him.
"My point is—" Arkai’s voice recovered so of its steadiness. "—I still live in this apartnt with two of my bros. I am a humble person."
Cecilia finally giggled, allowing Arkai to smile in relief.
But then—
"So why did you let yourself get hurt?!" Cecilia’s voice rose to a yell, her glare returning with renewed ferocity. "You are supposed to have strong communities of skilled and wonderful working-class people around you!"
Arkai squeezed himself smaller. His ears, already flat, seed to press even tighter against his skull. His tail, which had been curled behind him, tucked itself between his legs like a scolded puppy.
"You think you can deceive ? Just because your wounds heal fast because you are a werewolf, you think I won’t notice? Hmmmm?" Cecilia’s eyes widened, blazing with sun-like intensity.
"But I’m okay..."
"At least you shouldn’t hide it from ! Hmph!" She threw her face away, her chin jerking to the side.
"Cece..." Arkai’s hand rose, his fingers gently catching her chin and turning her face back toward him. His eyes, soft and pleading, t hers. "I won’t do that again, okay? Anyway—" His voice shifted, about to throw soone else under the bus. "—if we are talking about recklessness, Eastiel is far more reckless than ..."
Cecilia turned to him and glared once more. "And you let him?"
"That’s not..."
Ah. His escape route had backfired spectacularly.
***
The sunset fell over the city like a slow, amber tide, spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the apartnt and painting everything in shades of gold and rose and deepening violet.
The glass and steel of the skyline caught the light and threw it back in glittering fragnts, a thousand tiny mirrors reflecting the end of the day.
Inside, the apartnt was warm and felt like ho.
Arkai had showered properly after his confession, erging in soft sweatpants and a worn t-shirt that managed to hide the fading pink lines of freshly healed scratches across his ribs.
He had endured Cecilia’s silent, pointed glare at those scratches. It wasn’t every day he got to be a stoic, resigned man who knew he deserved it, but also happy a woman he loved was worried about him.
Oathran had returned from his McKing shift still slling faintly of the grill, his uniform exchanged for comfortable house clothes and his pale hair still damp from his own shower.
Today, the last one ho was Eastiel.
The front door burst open. He was hauling an enormous burlap sack over one shoulder that was bulging with potatoes. Dozens of them. Yet he looked like he was just hauling a sack of cotton.
"Got ’em on sale!"
Behind him, hooked over his other arm were the rest of the grocery bags.
"Ah." Arkai humd dryly, but his lips were twitching. "We are eating potatoes as carbs for a while, huh?"
"Alright." Oathran was already moving toward the kitchen, his sleeves rolled up. "Prep so of them for dinner. I will start chopping the vegetables."
Cecilia rose from the couch, ready to jump in and help. She had learned, after all, and she was becoming quite proficient with the various knobs and buttons of this world’s kitchen appliances... when the front doorbell rang.
Ding-dong.
All three n stopped what they were doing. Arkai’s hand froze halfway to the potato sack and Eastiel’s ears swiveled toward the door. anwhile, Oathran’s knife hovered above the cutting board. None of them had expected guests.
Cecilia checked her phone, which had suddenly blipped with a notification.
{Thalia (Dad’s Lwy): Madam, we are here with your belongings.}
"It’s Thalia," Cecilia said, looking up at Oathran.
His eyes t hers, and the tension in his shoulders eased. He nodded.
"We have company for dinner today."
Cecilia opened the front door to find Thalia and Gregor standing in the hallway. Behind them, a small army of black-suited bodyguards, all of them tigers with their massive fras barely contained by their tailored jackets, were hauling boxes.
Several boxes. Many boxes. An almost comical number of boxes, stacked on a rolling cart that had probably been commandeered from the building’s service elevator.
"Madam." Thalia’s face broke into a warm, genuine smile the mont she saw Cecilia. "Your belongings. Everything from the estate, and everything we could recover from the lab."
Thalia’s eyes flicked past Cecilia’s shoulder, taking in the apartnt beyond. She had been wondering where her Madam had been staying and finally, she was going to get her first look.
"Please, co in." Cecilia stepped aside, gesturing them through the doorway. "All of you. Thank you so much for doing this."
The bodyguards filed in carefully. The boxes were stacked neatly against the wall of the living room, each one labeled in Thalia’s precise handwriting.
The bodyguards, their duty discharged, nodded respectfully to Cecilia and retreated to wait in the hallway.
But Thalia and Gregor didn’t leave. They stood in the center of the living room, their eyes sweeping across the space. They had spent years managing the affairs of a billionaire family and could price a room’s contents with a single glance.
The apartnt was, they realized imdiately, one of the most expensive luxury four-bedroom units in the entire city. Thalia recognized the building. She had researched it once, years ago, when she had been helping Madam look for potential investnt properties.
The price per square ter was astronomical. The views were unparalleled. The finishes, the polished concrete floors, the exposed steel beams, the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the glittering skyline, were all custom, all designer, all breathtakingly expensive.
And yet the furnishings, while tasteful and obviously high-quality, were not ostentatious. The furniture was a mix of brutalist design and comfortable, lived-in warmth.
The kitchen appliances were custom professional grade. The art on the walls was original, not reproduction. Nothing in the apartnt looked cheap, even though so items, a slightly worn throw blanket on the couch, a lamp that looked like it had been repaired more than once, were clearly well-loved.
This must be one of Madam’s assets, Thalia thought, her mind clicking through the possibilities. Madam had, after all, been a billionaire’s wife. She had resources and investnts.
She must’ve had properties that Arzhen Vasiliev didn’t know about, because Arzhen Vasiliev had never bothered to pay attention to his wife’s finances.
It made sense that she would retreat to one of her own properties after leaving the mansion.
But then—Thalia’s ntal calculations stuttered.
She rembered. She had managed Madam’s accounts on and off for years.
Cecilia Araceli had never kept her "pocket money" for herself.
Every allowance Arzhen had given her, every discretionary fund, every small financial freedom she had been granted as the wife of a billionaire—she had donated it!
Right, damn it! This woman was a saint! How could they forget?
All of it. To charity. To research grants. To the small, struggling communities that had needed help and had no one else to turn to.
Madam had arrived at the hospital with nothing but the clothes on her back and the purse in her hand because she had nothing else! She had even co to the hospital because she fainted at a charity gala!
So this apartnt, this stunning, expensive, tastefully furnished apartnt, was not Madam’s. It belonged to the n.
Yes, the n. The three A-List models standing in front of them right now!
User Comments
0 comments from readers