The Billionaire's Clever Thief

4

AMELIA

"You can drop me by the roadside up ahead," I said, watching the streetlights slide past the window instead of looking at him. "I'm not going straight home."

The car had been quiet for almost ten minutes, before I finally broke it.

"No," Alaric said, not even glancing up from his phone.

"Excuse me?"

"I said I'll drop you wherever you're going. Not on some roadside at midnight." He finally looked at me, with one eyebrow raised, daring me to argue.

I almost did. Then I thought better of it and gave the driver an address instead.

Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside Green Willow, the paint peeling slightly on the sign out front. I felt him go still beside me.

"A nursing home," he said, like the words didn't quite fit in his mouth.

"Very observant." I was already opening the door.

It was late, past visiting hours technically, but Mrs. Ade at the front desk had long since stopped enforcing that rule with me. He followed me in, and I didn't ask him to, but I didn't tell him not to either, and some old man in the hallway called out "Amelia's here!" like church bells announcing a wedding.

"Baby girl." Nana Ruth was in her usual chair by the window, and her whole face lit up the second she saw me, the way it always did, like I was the best thing that had happened to her that week. Maybe I was.

"I brought you these." I handed her the small bunch of daisies I'd grabbed on the way, and she held them to her nose like they were roses from a palace garden.

"You spoil me," she said, and I bent down and kissed her forehead, breathing in the same lavender powder she always wore.

"Somebody has to." I straightened up, and that's when her eyes drifted past me, landing on Alaric, who was standing near the doorway looking like a man who had never once in his life stood in a room that smelled like antiseptic and instant coffee.

"And who is this fine young man?" Nana Ruth's eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Is he your boyfriend?"

I laughed before I could stop myself. "No, Nana. He's my boss."

She looked at Alaric, then back at me, then back at Alaric, with the slow, deliberate suspicion of a woman who had raised six children and buried two husbands and did not believe for one second that a man dressed like that drove women to nursing homes at midnight out of the goodness of his heart.

"Shame," she said finally. "You two would make a fine couple."

I felt my face heat and refused to look at him. "Goodnight, Nana."

Alaric, to his credit, stepped forward and offered his hand like he was closing a merger. "A pleasure to meet you, ma'am."

Nana Ruth shook it and gave me a look over his shoulder that I chose to ignore completely.

I spent the next twenty minutes doing my usual rounds, refilling Mr. Danladi's water, coaxing him into taking the pills he swore tasted like punishment, sitting with him long enough that he finally gave in because I asked him to, not because the nurse told him to. Alaric watched from a respectful distance the whole time, with his arms crossed, saying almost nothing, but something in his face had shifted by the time we walked back out to the car, some hardness were gone slightly soft around the edges.

He looked at me in the low light of the parking lot, taking in whatever exhaustion I was clearly wearing, and said, without asking, "We're stopping for food."

I didn't argue, I was too tired to for real.

The restaurant was quiet and half empty, we sat down and he asked me, gently for once, why I went to that nursing home.

I sighed deeply. Why now of all the hours of the day did he decide to ask me this question.

"I couldn't take care of my only parent, my father when he needed me," I said, staring at the flame between us instead of at him. "So I take care of other people's instead. It's the closest I can get."

"Your father," he said, carefully, like he already sensed the ground was thin.

I don't know what made me tell him. Maybe the wine. Maybe the exhaustion. Maybe two years of carrying it alone finally cracking under the weight of one gentle question.

So I started ; "My Dad was Daniel," I said finally. "Daniel Hale. He ran a small transport business. Nothing big, but enough to keep food on our table and pay my school fees on time, most of the time."

"What happened?"

"A man came to him with an offer. He wanted to expand the business, said he had the capital, my father had the reputation and the routes already established, said it was a fair partnership." I let out a breath that wasn't quite a laugh.

"My father believed him. He signed papers he probably should have had a lawyer look over first, but we didn't have money for lawyers back then, so he trusted a handshake instead."

"And the man didn't honor it."

"The man took everything." My voice was steady, the way I'd trained it to be, years of practice keeping this exact story from cracking me open in public. "He emptied the joint accounts my father had agreed to for the expansion. Sold two of the trucks under a shell company my father didn't even know existed. By the time my father realized what was happening, there was nothing left. Not the business. Not the money. Nothing."

"He tried to fight it."

"He tried everything. Lawyers he couldn't afford, letters, a lawsuit that went nowhere because the man had better lawyers and more money and a judge who owed him favors." I finally looked up and met his eyes. "So the man had my father arrested instead for fraud charges."

Alaric had gone very still. "How long was he in prison?"

"Fourteen months." My throat tightened around the number, the way it always did. "I visited him every week they let me. He kept telling me it would be fine, that the truth would come out eventually, that men like that always slip up eventually." I stopped, steadied myself. "His heart gave out in his cell. Alone. No one even called me until two days after it happened."

The restaurant noise seemed to fade around us, the clink of cutlery, the low hum of other conversations, none of it reaching where we sat.

"I was fourteen," I said. "I had no intentional family left who could take me in. I grew up on the street, taught myself everything I know now, because there was nobody left to teach me anything else. And every single day since, I have been looking for the man who did this. I don't even have a full name. Just fragments my father let slip before I was too young to understand what they meant."

"And when you find him," Alaric said quietly, "what will you do?"

"I will ruin him," I said, and for the first time all night my voice didn't shake at all. "The way he ruined my father. I don't care how long it takes."

Alaric's face had gone unreadable, something heavy behind his eyes, and he reached across the table toward my hand.

The second his fingers touched mine I flinched back like he'd burned me, wiping at my eyes fast, standing up so quickly my chair scraped the floor.

"f**k," I said, loud enough that the couple at the next table looked over.

"What's wrong?"

"My purse. I left it at the nursing home. My house keys are in it." I dropped back into my seat, defeated. "We can't go back, it's past midnight hours, they have fully closed now. ."

Alaric considered this for exactly two seconds. "Come sleep at my place. You'll get your keys tomorrow."

I hesitated, every instinct in me screaming that this was a terrible idea, sleeping under the roof of the man who currently held my freedom in his hands.

"Nothing will happen," he said, reading the panic on my face. "You have my word."

"Fine," I said finally. "I'll come."

He almost smiled, that rare c***k of amusement breaking through. "Funny. This isn't the woman I met that night. She was practically begging to come home with me."

I laughed despite myself, the sound surprising me more than it surprised him, and for one dangerous second it felt easy between us, warm even.

Then I caught myself, tucked the laugh away, and reminded myself exactly what happened to people who got comfortable with billionaires.