Part 3Loved A Billionaire In Disguise

The alarm went off early the next morning.

Usually, I’d be up by now, plating his breakfast and waking him with a kiss. Today, I stayed facing the wall, perfectly still.

Holden didn't complain. He slipped out of bed quietly, washed up, and came back to the edge of the mattress. He leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my temple.

"I'm heading to work, June. Stay in bed today, okay? Let your body rest."

"I made an extra sixty bucks on deliveries last night. I transferred fifty to your account. Buy yourself something nice."

"If you go out, just text me, alright? Don't scare me like last night."

I kept my eyes shut. I didn't say a word.

He didn't seem to mind. He stroked my hair gently, then stood up and left.

The moment the front door clicked shut, my eyes snapped open.

I got dressed in ten minutes, hurried downstairs, and watched him ride his battered scooter out of the apartment complex. I hailed a cab and pointed. "Follow him."

The driver looked at me in the rearview mirror. "Catching a cheater, honey?"

My lips curved into a ghost of a smile. "Something like that."

The scooter eventually merged into traffic heading toward one of the most exclusive zip codes in the state. The cab couldn't get past the private security gates. I was patient. I told the driver to park down the block and keep the meter running.

Half an hour later, a sleek, midnight-black car rolled out of the gates. The tinted window in the back was rolled halfway down. I had a clear view of Holden’s profile.

The driver let out a low whistle. "A Rolls-Royce Phantom. Your guy’s got some serious backing."

"Is it expensive?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"Expensive? The base model runs about half a million. Custom like that? Probably closer to a million."

I learned a lot about the world that day, trailing behind Holden.

He rode in a car that cost a lifetime of my wages, driven by a man in a tailored suit.

He went for a fitting at a bespoke tailor on an avenue where the rent was higher than my town’s annual budget.

He walked into a high-end jeweler whose name I couldn't even pronounce.

I asked my worldly cab driver how much that might cost.

"Hard to say. A hundred grand on the low end. Millions on the high end. That brand doesn't even let you in the door unless your net worth has commas in it."

It wasn't until dusk that the Rolls finally pulled into the most heavily guarded, elite enclave of estates in the city.

"What's the plan, sweetheart? We keep waiting?"

I shook my head, handed the driver a wad of cash that drained my account, and thanked him.

"Security here is military-grade," the driver warned. "You won't get within a mile of the door unless a resident clears you."

I nodded. I knew that. A girl like me didn't belong in a place like this.

But maybe God felt bad for how blindingly stupid I had been, because He decided to hand me the final nail for the coffin.

Standing at the guardhouse, signing a guest ledger, was Becca.

We grew up in neighboring counties back in the mountains. We weren't incredibly close, but we looked out for each other when we could. The reason she got me the club job was because I had sat in the hospital and signed her release papers when she had her appendix out last year, bringing her soup for a week.

"Becca," I called out.

She turned, startled. She looked at my worn jacket, then at the gates, and offered a tight, complicated smile. "You really shouldn't be here, June."

"I have a friend inside," I said, my voice steady. "I just need to see him. I swear to you, I won't cause a scene."

She studied my face for a long moment, then gave a curt nod.

The estate grounds were so massive we had to take a golf cart to the main house. I didn't know which mansion Holden was in, but fate has a sick sense of humor. I spotted him on the manicured lawn of the very house Becca was visiting.

The backyard was bathed in the warm glow of string lights. Caterers moved silently through a crowd of people dripping in old money. And there, standing in the center of it all, was Holden. He was dressed flawlessly, smiling a charming, polished smile as he leaned down to listen to a stunning woman in a designer silk dress.

"His name is Holden Croft. Heir to Croft Industries," Becca murmured, following my gaze. "You know the Croft name, right?"

I shook my head.

"Real estate. Corporate buyouts. That massive luxury mall downtown? They own the dirt it sits on."

"You know him?" I asked.

She shook her head, then nodded slowly. She pulled a vape from her purse, took a drag, and looked at me with something resembling pity.

"There's this... trend. A game the trust-fund boys in this city started playing a couple of years ago."

"They find a girl. Someone pretty, but broke. Desperate. And they play poor."

"It started as a bet. Just to see who could pull off the act the longest without the girl figuring it out."

"But then they realized how easy it was. How painfully naive girls from the wrong side of the tracks can be. How deeply they want to be loved."

"So they raised the stakes. The new bet was: who could get one of these girls pregnant, force her into an abortion, and still have her blindly devoted to him?"

Becca exhaled a cloud of white vapor. "Rumor in the lounge is that Holden Croft just cashed out a two-million-dollar pot for winning that bet."

She turned her eyes fully on me.

"The girl who got pregnant, went through the abortion, and won him millions..."

"God, June. It was you."