Page 57 of Booked for Theft

While it took me a moment or two to process his statement, I accepted his reasoning for hesitating. “I’m ready. I will only get upset if there is a really good reason for it.”

“There’s a castle in France up for sale, and I’m in process of buying it.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “An entire castle?”

“It’ll make an excellent cover for the trip. We’ll ride around Europe, visit our castle, and enjoy ourselves. Your love of history will be why I, a sentimental gentleman, might buy my fiancé a castle in France. And there will be a library, Future Mrs. Hampton. It will be a glorious library filled with beautiful books from all eras. But if things don’t work out in our favor, we’ll be all right. The purchase will give us an opening for French citizenship through their investment program. We’ll have to allow people to tour our castle one week out of every year to qualify.” Bradley’s expression turned rather sly. “And it’s one of the few methods we can get dual citizenship. On the surface, the United States government will feel it is honorary. In reality, we will be allowed to live and work in France—and many other places in Europe. That won’t help anyone else, but it’s a start of a plan if this doesn’t work out.”

I could understand why Bradley would feel I might become upset with him. “Let me see if I understand this. You, quite possibly in a moment of depression, flung a huge portion of your wealth at a gamble stock.”

Bradley winced. “That’s accurate.”

“Have you discussed the reckless spending with your therapist?”

He shook his head.

Ah. I sighed, as I had things I wasn’t quite ready to discuss with anyone yet, too. “Bradley, it’s okay. You were upset and depressed. The gamble paid off. Are you feeling guilty because you did something reckless and possibly stupid?”

“I am. I mean, I did think it was a gamble worth trying. I wouldn’t have risked your parents’ money otherwise. But I put down an unreasonable amount of money into the stock when I knew I shouldn’t.”

“You turned three million into billions, Bradley.”

He grimaced. “It makes me sick thinking about it, honestly. It’s too much money. I was hoping to double the investment.”

“You did a little more than double it. All right. So, you have the equivalent of survivor’s guilt. You did something dangerous with your money, which you had earned on your own. You’re upset because you feel you should have been punished rather than rewarded.” I engaged him in a staring contest. “And for some reason I can’t understand, you think I’m going to be upset over you buying us an entire castle in France.”

“That’s right.”

I petted Ajani before grabbing my phone, opening a dictionary app, and typing in ‘happy’ in the search box. Once I submitted and had the definition on the screen, I pointed the device at him. “My picture should be listed here. There’s something you can do that will make me even happier.”

“What?”

“Buy us an ancient villa in Italy, a Roman styled one—and if there isn’t one and there is land available, I have the blueprints for one. I’m sure you can find someone in Italy who would love to help you spend millions of dollars on such a project. And I bet you could wrangle honorary Italian citizenship for both of us and our colony of kitties.” I set my phone down on the table, picked up the voter guide, and passed it to him. “This was probably the last vote of the former United States, and it explains how so much we have now came to pass.”

Bradley took his time reading over it, and if I judged from his expression, he walked a wire while battling his emotions. “I wonder if Albert knows what he had.”

“Probably not. So many of these papers are felonies, but they were missed because it was just in a pile of papers from an estate auction. Will we be able to hide everything in the wall?”

“With some work, yes. I have the wire guides to slide stuff up along the drywall already in place, and I can stack in two inches of things for two feet. It’ll be rough to get it out later, but I should be able to stash all the voter material back there. If we’re going to distribute this to the media, then we should use the camera on the disposable laptop, clean a bunch of memory sticks, and then make use of anonymous mail drops. We’ll have to wear gloves the entire time, make sure no fingerprints are on anything, and otherwise hide our tracks.”

I nodded. “Do you think this is a good idea?”

“Good is relative. Do I think it’s necessary? Right now, yes, I do. Do I want us to be in such a position we need to do this? No. But we are. Is this dangerous? Definitely. But I think it’s worth the risk. And if things don’t work out, we at least tried—and I will cling to the hope we all get out of this alive until there isn’t any chance of survival at all.” Bradley sighed. “I’m worried that the attention you’ve been getting from the White House has been due to the stock success. It was one thing when I only had a few million dollars to work with and a future inheritance. Now I’m a serious contender in the wealth department. This condo and the maintenance fees probably went a long way towards convincing the government I was, well, depressed and just gambling with money.”

“How much did you lose on your stock gambles while I was gone?”

Bradley’s shoulder’s slumped. “Ten thousand dollars. That’s it. I lost one gamble, and I only gambled on that stock because it was late at night, I was bored, and it was in the same category as the stock I hit big on. Everything else worked out well.”

I narrowed my eyes. “And how much money did you gamble with?”

“Ten million. I reserved two million.”

“And your only loss was ten thousand dollars?”

He nodded, flopped onto the table, and regarded me with his saddest expression. “Ren called me Midas for an entire month, and now he’s mad because he has to manage a bunch of high dividend stocks with good success rates. His calendar is madness because of me. He has to check them whenever they hit six months to see if we need to pull out and reinvest elsewhere.”

I frowned. “What are high dividend stocks?”

“Dividends are the amount of profits that a company shares with its stockholders. Let’s say that a dividend’s percentage is one percent. That means the company will share one percent of its profits with its stockholders. How many shares you have determines how much of that percent of profit you’ll get. So, when I held those stocks I purchased, I was paid approximately thirty percent of the twenty percent of the company’s profits. It was a rather large paycheck. I reinvested about half of it, and I’ve been feeding the other half into your accounts when you aren’t looking.”