Worth Billions Read online

  Anton was the first adult to ever earn my trust. So much so that his house became home to me. It was the first place that ever felt like one. But even Anton had his faults. The idea of my playing professional football was beyond him. Just like it had been beyond my father. And though it didn’t spark abusive sparring matches, we did argue about it. He told me he expected me to go to college. To make something of myself so I could stick it to my father. Yet again, I was slapped with the expectations of another.

  With no regard for the expectations I had of myself.

  Now I looked at Anton’s house and sighed, saddened at how dead and empty it looked. My safe haven—my beacon of hope—had slowly crumbled with the rest of the town around it. Even though it was kept up more than most of the homes, with a mowed lawn, tailored landscape and a power-washed exterior, I could still see the age on it. The inability of the house to grow with the times. I walked up to the front porch and pushed open the front door.

  That old man never did lock his damn front door.

  I respected Anton enough to follow his wishes. Though I fused my own into it. I ended up with a scholarship to play football in college. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offered me a full fucking ride to play football and I took it. And Anton was proud, which was more than I could say for my father, who fucking followed me from town all the way to the damn college before campus security stopped him from getting out of his car to talk with me.

  Playing all through college, I racked up enough points on the field to get professional scouts looking at me. I even signed a professional contract to play five years with the NFL. I fucking did that. On my own. With no help whatsoever.

  Then I fucking blew it with that damn injury.

  I walked through the only place I’d really called home as a kid. The house looked pristine. Not like it had been virtually abandoned for over three years. It made me wonder how often Anton had the place cleaned. Or if he’d had someone renting it out or something while he was in the nursing home. Seeing it kept up gave me some hope that maybe someone had come into the old man’s life before he died. But the cleanliness only served as a contrast to the dead town around it, and my anger flourished again. Did no one care for their shit around this fucking place? Anton cared for his shit. Obviously. Could no one take a cue from one of the pillars of the community?

  Because that’s what Anton was.

  A strong pillar in our town, even when he moved in as an outsider.

  I wandered around the house, taking it all in. Before I knew it, I was standing in front of a familiar door. The door to the room Anton had showed me to on that first night. I pushed it open and took a look around. Such a small room. With nothing but a bed that still had the same damn sheets on it I used to sleep on. Small specks of dust floated around, but I could still smell the cleanliness. That lemon smell that came with every clean small town home, tainted with the faintest odor of bleach. Even now, I felt comfortable within the walls of this room. Safe and protected from the big, bad world outside. I couldn’t help comparing it to my new life.

  This room was smaller than my bathrooms.

  Certainly smaller than my closets.

  I sat on the edge of the bed and closed my eyes. I remembered telling Anton the day I bought the vineyard. He was absolutely stunned. The concussion I’d suffered on the football field during my last year of playing professionally took me out for good. The doctor said that another hard whack could make me a vegetable for the rest of my fucking life. So I took half of my saved millions and invested it into a rundown, beat-up vineyard in Napa Valley. I got that place for a steal, too. I sold off all their product for half price to raise some capital up front to breathe life back into the place, and now I was making a solid two billion a year from it.

  Billions more than I ever could’ve made playing professional football.

  So much had changed in my life since I left Anton’s house over a decade ago. College. Football. The injury. The money. All of it, bringing me to this exact point in time. Staring at the four walls that took me in when I had nowhere else to go.

  Being there without him felt wrong.

  “What the fuck,” I said with a groan.

  I put my head in my hands as the headache overtook my vision.

  Headaches. I got them sometimes. Courtesy of my concussion. We won that game, thanks to the moves I pulled on that field. But they were moves that ended my career. Sometimes I missed it. I’d get into the gym and work out my frustrations until I was pouring buckets of sweat off my body. I loved the physical activity. I loved the hitting. It helped with my anger. My aggression. The hatred I still had for my father. I made working out and practicing my life when I played professionally, but now sometimes it felt like my damn headaches ruled my world.

  Laying on the dusty bed, I shielded my eyes from the light.

  So much had changed, and I didn’t know if I liked it. My changes had been in a positive direction, but I’d hoped my small town would’ve changed at least a little bit, too. At least kept up with the times enough to aid in its own survival. But on the contrary, it seemed everyone in the damn place was content to drown in their traditions rather than rising above their comfort level and keeping the place afloat.

  It made me angry.

  It angered me that they talked about tradition without upholding any sort of standard to it. It angered me how they preached about family, but were willing to watch the other drown. It pissed me off that people talked about hard work, but that same work was only hard if you never made any money for it. People looked at my bank accounts and thought I was getting a free ride. Like my billions had been bestowed upon me from some damn tree in my backyard. They had no idea the hours I sunk into that vineyard. The hours I sunk into the gym. Into training. The injuries I dealt with and the migraines I suffered through out of passion for the sport of football. They didn’t know the risky business deals I made and the countless nights I spent learning about wine, crafting flavors, planting and growing grapes, and harvesting them at just the right time.

  Countless hours of sleep lost to bring myself to this point.

