The Trillionaire Chapter Five: Turnover and Kind Inclinations

Tori had expected to remain in Sweden while her father's estate was settled.

Mr. Peeters had other ideas.

Within hours of Erik Muller's death, Tori was told to pack her things.

There were no lengthy explanations. No reading of a will. No meeting with accountants or attorneys. Peeters simply informed her that arrangements had been made for her return to

New Mexico.

This time, there was no security detail.

That struck Tori as strange.

She had apparently needed protection when she was an anonymous girl living in a trailer, but now that the man whose people had been watching her was dead, they were willing to put her on an airplane alone.

Before she left, Peeters handed her an envelope containing several hundred dollars in American currency.

"Keep this concealed."

Tori looked inside.

"That's it?"

"For now."

"What about my father?"

"What about him?"

"His house. His stuff. Everything."

"Those matters will be handled."

"By who?"

"By the appropriate people."

Tori was becoming increasingly irritated by answers that sounded informative while explaining absolutely nothing.

"Am I one of the appropriate people?"

Peeters looked at her for a moment.

"Eventually."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you are fifteen years old."

"I'm emancipated."

"That does not make you an estate attorney."

Tori glared at him.

Peeters lowered his voice.

"You must understand something, Victoria. Until the estate is properly secured and Mr. Muller's affairs have been reviewed, you are potentially vulnerable."

"To what?"

"People."

"What people?"

"People who may suddenly find you very interesting."

That was the closest Peeters came to an explanation.

He instructed her not to discuss Muller, the estate, Sweden, or anything she had witnessed there. She shouldn't tell friends. She shouldn't tell neighbors. She shouldn't tell reporters if anyone somehow discovered her identity.

"Why?"

"Because for the immediate future, anonymity is the most useful protection you have."

Tori didn't particularly like that answer either.

Still, something about Peeters had changed. The smugness was gone. For the first time since meeting him, he appeared genuinely concerned.

That frightened her more than anything he'd said.

By that afternoon, she was gone.

During the flight home, Peeters's warning replayed in her head.

People may suddenly find you very interesting.

What did that mean?

Was she rich?

Was she inheriting something?

Was somebody going to come after her?

Or had Peeters simply frightened her so she wouldn't ask questions while he and the other attorneys divided up whatever her father had left behind?

That possibility seemed considerably more realistic.

By the time she reached New Mexico, Tori had almost convinced herself she'd been swindled.

When she finally stepped into her trailer again, she dropped her backpack onto the floor and stood in the middle of the living room.

The place smelled stale.

Nothing had changed.

The recliner was still there.

The old television.

The water stain on the ceiling.

Her mother's coffee cup remained in the cabinet.

Tori sat down.

After Sweden, the trailer looked impossibly small.

It also felt safe.

She slept for nearly fourteen hours.

The next morning, Tori began looking for information about Erik Muller.

She expected finding a dead billionaire—or millionaire, or whatever he had been—to be easy.

It wasn't.

She found nothing useful.

No obituary she could confidently connect to him. No photograph matching the dying man she'd met. No newspaper story announcing the death of a wealthy industrialist in Sweden.

It was as though Erik Muller had barely existed.

That raised more questions.

Why had he been so rich?

Why had her mother known him?

Why had she left?

Had Lesley known he was Tori's father?

Had Muller actually spent years searching for them, or was that simply something his attorneys wanted Tori to believe?

She considered asking for help.

Then she remembered Peeters's warning.

So she told no one.

The cash went beneath a loose floorboard under a rug in the bedroom. Her mother had used the same hiding place when Tori was little.

Lesley had never trusted the neighbors quite as much as she pretended to.

Then again, they'd rarely had enough money worth stealing.

Molly appeared as soon as she realized Tori was home.

"Where have you been?"

"New York."

"For that long?"

Tori shrugged.

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

Molly stared at her.

"They got the wrong person."

"What?"

"The lawyers. They thought I was related to somebody I'm not."

It wasn't a particularly good lie.

Fortunately, Molly wasn't particularly difficult to distract.

"So you went all the way to New York for nothing?"

"Pretty much."

"That sucks."

"Yeah."

Tori changed the subject.

"What's happening at school?"

