Page 36 of Billionaire In Vegas

“Come on and I’ll show you.”

We walked in and I felt a little weirded out. The building was eerily quiet.

“Um... you aren’t planning to kill me. Are you?”

“I don’t think so. Should I be?”

“Haha. Not funny.”

He pushed through a pair of double doors and then I saw a sign that said Ophelia’s Angels. Before I could ask about it, I noticed what was going on in front of me.

The building was packed from front to back with boxes, boxes I quickly realized were full of food.

Workers were sorting food. Packers were packaging boxes. Others were shouting orders. It was a busy, well-oiled machine.

“What’s Ophelia’s Angels? Some sort of packaging firm?”

“Something like that. We collect donations from around the city, clothes, food, etcetera, and ship them out to seniors in the community.”

“We?”

“Yes, Ophelia’s Angels is—”

“Named after your mother. This is your organization?”

Jude nodded. “Yeah, I started it when she first started getting sick.”

“Did she know about it?”

He shook his head. “She passed away so quickly, we were still getting off the ground when she died.”

I found myself taking his hand. “I’m sure she would have been proud of you.”

He nodded. “So now you know my secret, tell me about your family.”

I dropped his hand and moved away. “You already know I was raised by my aunt.”

“What happened to your parents?”

I sighed, knowing that I couldn’t continue dodging his questions. “I never knew my mother. I was raised by my father, but I don’t remember him either because he died when I wasn’t even one.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“It’s okay. I had a great childhood. My aunt treated me like a daughter and my cousin Leslie was a blast. My aunt was very loving. It’s just that I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks per se. I was bused into the richer neighborhoods for school and the kids there never let me forget that I was the poor kid, only there because of a scholarship. They made it clear that I didn’t fit in there.”

“Rich kids are the worst. You weren’t missing much.”

I guffawed. “Says a rich kid.”

He held up his hands. “Actually, my dad disowned me years ago.”

“What? You’re kidding.”

He shook his head. “I wish I were. But he cut me off when I was twenty.”

“So how are you funding this operation?”

“Mom left me some property and I saved some money from when I played pro-ball, but I wanted to expand outside of the city to other states, even internationally eventually. Right now, I don’t have the funds to make that happen, but one day...”