  Being home was a stark reminder of everything I never wanted to be in my life. That was the source of my anger. It made me sick to my stomach that Anton’s death had brought me back. That his funeral and his estate had brought me back.

  Because it meant I was alone.

  Now I was officially completely alone.

  Chapter 2

  Michelle

  “Are you familiar with pivot tables?”

  “With what?” I asked.

  “It says in your resume you have experience with Excel. We frequently use pivot tables. Have you used them before?”

  What the hell was a pivot table?

  “Um, a couple of times. Though the more I use something, the better I become at it.”

  “That is typically how people work, Miss Danforth.”

  Well she didn’t have to be a bitch about it.

  So I exaggerated my ability with spreadsheets? That didn’t mean I couldn’t learn about them. The requirements for some of these jobs in this pathetic town were astounding. They wanted to pay me twenty thousand dollars a damn year, yet wanted me to be an expert in all things? Were they serious? What about training someone? What ever happened to training someone to do a damn job? Why did they always want experts for a temporary position?

  But still, the woman at the temp agency looked unimpressed with my experience in, well, pretty much anything. I wasn’t being hired for a job through the temp agency. I wanted to be hired to work for them. They had to take pity on me, right? They had do. None of the jobs they were hiring for fit me at all. Not the ones requiring skills or work experience or anything. But I needed something. I needed any job that came my way so I could put some money away and get the hell back out of this damn town.

  “Well, thank you for your time, Miss Danforth. We’ll be sure to contact you once we’ve made our decision.”

  But I knew
what their decision was.

  A big fat ‘no.’

  “Thank you so much for your time,” I said with a smile.

  A big, fake, plastered-on smile.

  As I walked out of the building, I slung my purse over my shoulder. How the hell had I ended up in this place again? Stillsville offered me nothing. There was absolutely nothing for a budding woman like myself. Oh, yes. I remembered. My fucking boyfriend was the reason I was in this pathetic town. I’d followed him here thinking we’d spend the rest of our days in this quiet, quaint little place.

  Then he expected me to foot all the bills while he strummed his electric guitar and ‘booked gigs’.

  Fucking pathetic.

  “Asshole,” I said to myself.

  I found myself walking up the sidewalk towards the small apartment I shared with Andy. There had been no promise of keeping my resume on file. No suggestion of another interview. Nothing. And the ‘apartment’ we lived in? It was really a duplex, and honestly it wasn’t even that. It was a ranch-style home clumsily divided by a pathetic wall into two measly apartments. It hardly met the definition of ‘duplex’.

  But it was all Andy and I could afford on the money from his occasional ‘gigs’ and whatever I could bring in doing odd jobs.

  Walking by the dilapidated businesses with windows busted out by bullshit kids wielding rocks and baseballs I was annoyed. No one in this damn place had a care in the world for the things around them. They used and abused, drained the sources, then bitched when the well dried up. Well, if they took care of their stuff, it wouldn’t fucking dry up. And even though I hated our current living situation, it was still a roof over our heads, and things could always be worse in a place like Stillsville. We could’ve been homeless, or living in one of those abandoned structures like some people were.

  Things could always be worse, Michelle.

  It was a mantra I chanted to myself every morning. Things could be worse. I did have a roof over my head. I did have food to eat. I did wake up next to a man that told me he loved me at least. That was something. And he was playing gigs and did bring money in sometimes. But for the past month, he hadn’t played anywhere. Hadn’t done anything. And after Mr. Anton’s death, I had no money coming in either.

  Hence my humiliating visit to the temp agency.

  Shaking my head, I tried to clear it of all my negative thoughts. If there was anything I believed in, it was the power of the human mind. It had the strength to change perceptions and morph surroundings. It had the ability to change emotional states and lift the wool from eyes. I needed to keep my inner thoughts positive and focused on the good I had in my life instead of the bad.

  What I also needed was to find another damn job.

  And soon.

  Frequently, I found myself wishing Mr. Anton was still alive. He’d been kind, and decent, and had paid me a living wage to keep his house clean and keep his yard mowed. And I tried to keep up his house like it was my own. I trimmed the trees and added flowers that I kept watered. I pulled weeds from his gardens in the backyard. They didn’t grow anything. Not since he went to live in the nursing home. But I still grew some vegetables every now and again, just to make him smile.

  He was sweet to me, and it ached that he was gone.

  I just missed him. I missed that thick Russian accent and his kind smile. I missed those beady eyes that were intimidating to most, but comforting to me. I missed his pep talks and his speeches. He sure did know how to throw a lesson at someone. There were times when he’d even let me stay at his big house on the hill when after Andy had kicked me out during our fights.

  Just last month, he let me stay for a week and a half.

  I walked up our front steps and heard Andy wailing away on his electric guitar. In fact, most people heard it, all the way from the damn street. The wrong chords and the riffs that made no sense. It was painful to listen to sometimes. Closing my eyes, I stood at the front door, debating on whether or not to go in. Even though Anton had passed, I knew that his front door would be open and I could crash on that bed he always let me sleep on. I could finish off the food in his kitchen and then keep it nice and clean until someone came to settle his estate.