That was all Molly needed.

She launched into an account of fights, hookups, breakups, and betrayals involving people

Tori had known only weeks earlier.

Something had changed.

Before her mother's death, Tori could have listened to this for hours. Who liked whom mattered. Who had kissed whom mattered. Somebody getting humiliated in the cafeteria

could fuel conversation for a week.

Now it all sounded impossibly small.

Tori caught herself drifting away while Molly talked.

She forced herself back.

Apparently Molly had met a boy named Jesse.

Jesse skateboarded competitively—or at least competitively enough for Molly to describe him as a champion—and he had a friend named Rocky.

"I told them we'd all go out Saturday."

Tori blinked.

"We?"

"Me and you."

"You already told them?"

"Yes."

"Before asking me?"

Molly smiled.

Two weeks ago, Tori wouldn't have cared.

Now her first instinct was to say no.

Stay home.

Keep quiet.

Don't attract attention.

Then Tori looked around the trailer.

She couldn't hide there forever.

"Fine."

Saturday night, Tori and Molly walked to a taco truck near the trailer park and met the boys there.

Tori had prepared herself to dislike Jesse.

She had been on one blind date before and considered the experience sufficient evidence against the entire concept.

Then Jesse showed up.

Tori immediately revised her position.

He had thick dark hair, a friendly smile and the relaxed confidence of someone who didn't seem particularly concerned with impressing anybody.

Molly had done well.

Rocky was another matter.

He was nineteen and already possessed the exhausted appearance of somebody who had spent several years making bad decisions professionally.

Tori watched him put an arm around Molly.

Please don't get pregnant.

She immediately felt guilty for thinking it.

But she'd seen too many girls disappear from school after a pregnancy and reappear months later carrying babies while their boyfriends vanished.

The thought unexpectedly reminded her of Sweden.

There had been no children at Muller's estate.

Not one.

No toys.

No photographs of babies.

No sound of children anywhere in that enormous house.

Tori didn't know why that detail bothered her.

It simply did.

After tacos, the boys took them to an abandoned warehouse across from the trailer park.

The parking lot had become an unofficial skating spot. Jesse and Rocky rode across the cracked pavement, jumping curbs and performing tricks while Molly cheered.

Tori watched Jesse.

Then her attention wandered toward the building.

The warehouse had been empty for years. Several windows were broken. Weeds grew through cracks near the loading dock. Graffiti covered one wall.

She had passed it hundreds of times without really seeing it.

Now she wondered who owned it.

It was strange.

She had just returned from a mansion containing more rooms than anyone could reasonably

need, yet here was an enormous building nobody used at all.

Why did places simply rot?

Why couldn't somebody fix them?

For the first time, another thought followed.

Could I?

Tori almost laughed at herself.

She didn't even own a car.

The date went better than expected.

Jesse was funny without trying too hard, and he didn't seem bothered by Tori's silences.

When he talked about skateboarding, he became animated in a way Tori liked.

At the end of the night, Molly asked whether she and Rocky could use Tori's trailer for a while.

"No."

"Come on."

"No."

"We won't do anything."

"Then don't do nothing somewhere else."

Molly called her selfish.

Tori went home alone.

For once, she enjoyed being there.

Twelve weeks passed.

Nothing happened.

No mysterious visitors.

No reporters.

No threatening strangers.

No Mr. Peeters.

With every uneventful day, his warning seemed a little more ridiculous.

Tori began to wonder whether she would ever hear from Sweden again.

She lived carefully on the money Peeters had given her.

Originally, she'd planned to buy Mr. Ronny's truck and immediately begin applying for jobs.

Instead, exhaustion caught up with her.

For months, she'd moved from her mother's death to emancipation, from emancipation to

New York, from New York to Sweden and from Sweden straight back home.

So Tori did something she almost never allowed herself to do.

Nothing.

She slept.

She watched television.

She spent time with Jesse.

She thought about what she wanted.

Maybe fast food didn't have to be the entirety of her future.

Maybe she could go to college.

The idea seemed absurd at first.

Then less absurd.

Eventually the envelope of cash became noticeably thinner.

Tori counted what remained.

Reality returned.

She needed work.

