A Very Bad Billionaire (BWWM Contemporary Romance Novel) (12 page)

“Good for you. That had to be a hard decision to make.”

“Not as hard as having to deal with her after I told her it wasn’t happening. She went crazy. She flew off the deep end and started calling me every name in the book. She told me that I ruined her life and she was going to make me pay. Eventually, I was able to calm her down. She said she was sorry and that she was just ashamed that she was pregnant before getting married. I offered to marry her, but she refused. She said it wouldn’t matter because she was already pregnant. Although she didn’t want to get married, she did ask if she could stay with me until we could figure out what to do. Of course, I agreed.”

As I continued to tell the story, I couldn’t help but get a little catch in my throat. I’m not a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. I try to show as little emotion as possible, but that’s almost impossible to do when it comes to this part of my past. Natalia could sense it as well and reached over, placing her hand on top of mine. It always amazes me how the smallest thing like the touch of a hand can bring a person so much comfort.

“When it came time for her to have the baby, she disappeared again. I called hospital after hospital and none of them had her registered. Eventually, I got a phone call from a hospital in Pennsylvania telling me that I had to come and sign the birth certificate. At the time, I had no idea what she was doing in Pennsylvania but I would later find out that she had met a man on the Internet and fell madly in love with him. Anyway, she wanted nothing to do with the baby and basically told me that I could either take care of him myself or we could put him up for adoption. I didn’t have the time nor the means to properly care for a baby, especially by myself, but I knew giving him up for adoption wasn’t an option either. So I did the one thing she didn’t want me to do. I called her parents, told them what was going on and asked them for help.”

“Oh my God. What did they say? Were they willing to help?”

“Well,” I said as I looked across the table. “I believe you’ve already met Frank and Eva Ryan. They are Andy’s grandparents.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Natalia

The story that Kaiden was telling me sounded like something I would watch on one of my soap operas or something. He had me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what was going to happen next. I could also see that telling the story was extremely hard for him. It was nice to see that there was a soft, caring man underneath the rough exterior that he allows everyone else to see. I felt like I was getting to see something in him that very few people would ever see in their lifetime.

“So this is your daughter we’re talking about?” I asked Frank and Eva.

“Yes, we are Andy’s biological grandparents. We make sure he is well taken care of for Kaiden.”

“But you didn’t know your daughter was pregnant? How did you not know?”

“She stopped coming around altogether. It was really strange because she always came home to see us anytime she had the chance but while she was pregnant, we didn’t see her at all. Needless to say, it came as quite a shock to get Kaiden’s phone call letting us know that we were grandparents,” Frank said.

All I could do was look at him in disbelief. I couldn’t imagine finding out I was a grandparent before I even knew my daughter was pregnant. I would have felt like I got cheated out of the whole pregnancy experience. I shook my head as I turned my attention back to Kaiden.

“I decided to take the baby. I knew there was no way I was ready to take care of the baby on my own. I wasn’t prepared to take that on. I asked Frank and Eva if they would be willing to help me out with Andy. I figured that my ex was going through postpartum depression or something and would come around once she started missing her son. Unfortunately, that never happened. Eventually, she came back to New York but she was a different person. She didn’t want anything to do with the baby and hasn’t even tried to see him to this day. She went about her life as if nothing had ever happened. She acted like the child never existed. In fact, she spent most of her time parading this foreign guy around town. She had started dating him and decided she wanted to show him off as a way to mock me or try to make me jealous. I’m not really sure what her end goal was, but it didn’t work.”

“No offense,” I said to Frank and Eva, “but she sounds like a horrible person.”

“None taken,” Eva replied.

“What was her name?” I asked, not really sure why I wanted to know.

“Her name is Anna.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Kaiden

As soon as I uttered the name Anna, I looked up to see what kind of reaction Natalia would give. Once she heard the name, her jaw dropped and her eyes widened. She knew exactly who I was talking about. Looking over at Frank and Eva, I could see that they noticed her expression as well.

“Eva, Frank and I have been taking care of Andy ever since he was born,” I continued. “I get out here every chance that I get. There are many days when people think I’m at business meetings or doing other things for work when, in reality, I am here spending time with my son.”

“Why not tell everyone the truth? You seem to be a great father,” Natalia asked.

“I try to be the best father I can be. I really do. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as simply telling everyone that I have a son that I am solely responsible for. The three of us sat down when we brought Andy home and decided the best thing for everyone involved would be to not tell anyone about him, at least not until it’s the right time.”

“I don’t understand. You don’t appear to be ashamed of him. Why not let everyone know about him? Is it because you’re afraid you’ll lose your edge as a businessman?”

“No, it’s nothing like that at all. I’m very proud of my son and I’d love nothing more than to show him off to everyone. Unfortunately, it would lead to a huge scandal and I need to make sure my son is protected from that. He’s too young to understand any of it.”

“I see. I still don’t get it, but he’s your son so that’s your decision. What do your parents think about you being a father? Do they ever come out here and spend time with him?”

“Are you kidding me? My parents are near the top of the list of people I have no intention of telling any time soon. I mean, you met them tonight. You’ve seen what kind of person my mother is. My father is the same way behind closed doors. He likes to put up a front when he’s around other people, but the two of them are exactly the same. They’ve been strict my entire life and they’d never let me hear the end of it. I’ve always said that if I had children, I’d have to think long and hard about either of them being allowed in their lives. They are psychopaths and sociopaths, but they put up a good front.”