  Who was settling his estate?

  Did he have family?

  I looked over at our neighbor, Cecily, and she waved a courteous hand in my direction. She mouthed a particularly fond ‘good luck’ to me, knowing her voice would never be heard over the shriek of Andy’s guitar. I reached out and threw the door open, my ears assaulted by the wailing nonsense coming from our side of the house.

  The stench of beer was thick in the air.

  Stepping inside, my eardrums were already throbbing. And there Andy sat, shirtless on our couch and surrounded by empty beer cans.

  I rolled my eyes and shut the door, wondering how I could smooth things over. Because he looked pissed.

  What the hell did he have to be pissed off about? He didn’t work. Or cook. Or clean. Or do laundry. Or grocery shop. Or do anything except sit on his ass.

  “Hey there, Andy.”

  But instead of acknowledging me, he continued to riff away on his guitar.

  Like I wasn’t even there.

  Passing him without a second thought, I made my way into the bedroom. I needed to change out of my job search clothes. I slipped my shirt over my head and went to wiggle out of my pants, when suddenly a pair of hands came down onto my hips. Lips hit my shoulder and the smell of stale beer was putrid and thick. I felt Andy’s greasy hair on my skin and it made me grimace, causing me to pull away from him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m not in the mood,” I said.

  “I figured we’d celebrate your new job,” he said, as he came at me with his lips again.

  I put my hand in his face and pushed him away.

  “I said ‘no,’ and besides, they didn’t offer me the job.”

  Andy rolled his eyes as I reached for my robe.

  “How the hell did you blow it this time?” he asked.

  Wrapping my robe around me, I scoffed.

  “Me? I blew it? At least I’m out there taking interviews and trying to find a job. You haven’t had a gig in almost a month. And you’re not even out there trying to find any.”

  “This isn’t about me and my gigs. People hire me all the damn time, but I have to stay behind and take care of your ass instead.”

  “You know how you can take care of my ass? Do the gigs, Andy.”

  “This isn’t about me. This is about you being unemployable. What the hell have you been doing all your life? You talk about how you’re all independent and on your own, but all you’ve done is drain me of my money.”

  “Exactly what money was that?” I asked. “The three hundred bucks you occasionally get for playing in bars? Even though most of the time you take free drinks as payment. I’m the one that has kept us supported. It’s me that’s kept us fed. I’ve kept this roof over our heads while you lay around drunk all day riffing away on your stupid guitar.”

  “Stupid? Let’s talk about stupid. Someone with a college degree that can’t even get a job. That’s stupid. You had to take that pathetic job with some old man because your stupid community college degree is worthless.”

  “Well, remember what I said, Andy. Once I find that job, I’m going to go after every certification I can get, and then I’ll be leaving your sorry ass in the dust.”

  “Good. It’s not like I’m banging that ass anyway,” he said.

  “You’ll never touch me again so long as I can help it,” I said. “So, since we’ve talked about my job search, you want to tell me about yours now?”

  Andy eyed me and I thought for sure he was going to hit me. He loomed over me, straightened out his drunken posture and tried to buck up to me. But I was ready for him. Reaching my hand out for the baseball bat in the corner, I was ready to use it. His eyes flickered down to my grip before a grin crossed his cheeks, then the hazy alcoholic returned.

  “Bi
tch,” he said.

  “Deadbeat.”

  He snapped back around to me and I held my ground with the baseball bat at my side.

  He rummaged around for a shirt and pulled it over his head before grabbing his leather jacket. The next sound I heard was the slamming of our front door. I stood there as water began to drip on top of my head and I held back tears. I looked up, noticing the leak and the stains it left on our ceiling. I grabbed a change cup off the windowsill and dumped out the pennies, then placed it on the floor so the water wouldn’t ruin the carpet.

  As if that nasty carpet was somehow precious.

  I fought back tears as I leaned against the wall. Why the hell had I agreed to move to this hellhole in the first place? Oh, that was right. Because my fucking boyfriend asked me to. Because he told me he loved me, and painted a picture of this quaint little country life. Because that same degree he just thrown up in my face was supposed be useful here.

  My two-year medical transcriptionist degree, guaranteeing me a job anywhere.

  Even useful in fucking Stillsville, Illinois.

  What an idiot I had been.

  I slid down the wall and curled my knees up to my chest. Andy had been charming once. A wonderful musician I couldn’t stop listening to. I went to his performances and he dedicated songs to me before we had mind-blowing sex in the bathrooms of the bars he played in. I loved him. There was a point in time where I loved him more than anything. Where I would’ve given up everything for him. And I had, the minute he asked me to move in with him. I had, when he told me he’d found us the perfect starter place. I had, when I’d packed up all my shit and came to live with him in this godforsaken town that was crumbling around us.

  Mr. Anton was the only thing that made it bearable.

  And now I didn’t even have him.

  What the hell was I going to do now?