The Billionaire Next Door

He reached out and took her hand. “I’m there for you. One hundred percent.”

She positively sagged with relief. “Thank you. This has been a very difficult time.”

He pulled her forward and tucked her into his body as a friend or a brother would, for comfort. “You don’t worry about a thing.”

When his phone started to ring in his breast pocket, he took it out. The 617 area code made him frown because he didn’t recognize the rest of the caller’s number.

“I’ll let you take that,” Elena said, kissing him on the cheek. “And seriously, Sean…thank you.”

“Don’t go, baby. This’ll just take a sec.” He accepted the call. “Yeah?”

The pause that followed was broken by the wail of an ambulance siren. Then a female voice said, “Sean O’Banyon?”

“Who is this and how did you get this number?”

“My name is Elizabeth Bond. I got it from your voice mail. I’m…I’m so very sorry to tell you this…but your father has passed.”

All at once, the sounds of the party drained away. The patter of talk, the winding chords of the chamber orchestra, the trilling laughter of a woman nearby—all of it disappeared as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over everything. And then the sight of the 150 people before him fogged out until he was alone in the vast room.

In fact, the very fabric of reality disintegrated until it seemed as if the world had become an intangible dreamscape and him a formless vapor: he couldn’t feel the floor under his feet or the phone in his palm or the weight of his body. Nor could he remember what he was doing in this room full of crystal chandeliers and too much perfume.

“When?” The heavy word came out of his mouth without benefit of conscious thought.

“Less than an hour ago. He suffered a second heart attack.”

“When was the first?”

“Six days ago.”

“Six days ago?” he asked in an utterly level tone.

There was a hesitation, as if the woman on the other end was unsure what his mental state was. Funny, that made two of them.

She cleared her throat. “Immediately following his first, he was taken by ambulance here to Mass General, and though he was revived, the damage to his heart muscle was extensive. Following an angiogram, it was revealed that he had multiple blockages, but he was not stable enough for surgery.”

Dimly, Sean heard the sound of ice tinkling in a glass and he looked down. His hand was shaking so badly his Tanqueray and tonic might as well have been in a blender. He leaned to the side and put the drink down on a table.

“What happens to him now?” he asked, shoving his hand in his pocket.

“He will be held here at Mass General until the family makes arrangements.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Mr. O’Banyon? Will you be making arrangements? Um…hello?”

“Yes, I will. I’ll fly up tonight. What do I need to do once I’m at the hospital?” As she proceeded to tell him who to call and where to go at MGH, he wasn’t tracking. The only thing that stuck was that he could phone the general information number if he needed help or had further questions.

“I’m very sorry,” the woman said and she obviously meant it. There was true sorrow in her voice. “I—”

“Are you a nurse?”

“Yes, I am. But your father wasn’t a patient of mine. He was—”

“Thank you for calling me. If you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls. Goodbye.”

He hung up and stared at his phone. Obviously his father had listed him as next of kin, which explained how the woman had gotten the number.

“Sean? Is everything all right?”

He glanced at Elena. It took a moment or two for him to recognize her, but eventually her worried mahogany eyes got through to him. “My father is dead.”

As she gasped and put her hand on his arm, a booming voice barreled through the crowd at them. “Sean O’Banyon, as I live and breathe!”

Sean turned to see the owner of a shipping conglomerate lumbering over like a bear through the woods. The man was as ungainly as the mega-ton freight haulers he put out on the oceans and he had the mouth of a longshoreman. In typical Manhattan fashion, he was welcome here tonight only because he’d given five million dollars to the cause.

“I’ll handle him,” Elena whispered. “You, go now.”

Sean nodded and took off, heading for the back exit while trying to dodge all the people who wanted things from him. As he fought through the crowd, he felt as if he couldn’t breathe and a curious panic set in.

When he finally burst outside through a fire door, he had to lean down and put his hands on his knees. Drawing the sultry summer air down his throat and into his lungs only made the suffocation worse and he wrenched at his tie.

Dead. His father was dead.

He and his brothers were finally free.

Sean forced himself to stand up like a man and pushed a hand through his hair to try and clear his brain. Yeah…freedom had come with that phone call.

Hadn’t it?

Tilting his head back, he measured the lack of stars in the sky and thought about the inflection in the nurse’s words, the sadness and the regret.

How appropriate that the person mourning his father was a stranger.

God knew, his sons would never be able to.

Chapter Two

Lizzie hung up her cell phone and stared at the thing. Through the din of what sounded like a party, Mr. O’Banyon’s son had been totally detached, his voice giving away no emotion at all. Then again, she was a stranger and the news had not been good or expected. He was no doubt in shock.

She’d wanted to find out when and where the funeral would be held, but that hadn’t seemed like an appropriate thing to bring up. Worst came to worst she could always call him later.

An ambulance went by her, its lights flashing red and white, its siren letting out a single squawk as it left the Mass General complex and headed out onto Cambridge Avenue. The sight of it got her moving and she started for the parking garage. Part of her wanted to stay here and wait for the son to arrive, but it would take him hours to get into town. Plus it appeared that he was the type who’d rather deal with things on his own.

Besides, it was time to go to her second job.

Lizzie jogged across the road and took two flights of concrete stairs up to the second story of the garage. When she found her old Toyota Camry in the lines of cars, she unlocked it with a key as the remote no longer worked, and put Mr. O’Banyon’s things on the backseat. Getting behind the wheel, she figured she’d leave the bag by the upstairs apartment’s door for the son along with a note that if there was anything she could do to help she was always available.

The drive from Beacon Hill to Chinatown took her on a straight shot up Charles Street, then a jog around the Commons, followed by a scoot past Emerson College. Down farther, opposite one of the Big Dig’s gaping mouths, was Boston Medical Center. Affiliated with Boston University, BMC was a busy urban hospital and its emergency department saw a lot of action. Particularly, and tragically, of the gunshot and stabbing variety.

She’d been moonlighting in the ED three nights a week for the past year because, though she worked days at the health clinic in Roxbury, she needed the extra income. Her mother lived in an artist’s world of color and texture and not much reality, so Lizzie helped her out a lot, covering her expenses, paying bills, making sure she had enough money. To Alma Bond, the world was a place of beauty and magic; practical matters rarely permeated her fog of inspiration.

The extra income was also for Lizzie, however. Earlier in the year, she’d applied and been accepted into a master’s program for public health. Though she couldn’t afford to start this fall, her plan was to save up over the next few months and matriculate in the winter session.