What Natalia didn’t know was that Frank and Eva didn’t know about a lot of things their daughter had done to me. As far as they knew, she had the baby, showed her new boyfriend off for a while and then disappeared into obscurity somewhere. That part of the story was true for a while but had changed over the past year. I knew that they struggled daily with the fact that their daughter suddenly decided that she didn’t want anything to do with her family. The last thing I wanted to do was make their lives harder by telling them how evil their daughter had become. With Natalia there, however, I knew that it was about to come out. She had no clue what they knew and what they didn’t. To her, she assumed they knew the whole story.

“So this Anna. Is she the same Anna involved with the blackmailing stuff? The guy that you caught in that alley said he was hired by a woman named Anna.”

Frank and Eva looked at me with concern on their faces.

“Blackmailing?” Eva asked. “Kaiden, what is she talking about?”

Natalia looked down at the ground, putting together the fact that she probably shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t blame her for asking the question. I probably would have done the same thing. I was just happy she didn’t mention the sex club. That would have brought on a whole host of questions that I didn’t have any desire to answer. Still, since she had brought up the blackmailing situation, I felt the only fair thing to do was to be honest and tell everyone what had been going on.

“The truth of the matter is that Anna has never completely disappeared from my life. She’s been trying to get money out of me for a long time now. At first, I would give it to her and then she’d disappear for a while. When she needed money again, she would appear out of nowhere. Eventually, I told her enough was enough. If she had stuck around and had custody of our son, I would have no problem giving her money to help support him. Since she basically abandoned him, however, I told her that I was no longer going to be treated as a bank by her.”

“We had no idea, Kaiden,” Frank told me, appearing ashamed of the things his daughter had done.

“I know you didn’t Frank. Please don’t think I blame you for anything. You guys have been amazing to me and my son. Anyway, when I told her I would no longer be giving her money, she was pissed. She called me over and over for a few weeks yelling and screaming into the phone constantly. If I didn’t answer, I would get a bunch of long, angry messages on my voice mail. She made threats, telling me she was going to ruin me. Her threats escalated day by day as she promised that she wouldn’t rest until I was penniless and living on the street. Then, as quickly as the calls began, it was all over. She stopped calling and I didn’t hear from her again. I figured she realized she wasn’t going to get what she wanted and went away. I had forgotten all about it until what happened earlier this week.”

“What happened? What did she do?” Eva questioned.

“I don’t want to go into too much detail because it’s pretty embarrassing. Let’s just say that I was doing some things that some of the people I do business with probably wouldn’t like. It’s nothing illegal or anything like, but it may bring into question my moral aptitude, which both of you know is ridiculous. Anna had someone following me and snapping pictures any chance they could. The photos, of course, could be painted in a number of different ways when I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong. The other day, I got an envelope full of pictures delivered to my front door. I was stunned to see them as they are very private in nature. There was a note along with them promising me that my public image would be destroyed if I didn’t give in to their demands, but it didn’t actually say what the demands were. The note was also not signed so I didn’t have any clue where it had come from at the time.”

“Is there a chance it may not be Anna then?” Frank inquired, a slight bit of hope coming through in his voice.

“Unfortunately, no. Natalia and I went to where the photographs were taken and we were able to track down the person taking the photos. We actually caught him in the act of taking more pictures while we were there. When the man saw that he was busted, he took off running and I had to give chase. He almost got away, but I was able to chase him down outside the building. He didn’t want to give me any information, but he knew he wasn’t getting away without telling me. He finally told me he didn’t know the woman personally and all he knew about her was the fact that her name was Anna.”

“I’m so sorry Kaiden,” Eva said as she began to cry. “I don’t know where we went wrong with her. We tried to raise her right. We attempted to give her all the tools she needed to be successful in life. We used to be so close. She used to come visit all the time and now we never hear from her. I don’t know what happened. I’m so embarrassed that she’s doing all of this to you.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Eva. You’re not responsible for any of this. She’s a big girl who is capable of making her own decisions. It’s not your fault that the decisions she’s choosing to make are poor. I’m going to get all of this sorted out. I just have to figure out where she is so I can confront her. Once I find her, I promise you both that I will put a stop to this behavior once and for all.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Natalia

When we left Manhattan to go to Bear Mountain, I had no idea what the night was going to bring. I didn’t think I was going to find out that Kaiden had a son that nobody knew about and I certainly didn’t plan on experiencing so many emotions in the matter of a couple of hours. I had run the gamut of feelings over the course of the evening. I was anxious on the way to the house, confused when we got there, amazed when I saw his son, relieved when I heard he was going to put an end to Anna’s bullshit and happy that he chose to share all of it with me.

It was close to midnight when we left the house and made our way back to Manhattan. There wasn’t a lot of conversation on the way back to his house. The time was used more for reflection. Kaiden reached out to hold my hand as soon as we got into the back of the car and he didn’t let it go until we got back to his place.

Never before had I felt so connected to someone. That connection was something that had been missing from all of my previous relationships, I just didn’t know it. It’s hard to know that an emotion is missing when you had no clue it existed in the first place.