Page 114 of The Grumpy Billionaire

“Hi, Charlie,” I call.

Charlie storms in. His clothes are wrinkled, and his hair is impossibly mussed. Did he just come from the plane?

Hugo shuts the door calmly and follows him in, coming around to where I’m standing. He wraps his arms around me and sets his chin on the top of my head. “What?”

Charlie’s fingers look white. Even from where we’re standing, I can see it’s the text with the picture I sent.

“What the hell is this? She lands in this city, vulnerable, completely without resources, and you move in on her?”

“Hello, I’m right here!” I say.

“You just swoop in on her?” Charlie adds.

I break away from Hugo and walk right up to Charlie. “This is none of your business, is it?”

“It’s very much my business when you send me this.” Again with the phone. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Neither of you are seeing clearly the train wreck that is happening here.”

“It’s not a train wreck, and your sister is neither vulnerable nor without resources,” Hugo says with icy calm.

“Yeah,” I add, loving his icy calm. “So you can take yourself and the bullshit that you’ve been peddling right out of here.”

“Me peddling bullshit,” Charlie says. “You thinkI’mthe one peddling bullshit?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Like this thing where you told Mom to tell me Hugo didn’t want me anywhere near him at work? Because I might accost him or whatever?”

“And I’m guessing that’s exactly what you did, isn’t it? Because whatever this is—”

“Oh my god!” I get in his face. “I’m so tired of you thinking I’m this ridiculous child. I’m done with it.”

A hand on my shoulder.

Hugo.

“I don’t think you’ve seen your sister clearly for a very long time,” he says, standing with me, shoulder to shoulder. Something new washes over me. Like I’m not alone here. We’re in it together. We’re a team. And unlike Charlie, Hugo respects my judgement.

Charlie gives Hugo a hard look. “So much for your famous fucking code of honor.”

My chest tightens. Charlie knows exactly where to hit. Happy as we are together, Hugo’s not proud to have broken one of his own self-imposed codes.

“Please with the codes,” I say. “I’m an adult, and it’s not 1872, with codes around womenfolk and all that.”

“You don’t go after your best friend’s little sister,” Charlie says. “That’s always a thing.”

“It’s not always a thing,” Hugo says, “and even if it were, the love that I feel for your sister transcends codes.”

Warmth rushes through me for how he says this. Transcends codes.

Charlie isn’t feeling it. “I get that you may believe you love her, Hugo, but we both know how this goes.” Charlie turns to me now. “Look, I’m sure Hugo believes what he’s saying, but he’ll never be in this thing like you are. Food, water, shelter, sex, it’s all there to serve his work, his quest for the next breakthrough. No woman will ever fit his ideal, no equation will ever be good enough. The distraction you create may be helping him in some way but it’s not what you think it is.”

“You’re pushing it,” Hugo says, voice filled with menace.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Hugo loves math and logic and data and perfect accuracy. That is his true love. In fact…” Charlie turns a cold smile on us. “Ask him what he’s working on.”

“I know what he’s working on,” I say. “A data model to predict the markets.”

“Ah. So you know what the goal is.”

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