Page 21 of Billionaire Grump
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve covered my tracks. No one will be able to trace it.”
“Josh. Jesus. Of course they’ll be able to trace it! You have to give it back. Now. Immediately.”
“No.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded and irate. “Yes!”
“I’m not giving it back, Ivy. He owes us. He owes me.”
“Josh, you’ll go to jail if they find out, don’t you get that? Jail!”
He’s infuriatingly unrepentant. “As I said, I was very thorough. And discrete.”
“Josh, be reasonable! You have to put it back right this second. Please. I promise you, we can afford Columbia. You know that. I make enough money. We’ll be fine. We don’t need his money.”
He’s quiet for a few long seconds, contemplating me gently. “You know I love you, right, Ive?”
This shocks me a little. I say the words to him all the time. Sometimes he says them back, offhandedly, if he’s in the right mood. But I’m not sure he’s ever said them first, just out of the blue like that. “I love you too, Josh.”
“And I appreciate the hell out of everything you’ve done for me. I know how hard it’s been. I know how hard you work. And I’m going to pay you back one day. But for now, I think it’s okay if we quietly allow our father to help us, when it’s so little to him. It’s not his only offshore account. He has two others. I did some research. And it looks like his money-making schemes aren’t always a hundred percent legal. So it’s safe to say he’s not going to be destitute. He’ll also think twice about getting the authorities involved. He might not even notice.”
“Josh, of course he’ll notice! It’s ten million dollars!”
“I don’t want you to pay when he can pay. It’s too much for you to do that. You’ve done enough already.”
Josh knows that Columbia, by the time he graduates, will have cost us close to half a million dollars—if he lives on campus, which he still hasn’t decided, but I’d like him to do that if he wants to. Josh also knows that, when I did my research about how much he might be able to get in financial aid, the answer is zero. Because I’m his legal guardian and I make enough to keep the option of assistance out of reach.
I have money, but it’s not regenerating at the rate it was when I first burst onto the TikTok scene. I know I could ramp up my platform if I toured more. Social media loves travel, exotic locations, keeping it fresh and exciting.
I haven’t traveled because I’m here, taking care of my brother. I do local gigs and record new music but my plate is very full and it’s sometimes hard to keep up the staged illusion of fun and perfection when my life isn’t always those things.
I don’t regret spending all my money on buying us a beautiful home where we can feel safe, or for sending Josh to a private high school his last two years to help his chances of getting into a good college, but it’s all added up.
“Ivy, you’ve literally paid for everything for years. It shouldn’t be up to you to do all that for me. Not when he can.”
“Josh. Come on. I get how angry you are. I do. But it doesn’t mean you can steal from him. It’s not worth risking everything and it’s definitely not worth going to jail for. You have to put it back before this spirals into something uncontrollable. You have to do the right thing. Please.”
“I am doing the right thing.”
He seems so calm, so unfazed, it’s freaking me out. “You must be able to put it back though, right? If you do it quickly enough, he might not even notice it was gone. If it’s an account he doesn’t check every day, then he might not have contacted the bank.” Or the police.
“I’ll take care of it, Ive.”
Most parents don’t have to deal with this kind of shit, right? Underage drinking, smoking weed, cheating on a test…I can handle all that. What I can’t handle is my brother throwing his entire life away. And I definitely can’t handle him getting locked up.
Josh stands up to his full height, which seems taller every time I look at him. He grabs his stuffed-full duffel bag from under the table. I hadn’t seen it there.
“It’s Spring Break, Ive,” he informs me. “Cameron’s dad has a condo in Fort Lauderdale. We’re flying out this afternoon for the weekend and I have to go now.”
“Fort Lauderdale?” I still feel stunned. “That’s in Florida.”
He grins down at me. “You nailed it, Einstein. Maybe you should be the one going to Columbia.”
“You’re not going to Florida.” I’m about to ask him how he can afford the plane ticket, but of course I already know. “Not until we’ve solved this problem.”
“The problem has already been solved. And guess how old I’m turning on Sunday, Ive? Eighteen. Which means you can’t stop me from doing any damn thing I want.”
“It also means you’ll be tried as a fully-fledged adult,” I can’t help pointing out.