One afternoon she walked to the cluster of mailboxes hoping, irrationally, for some kind of miracle.

There was a water bill.

There was an advertisement from a store where even the discounted merchandise cost more than Tori's monthly grocery budget.

That was it.

She walked back toward the trailer.

A cardboard overnight envelope was wedged between the screen door and frame.

The return address belonged to Mr. Kenton's law firm in New York.

Tori carried it inside before opening it.

There were several documents.

This time, she read every page.

A trust had been established for her benefit.

Tori read that sentence repeatedly.

Most of the assets associated with her father's estate remained tied up in legal proceedings she barely understood, and nothing in the documents told her how much she might ultimately inherit—or whether she would receive anything substantial at all.

But until she turned eighteen, the trust would provide her with a monthly living allowance.

The money would be deposited into a custodial account administered under the terms of the trust, with Tori permitted access to a debit account for ordinary living expenses. Larger expenditures would require approval.

There was a card attached.

Tori stared at it.

She called the bank using the number printed on the paperwork rather than the card itself.

After answering an exhausting number of security questions, she confirmed that the account was real.

Then she asked the balance.

When the woman told her, Tori sat down.

It wasn't a fortune.

It wasn't mansion money.

But it was more money than Tori had ever personally controlled.

Enough for groceries.

Enough for the lot rent.

Enough for electricity.

Enough that a broken appliance wouldn't immediately become a catastrophe.

For the first time in her life, Tori possessed something she'd never understood wealthy people took for granted.

Breathing room.

There was a short letter from Peeters.

He reminded her again to remain discreet regarding her connection to Muller and informed her that Kenton's office would contact her regarding developments in the estate.

Tori considered writing back.

She didn't.

Whatever gratitude she might have felt was complicated by the memory of Sweden.

Still, that evening she bought groceries without calculating the price of every item before reaching the register.

It felt almost indecent.

Summer approached.

Tori spent more time with Jesse.

He taught her the names of skateboard tricks, although she suspected she would never understand why performing something called a kickflip was worth potentially breaking several bones.

Then one afternoon, Jesse attempted an ollie off a concrete ledge.

The board shot away.

Jesse landed badly.

He cried out and grabbed his hand.

Tori ran to him.

"You okay?"

"No."

That answer frightened her.

His wrist was already swelling.

Rocky eventually found somebody with a car who could take Jesse home.

Tori walked the two miles back to the trailer park alone.

She kept thinking about the fall.

The broken pavement.

The loose gravel.

The rusted metal around the warehouse.

The place wasn't meant for skating.

Nobody maintained it because nobody cared what happened there.

Tori looked across the road at the abandoned building.

Then an idea occurred to her.

Not buying it.

That would be ridiculous.

Renting it.

Maybe.

Just for the summer.

She could clean part of it herself. Jesse and Rocky could help. They could clear the dangerous debris and make a place where their friends could skate without worrying about traffic or broken pavement.

Tori stopped walking.

She stared at the warehouse.

Three months ago, her solution to every problem had been endurance.

If something was broken, you lived with it.

If something was dangerous, you avoided it.

If something cost too much, you went without.

Now another possibility had entered her thinking.

Maybe some problems could simply be fixed.

That night, Tori dragged the Yellow Pages onto the kitchen table.

Finding the owner took several telephone calls. The number printed in an old commercial-property advertisement was disconnected, which led her to another number, then another. Eventually she found the name of the company responsible for the property and wrote it on the back of an envelope.

She stared at the telephone number.

Renting a warehouse was probably impossible.

She was fifteen.

She didn't know anything about leases.

She didn't know what insurance cost.

She didn't know whether the building even had electricity.

She didn't know whether anyone would take her seriously.

Tori picked up a yellow highlighter and drew a line across the number anyway.

Tomorrow she would call.

Maybe they would laugh at her.

Maybe they would tell her no.

But Tori had recently crossed an ocean, met the father she never knew existed, and returned home with a trust account and more questions than answers.

A telephone call no longer seemed particularly frightening.

She looked through the trailer window toward the dark silhouette of the warehouse.

For most of her life, Tori had learned how to survive inside circumstances other people created.

She was beginning to wonder what might happen if she created something herself.