Four Boys, Two Dorm Rooms, and a Name That Started as a Joke
Four scholarship boys at an elite prep school made a pact—and a joke—that turned into a prophecy. Susan Gable on the brotherhood at the heart of her Broke to Billionaires series, the found family that holds four love stories together.
MEET THE CHARACTERSBEHIND THE BOOK
Susan Gable
6/16/20264 min read
I've been telling you about individuals so far. Raya, who showed up first. Ellie, who stole the show. Rafe, who built an empire and almost lost what mattered in the process.
Now I want to tell you about the thing that holds this whole series together. Not a plot. Not a trope. A friendship.
A found family. A brotherhood.
Four scholarship boys at an elite New England prep school called Whitfield Academy. Outsiders in a world where legacy meant everything and money was the only language anyone spoke. They didn't belong there. Everyone knew it, including them.
They survived because they had each other.
That's it. That's the foundation of the entire Broke to Billionaires series. Everything else grows out of a dorm room that never quite fit them and four teenagers who decided that if the world wasn't going to let them in, they'd build their own doors.
The name started as a joke. A mockery of the silver-spoon world around them that liked to torment them. Broke to Billionaires. Four kids with nothing, laughing at the idea that they'd ever have everything. But jokes have a funny way of turning into blueprints, and somewhere along the way, the mockery became the mission.
For some of them, anyway. That's the thing that makes this series work (I hope). They all heard the same joke. They all made the same pact. And they all did something completely different with it.
Rafe built the empire. You know that already. He took the name literally and made it real.
Kieran is the charmer. Computer guy, tech money, fast and liquid, built on being the smartest person in every room and making sure you liked him while he proved it. He's the one everyone loves. He's also the one nobody actually knows (including me at this point, because he's not talking yet. He doesn't want me in his head. Sorry, Kieran, I'm coming for you!), which is a very specific kind of lonely that he covers with a smile so amazing you'd never think to look behind it.
Dom walked away from the money entirely. West Point. Military. Helicopters. He runs a search-and-rescue operation in Denver now. He borrowed from the other B2B boys to start it and paid them back ahead of schedule with interest, because that's who Dom is. He doesn't want the money. He's there because he chose to be. (He's getting money anyway, but that's a whole other story. Dom doesn't like to talk about that.)
Harlan is the smart one. An actual genius from a small town in West Virginia. An engineer's brain that thinks in structures and hands that build. He skipped grades in elementary school, which is how a kid from Appalachia ended up at a prep school in New England. He's also, quietly, the wealthiest of all four of them. He never mentions the money. That's not why he built anything. (But if a brother needs a helicopter? No worries. Harlan will cover you and never say a word about it.)
Four men. Four completely different relationships to wealth, to power, to the world that told them they didn't belong. And one bond that's held for twenty years because it was forged in the specific fire of being the kids who didn't have what everyone else around them was born with.
They went their separate ways for college, but the brotherhood bond held via video games and summer visits. They reunited after in Denver, the city chosen by Rafe, to build their dreams. (Except for Dom. As I said already, Dom went to West Point, so after graduation, he went where the Army sent him. Until he eventually ended up in Denver where the rest of the guys were.)
The seed for all of this came from real life. Someone I work with has a son who's a scholarship kid at one of those schools. And my writer brain did what it always does. Filed it away. Let it sit and stew. And a couple years later, it opened the file and said, "What if there were four of them? And what if they made a pact?"
I'm not going to lie to you. Writing the brotherhood is one of the best parts of this whole project. There's a scene in The Billionaire's Ninja Nanny where the other three of them show up at Rafe's kitchen table, unannounced, with a bottle of bourbon and the particular energy of men who've coordinated an intervention in a group chat. Dom walks in carrying the bottle. Kieran pulls out a chair with a look on his face that is not remotely charming. Harlan brings up the rear, says almost nothing, and his silence is louder than everyone else's words.
Writing that scene, I could hear all four of them. Talking over each other. Talking around the real subject. Saying the hard things the way men do when they love each other and don't have the vocabulary for it, so they show up with bourbon instead. (This is an actual scene in The Billionaire's Ninja Nanny, so if you want to see it…read the book!)
If you've ever had a friendship like that, the kind where someone shows up without being asked because they already know you need them, you understand what these four have. And if you haven't...well, maybe that's part of the fantasy. It should be. Chosen family is one of the most powerful things in fiction because it's one of the most powerful things in life.
This is a romance series. Every book has love at the center and a happily ever after at the end. But the B2B brotherhood is the spine. It's the thing that runs through all four books and connects them into something bigger than any single love story.
Rafe's book is first. Kieran's book is last (and if you think I'm going to tell you why, you haven't been paying attention). In between, Dom and Harlan get their turns. Each one gets the girl. Each one earns it. And the brotherhood holds.
I'm not done telling you about them. I'll have more to say as the series takes shape. But for now, I wanted you to meet them. Four boys in a dorm room, laughing at a joke that turned out to be a prophecy.
Broke to Billionaires. They meant it as mockery. They made it a promise.
