Page 5 of Recruited By the Billionaire

“Devin,” she said as if his name was the cancer that was ravishing her body. “That man don’t give a damn about you either. Mark my words. He’s just using you like all those other men you thought wanted you. Never risked anything in your whole life, but all of a sudden you want to put all your eggs in the worst basket of them all. And that Devin, I’m telling you, is the worst. But that’s my daughter. Just like her father!”

Her mother laughed when she said that. Couldn’t stop herself from laughing. Thought it was the funniest thing ever. Until she began having a coughing fit and the nurse told Frankie she had to leave. Her mother needed to rest.

Her mother had an even more dramatic coughing fit later that same night, and Frankie was told she was screaming from the top of her lungs as she died. She passed away that same bitter woman she became after Frankie’s father left them. Her entire life was defined by how one man treated her.

But her mother was right. Frankie had played it safe her entire life and had nothing to show for it but a string of bad relationships.

Now she was in another relationship. A marriage that she considered a decent marriage to a man who earned a good living as an attorney, and who declared daily his devotion to her. A good guy.

But then why, she wondered as she turned into the parking lot of some cheap-ass motel in the Bronx, was the first car she saw when she pulled in was that good guy’s BMW.

And why did her heart began racing with crippling fear when her two best friends in the entire world got out of Royce’s Lexus and made their way to her Audi. Looking somber. Like they were at another funeral.

Only this time, she felt, it was hers.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was the last place Robert Marris wanted to be, and Laine knew it. That was why he sat on that backseat of his limousine as if he was catatonic. That was why, even after his bodyguard opened the door, he still sat there.

“It’s not an option, sir,” Laine said to her boss. She was in the limo too. “You’re here now. You have to get out and pay your respects to the mother of your children. You have to, or the press will turn it into another distraction. And after what happened last night and what happened the month before, we’ve had enough distractions.”

Robert still didn’t move. It was the height of hypocrisy, in his view, showing up at his ex-wife’s Wake, a woman he despised and who despised him. But they did have two children together, and the children, now both grown and as obnoxious as their mother, were at the Wake too. They were the only reason he was even bothering to show up.

He got out, buttoned his suit coat, and with bodyguard and publicist in tow, walked across the sidewalk and then up the steps into the funeral home where the body was being held. The press was out in force, but he ignored all of their yelled-out questions and clicking cameras.

You could hear a hush come over the well-attended Wake as he walked up the long aisle toward the casket. His children were seated beside the casket, staring angrily at him too, but he kept his composure. Never a man who let anybody get anything over on him, it wasn’t easy. He had a lifetime of grievances he could unload on those two just as harshly as he knew they wanted to unload on him, but he knew he had to be the grownup.

When he got to the casket and saw his ex-wife’s beautiful face, he should have felt something for the woman he once loved. But he felt absolutely nothing. After years of trying to get her clean and sober. After years of following her and pleading with her and snatching her out of one man’s house or out of the clutches of another man’s arms, he gave her over to her demons. He was done.

Now she was dead from an overdose of fentanyl and God knows what else, and what was he supposed to do? He did all he could for her. If they didn’t have two children together, and if he didn’t own an NFL team that required him to uphold a certain image, he would not have even considered showing up. But Laine was right. The press would have a field day if he didn’t make an appearance.

His two children, Robert, Junior, called RJ, and Everly, acted as if they had been waiting on pins and needles for his arrival. He could feel the fumes coming out of their perfectly manicured heads as they sat there staring at him. But when he stood at that casket and wouldn’t so much as acknowledge them, they could wait no longer. They got up from their seats and hurried beside him, one on either side of him, as if they finally had him cornered.

Phones flew out of attendees’ pockets as soon as his children jumped from their seats, as if each person was determined to be the one to get the shot that would go viral. Maybe Everly would slap him. Maybe RJ would knock him out. It was the fireworks they had been waiting for.

And his children did not disappoint.

“Why didn’t you help her?” RJ started saying loud enough for many rows back to hear him. “She would still be alive if you would have helped her!”

“She loved you,” Everly said, “but you didn’t give a damn about her!”

“You wanted to own that NFL team so bad that you’d do anything to own it,” said RJ. “Including neglecting our mother. You bastard!” he said.

But it took Robert to make it a tangle and Robert wasn’t interested. As soon as his children started hurling their insults, he remained cool and didn’t even look their way. He continued to stare at their mother in her casket. Stared at the woman he once loved but grew to hate. But when RJ started talking about his NFL team, and called him a bastard, he spoke up.

“Keep talking,” he said to them in a low, calm voice as he continued to stare at their dead mother, “and you won’t get another penny from me.” And then Robert looked at RJ, and then at Everly, in case they thought he was joking.

Both siblings seemed shocked by those words. How could he talk about money at a time like this?

But they also understood the ramifications. RJ, the oldest at twenty-four, especially understood the ramifications. Their mother was gone. All those alimony checks and living expenses checks were gone too. They were too old for child support and Robert had already refused to make them trust-fund babies. If he stopped giving them their monthly allowance of twenty-thousand-dollars each, they would have nothing. RJ realized, in that moment, that they were completely and utterly dependent on that rich father they despised.

Everly realized it too, but at nineteen she was still too hurt to understand like RJ understood. She wanted to let her father know how much she hated how he divorced their mother and, by extension, them.

But RJ touched her arm, and she looked into his eyes. And as always her entire life, she did whatever her big brother wanted.

And although they hated their father with a venomous hate, they loved their father’s money with a passion. They made no bones about that. And each of them, in their own save-face, careful way, slithered back to their seats and sat down as if nothing had ever happened.

But as Robert took his seat at the casket between his two children, he knew he couldn’t take it. He could feel their hatred, and that hate felt like daggers through his soul. They felt he should have never given up on their cheating mother and her boatload of problems. They felt a real man would have toughed it out and took it if he loved his children. Robert loved his children. Even through their hate, he loved them. He would not have given them a dime had he not loved them. But he refused to take their bullshit. He didn’t take their mother’s, and he wasn’t taking theirs.

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