Page 33 of Celebrity

Chapter Nine

I arrivedat Austin-Bergstrom International Airport a little after one the following day. The fight was uneventful except having to get up at the ass crack of dawn and fly alone. I’d asked Ashur to send his jet to pick me up, since the last thing I wanted to deal with was fans at the airport.

Dev had taken the commercial flight out the night before to meet his parents in Houston. The good senator wanted him to meet up with a potential donor who Dev had clerked with after law school and who had very deep pockets.

I wasn’t happy about him ditching me. To tell the truth, I was livid.

I should have been used to it by now, but with everything he’d said to me, I never expected for him to arrive in Austin without me.

If this was an example of putting me first, then he’d failed miserably.

A lump formed in the pit of my stomach. Was I trying to hold on to something that had no hope of a future? Or was I being unfair to Devin?

He tried to spin it as a way to make connections that could potentially help with my bid for Senate.

Devin seemed to have forgotten that my current net worth was ten times his whole family’s put together, and that wasaftermy father disowned me and took me out of the line to inherit his fortune. I could run my entire campaign without a cent from donors.

I had a trust that came to me free and clear when I’d turned twenty-five. It was created by my maternal grandparents who were steel industrialists in India and then used their money to become angel investors in unknown startups that netted them huge profits. No matter how much my father wished it, he couldn’t revoke it.

Just because I hadn’t touched a penny of it, didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

Who was I kidding? I was never going to dig into the trust.

I wanted to prove to myself I could succeed without using my family’s money, even if my grandparents had given it to me without strings. I could proudly say I’d accomplished my goals so far. My portion of the Bassett case alone had paid for half of the build cost of my house.

Too bad Papa couldn’t see past the betrayal he felt at my picking my own path in life.

What was it going to take for him to see that I wasn’t a fuck-up? Any father, except mine, would be proud of everything I’d achieved.

I closed my eyes for a quick second and released a deep breath.Let it go, Samina. You’ve had six years to get over Papa’s actions.

I smirked to myself. I could almost hear Jacinta singing “Let it Go,” the song every parent with little girls had heard on repeat at least twenty times. She’d belt out the song off key to annoy me, in spite of the fact she had a beautiful voice.

“Mrs. Camden. Give us a few minutes to clear security, and we can exit the aircraft. Ms. Camden is waiting for you.”

“Thanks, Renita. By the way, my brother put you up to calling me Mrs. Camden, didn’t he?”

She blushed. “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Kumar gave me a message to relay if you asked that very question.”

I waited for her to continue.

“He said it was time to face who you are, no matter what others may feel, even you.”

Oh, Ash. He always knew what to say to me.

After a few minutes, the captain gave the all-clear, and I stepped down the stairs leading to the tarmac.

Before I descended halfway, Jacinta jumped out of the waiting limo and ran toward me.

I hurried the last few steps and hugged her tight.

“I missed you,” I whispered as tears filled my eyes. “Things are such a mess.”

“So, did you and my brother fight again or was he being his usual cheery self when he arrived this morning?”

“I haven’t seen Dev since yesterday. He was meeting your parents in Houston.” I furrowed my brow. “Why?”

She studied my face for a second, and then said, “Well, that answered my question. Just a warning, Big Brother is in a piss-poor mood.”

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