Page 48 of The Reluctant Billionaire

‘She owns a company called Venus,’ I tell Woody, keeping my voice natural. ‘They build houses and flats, and they’re helping us on the project. They’ve donated all the equipment, and a team of them have been helping out all week. They’re good guys.’

‘Is she fit?’ Pete asks, a sneaky tone to his voice that makes me want to punch him in the face.

I mean, it’s not his tone that makes me want to punch him. It’s his spectacular lack of maturity, of accountability, that makes me despise my brother.

All the other shit is just icing on the fucking chocolate fudge cake that is his life.

‘She’s pretty,’ I concede in what I hope is my most off-putting tone. ‘But, you know, high maintenance. She’s from a very wealthy family.’

‘What’s her full name?’ Laura asks. Clearly, my off-putting tone needs work.

I sigh. If my brother was asking, I’d shoot him down, but I can’t be rude to Laura. She’s far too lovely, and she has enough on her plate dealing with Pete day in, day out.

‘Carlotta Montefiore-Charlton,’ I say. ‘She’s Paul’s daughter, Mum. You know, my mentor.’

Mum purses her lips. While I’m sure she’s grateful to Paul and Chiara for everything they’ve done for me over the years, I know the wealth level of people like that make her incredibly uncomfortable. Her eldest son may be worth ten figures, but in her eyes, I’m still me. It helps that I do everything humanly possible to act the same when I see her. My net worth is an abstract concept to her, and she’d prefer to keep it that way than deal with the inevitable change that comes with life-changing money.

It’s difficult for me. It’s not like I won the fucking lottery and became rich overnight. I worked and worked and made decisions and took steps and worked some more and got lucky. My rise may have been whatThe Economistlikes to callmeteoric, but it’s been gradual enough for us to accommodate.

Unless you’re Veronica Duffy and you’ve been brought up in a culture that teaches you never to abandon your religion or your political stance or your social class, even when they no longer serve you. So she’s stayed staunchly Catholic and Labour-voting and working class all her life. And, if I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think I let her down by finding professional success and ‘abandoning’ my honest, working roots.

Even this house is a joke. Yeah, it’s better than the shithole I grew up in, the one I persuaded her to sell after Dad died. But it’s still a small terraced house in an uninspiring road in North Kensington.

I’ve done the best I can. I never expected her to up sticks and move somewhere swanky, so I bought her the best house I could. It’s secure, and clean, and not damp. It has double glazing and a nice little garden and a kitchen that had been newly installed when we bought it. When I look around, I feel I’ve failed her, but here’s the thing.

She would never allow herself to upgrade more than this. To ‘move up in the world’. Because, God forbid, her small-minded, backwards-looking friends and neighbours would think she’d got too big for her boots.

Just like I have, apparently.

Pete’s another matter entirely. To say my brother has embraced my wealth is an understatement, and that’s caused more friction than anything else.

‘I’ve seen their house inHello!magazine,’ Mum says now. ‘It’s very tacky. Money can’t buy taste, you know.’

‘I don’t remember it,’ I say, even though I do. I was definitely too young and too skint to understand taste levels in the way I do now. All I knew back then was that the Montefiore-Charlton home was a palace. Everything glittered. But I have no interest in perpetuating this conversation, because Mum seems determined to be mean-spirited about the people who gave me my first shot at success and worked hard to deserve their own.

‘Oh my God,’ Laura says. ‘She’sgorgeous, Aide.’

I steel myself and lean in to look at the phone she’s waving in my and Pete’s direction. It looks like Carlotta’s Instagram account, which is a roundabout way of saying Iknowit’s her Instagram account because I feasted my eyes on it over the weekend before finally following her.

To say her feed is a reflection of the hedonistic bubble the woman I bedded lives in is an understatement. Everything in her life, from her clothes to her friends and her holidays, is beautiful. She’s radiant in every fucking photo, but natural, too. It’s not like she’s sporting some Kardashian-esque pout. She’s beaming and moving and shining in all of them.

Just like in real life.

‘This is what pisses me off,’ Pete says, grabbing the phone off his long-suffering partner. ‘You become a billionaire and suddenly you have all these smoking hot women hanging off you. It’s so fucking wrong. It’s not like you’re a rapper—you’re a fucking tech nerd. Do they even realise that?’

‘Language,’Mum spits.

Pete shrugs.

Woody grins.

‘Pete,’ I say, exasperated, ‘I met her on acommunity project, for God’s sake, not a super yacht. She’s ‘hanging off’ Gaz and Judy more than me. If you could be bothered to get off your backside and volunteer, then you’d get to meet her, too. But you can’t be arsed.’

It’s true. I asked my brother to help out, and he laughed in my face. He doesn’t even have a job at the moment, as far as I know. His concept ofneedingto work has become far too skewed since I started gifting my family money, and while it’s a struggle to get Mum to take a penny, Pete’s bank account is a black fucking hole.

I grab Laura’s phone off him and hand it back to her. She scrolls wistfully through Lotta’s feed, and I feel a pang towards this woman who’s living with my fuckwit brother and managing to raise an amazing kid.

I make a note to do something nice for Laura—something I’ll pay for directly so Pete can’t intercept the money with his dirty mitts. Maybe a spa day one weekend, or lunch for her and her girlfriends. An overnight, even.

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