The Millionaire's Convenient Arrangement

A Convenient Arrangement

Her face paled. "You knew," she said, her voice a whisper. "You spent time with us, with Joey, you took me out on a date, you knew I was attracted to you. You kissed me," she said, and a bit of the color came back into her face. "You must have realized that if I knew who you were, I'd hate you."

"I didn't know. Not until the baseball game when Joey mentioned his brother. His brother who was serving time in prison."

She sat there, just staring at him.

"Obviously, there was a good chance I'd prosecuted him. The timing made sense. So I looked up the file."

"You don't remember it."

"I prosecuted a lot of people. Gangbangers and drug addicts and pushers. So no, I can't put a name and a face to them all."

"Tito was different," she said, and he cut off the sharp retort he'd intended when he saw the sudden tears spring into her eyes. "You destroyed his life, and you don't even remember his face."

He imagined her brother hadn't needed any help in destroying his own life, but he didn't say so.

"Joey is what matters now. I'm offering to get him out of trouble and back on track. You want to walk away from that because you think I'm responsible for where your brother Tito ended up, go ahead. But Joey's the one who'll suffer for it."

He could see the struggle on her face. "I get that I'm the last person you want to accept help from right now. Joey needs a more stable environment, structure, a new school, activities, all the things I can provide. But he also needs you."

She looked up, surprise and a hint of resignation on her face. She knew she'd run out of options.

"Of course he needs me. We could come up with a schedule, have him spend some time at your house and some time at home with me each week."

Ritchie shook his head. "That's not going to cut it."

"Then I don't know what you're suggesting."

"I'm suggesting that for the next six months, the most convenient arrangement is for both of you to move out of your apartment and move in with me."

* * *

"Are you out of your mind?" She spoke so loudly that other people in the café turned to look at them. She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. "You must be out of your mind."

"Think about it," Ritchie said, "and you'll see it makes perfect sense."

"It doesn't make any sense at all. Why are you doing this? It's not enough that you've taken one brother away from me, now you want to take over Joey's life and control mine?"

"Look, I understand how you feel about your brother Tito, but– "

"You don't understand anything."

"I understand that Joey needs help, and he looks up to me."

"He won't once I tell him who you are, what you did."

"Maybe not." He leaned forward. "Maria, did you ever think that part of Joey's problem is that he sees his brother as a victim, not someone who made some really bad choices?"

"Well, since you don't even remember Tito's case, I don't know how you can say that."

"I didn't make a habit of prosecuting innocent people. I went back and looked at the file, Maria, and there was plenty of evidence against your brother. But from what Joey told me it was all some big mistake. Tito was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and the only reason he's in prison is because some overly zealous prosecutor wanted to make a name for himself. Me."