Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106150 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 425(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
“Yes. Well.” Not-Sterling patted his plentiful brown curls, perhaps wondering how much more hair a human head could sustain. “I’m sure there are many incorrect rumors about Sterling Chase out there. I pay them no mind.”
“Rumors about… Sterling Chase?” Silas repeated, eyes flicking to me again. “That’s an odd way to phrase it.”
“Oh, Sterling enjoys talking about Sterling’s self in the third person,” I explained, deadpan. “It’s one of his many, as he likes to call them, ‘quirky billionaire eccentricities.’”
Silas blinked. “Well. I suppose I’ve heard of billionaires doing stranger things…” he said pointedly, and when his eyes met mine, I very clearly heard the words he’d left unsaid: “…take, for example, the two of us, doing whatever the fuck we’re doing right now.”
“Quite true.” Not-Sterling nodded imperiously. “I once heard about a European billionaire who bought a castle for his cat… which seems rather excessive when one ponders that there are people out there who’d just like an upgrade from their cousin’s lumpy futon.” He cleared his throat, his cheeks turning that addictive shade of pink again. “There’s also a chap in Asia, I do believe, who’s attempting to clone himself a pet dinosaur.”
“Ooof. That won’t end well,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Has he never seen Jurassic Park?”
Not-Sterling chuckled light and low, a sound of startled, honest amusement, and answering heat flared through my body. He turned those big brown eyes up at me… but the instant his gaze met mine, he seemed to recall exactly where he was, who he was talking to, and who he was trying to impersonate. He looked away immediately.
Silas frowned at both of us… but mostly at me.
“Yes, we billionaires are a quirky lot!” Not-Sterling forced a laugh. “You should see us when we get together at our secret billionaire club.” He paused. “Um. Not that there is a secret billionaire club. Or that I could talk about it if there was.” He mimed zipping his lips and locking them tight. “First rule of secret billionaire club, you know?”
Silas nodded slowly, studiously not looking at me now.
Not-Sterling’s lies were skirting closer to the truth than he knew.
When Silas and I, along with our three best friends, had created the ETC software, we’d been excited at the possibilities of what the software could do for the world and had hoped that selling it would earn us a nice little nest egg—maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars apiece!—that we could use as seed money to build our futures.
We’d been incredibly fucking naive.
Fortunately, I’d scored a couple of mentors through my family connections who’d given us solid guidance. Create a company to bring the software to market, they’d said. Don’t list your own names as owners; instead, create individual corporations. Hide, hide, hide.
At the time, it had seemed ridiculous, expensive, and overly complicated. I’d had to front the money to pay for the lawyers who set it all up since I’d been the one with family money.
But then we’d sold the software for 7.3 billion, and all hell had broken loose.
Even though we’d kept the source of our newfound wealth a secret, money-hungry relatives had still emerged the moment they’d noticed us enjoying the fruits of our labor. Unscrupulous business advisors had wanted a piece of the action. We’d been betrayed by friends, siblings, and romantic partners. And we’d realized that the best way to protect ourselves was to keep new friends in the dark as much as possible.
According to official records, Sterling Chase had created the ETC, and Sterling Chase had profited. The five of us were technically members of Sterling Chase’s board, but this wasn’t widely known because our company had no shareholders to report to, and we made sure our photos were never posted in articles or on the company website.
I hid my wealth behind inherited family money and kept my involvement in the company mostly behind the scenes. The others—Zane, Silas, Dev, and Landry—distanced themselves from Sterling Chase almost entirely, using their money to pursue their own interests.
And no one outside the five of us—plus Kenji—had a clue just how many zeroes were at the end of our bank balances.
Secret billionaire club indeed.
“Anyway,” Not-Sterling babbled on, “when you think about it, Sterling Chase is really only… mildly quirky. Quirk-lite. In fact, the quirkiest thing about him—me—is that I, uh…” He swallowed hard and lifted his chin a fraction higher, which made his curls bob. “I like my close associates to call me Rowe.”
“Rowe,” Silas repeated thoughtfully. “Well, that’s easy enough to remember, isn’t it?” He sent me a quick flick of a glance that said he’d be reporting this information to Kenji within minutes so he could pull images from the security tapes, begin a background check… and possibly schedule me some sort of intervention if I continued conversing with this impostor.