His Secret Child Read online

  His Secret Child

  By

  Jordan Silver

  Copyright©2014 Alison Jordan

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  The day started like any other. I had a full plate as usual, just the way I like it. I was in the middle of putting the final touches on a very lucrative deal and finding more ways to keep my company doing as well as it has been.

  I’d sunk my whole life into the business lately, and now it looked like it was paying off. Not just financially, that had always been there, but I was leaving my footprint in the business world in a big way with even more to come.

  This was to be the day. In a few hours, I’ll sign on the dotted line and broker the biggest deal the state has ever seen.

  How was I to know that my life would be changed forever in a whole other way, before its end? That my past would come back in a way that no one could ever have imagined, least of all me, and take me in a whole other direction.

  I answered my ringing phone just as I hit the doors to my office. I knew from the annoying ringtone that the caller had programmed into my phone, exactly who was on the other end.

  “Camille, what is it?”

  “Must you be so short?” I didn’t bother to answer her, since I didn’t have the time it would take to quell this particular argument.

  “I have a very busy day ahead of me here, you’re gonna have to catch me later this evening.” I hung up the phone and nodded hello to my assistant before making my way into my office.

  This deal I was working could mean keeping my family’s company in the black for the foreseeable future. Something I was very interested in, especially in these trying times.

  In the last five years, I’d buried myself in my work. Neglecting everything else, including at times and even more so here lately, the woman who’d just called.

  I’d made my own mark, instead of sailing on my father’s coattails. It was something to be proud of, not to mention work had kept me sane at a low point in my life.

  Odd, I never thought of those times, not usually anyway, and not in a long time. But here lately, they’ve been rearing their unwelcome, ugly heads.

  It could be because of the fact that this deal was the high point of my life; my psyche was probably just making the comparison.

  Whatever the reason, I didn’t like the reminders one bit and wish there was a way to erase the memories entirely. I hate that they still had the power to affect me. Though no one would ever know.

  I had thought throwing myself into work the way I had would help do that, would keep me so occupied that I wouldn’t have a spare moment to think, and it did to a point, until I was alone with my thoughts, or at night when I was alone in bed.

  I thought for sure after the first year that I would be over it, but maybe it was because of the way things had transpired. The end with no chance for goodbye, I don’t know.

  Sometimes I think that death would’ve been easier. At least then I would know what was going on. The way things ended though, there were nothing but questions with no way of finding the answers.

  I’d done everything I could to erase the memories. I needed to, to survive. But in the end it looks like they won, why else would they be back now, at a time when my life was finally turning a corner?

  One good thing came of the whole fucked up mess though. I’d learnt that I had a weakness and went about fixing that shit. No way was I ever going to let this shit happen to me again.

  I’d ruthlessly pushed all of it to the side and shut it away for good. I had a new outlook on life. I played by new rules.

  Then I’d fallen into...something with Camille out of necessity, I guess. I’m still a man after all, though that trifling bitch had all but unmanned me. But that hadn’t worked either, because she’d gone and got her emotions involved and now here we are.

  Camille and I were at that cross roads where we were either going to get married or call it quits. I was straddling the line for the wrong fucking reasons and I knew it, but I was fucked enough that I really didn’t care too much. Or so I’d thought, until memories started plaguing me again.

  It had been five years, though I couldn’t tell you where they all went. Five long fucking years that seems to have drifted away into smoke.

  Camille and I weren’t a match made in heaven or anything that trite, far from it. We just happened to fall together because of circumstances and the fact that our parents belonged to the same country club.

  It sounds cold and impersonal, and so it is. I hadn’t cared so much about that in the past, because I didn’t care period.

  But here lately, I’ve been feeling restless. I know she and my mom were expecting a ring, and I had thought that I just might go ahead and do it; but now I’m not so sure.

  Something was niggling at me here lately. Something that kept playing at the edges of my mind before drifting away, eluding me, like a childhood game of hide and go seek.

  I put that and Camille out of my mind without too much effort though and tried to clear my head for the coming day. Now was not the time to unravel, right on the cusp of making the biggest deal of my life.

  I got ready for my upcoming meeting, going over the stats and running the numbers again. This government contract to build engines for the army was a long time coming.

  My great grandfather had started this company back in the early nineteen hundreds. We’d built plastics back then and had even been called on during the first and second world wars to help out our country in its time of need.

  That’s where most of the wealth started, and it has only grown since then. But this latest contract was my baby and will see us set for life; and although I was pretty sure I had it in the bag, I couldn’t afford to miss any steps. So no more fucked up trips down memory lane.

  My desk phone went off and I answered it absently. “Yes Janet?” I placed the report I’d been reading to the side as I listened to her.

  “There’s a young lady here to see you sir.”

  “Does she have an appointment?”

  “No sir, you’re clear for the morning and early afternoon, but…”

  “Well then tell her to come back some other time, and Janet, no more interruptions.”

  “Yes sir.”

  I went back to my reading until it was time to go to my meeting, never once giving the interruption or its cause a second thought. As expected, these men went over everything with a fine toothcomb.

  All our inspections had passed with flying colors though, so I had no worries. I just needed them to sign this shit and be done so I could move on to the next chapter.

  That’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple years. Just moving from one deal to the next with barely any down time in between.

  Too much free time on my hands gave me too much thinking time and that was the last thing I wanted, especially now when it seems my mind was set on fucking with me with this shit.

  It took a few hours, but in the end I got what I wanted and walked away even richer than I had already been. Not that I was hurting for money, it was ridiculous how much wealth my family controlled. Not just money, but land and holdings all over the world. />
  We are what some call the premier family in these parts, a fact that my mother reveled in. She had married into the family but her own hadn’t been too shabby either.

  Let’s just say both families had enough wealth between them to buy half the world and there was still more to be made.

  I come from one of those families that wealth and prestige is in the blood and in the very air we breathe.

  The thing about that though is that after a while, things start to become a little mundane and almost inbred.

  We only married people like us, or that’s what my mother is always saying. Thinking of that brought my mind back to a time that I’d much sooner forget. What the fuck?

  I’d been given every opportunity in life, attended the best schools and drove the best cars. And yet none of that had protected me from the most basic failings of man.

  I won’t call it what it was, what it had been. Pure fucking heartbreak! I won’t own that weakness. I’d never give that bitch the satisfaction; but in my innermost parts, there was no escaping the truth.

  What the fuck is really going on here anyway? Why do I keep thinking about that and...her? I brushed it off again, the unwanted memories, as I made my way through the streets back to my office.

  It wasn’t as easy as it had been just a few weeks ago, smothering the memories. Some fuck was going on there for sure. I just had no idea what the fuck that could be.

  I do know that in the last week I’ve woken up with my dick hard for a woman I hadn’t seen in six years and had no hopes of ever seeing again.

  Maybe it was because of that that I thought I saw her as I drove onto the street outside my office building, but that couldn’t be. She wouldn’t dare show her fucking face around here ever again. Not unless she had a fucking death wish.

  I fought back the quick spurt of feeling that clenched my heart at the thought of seeing her. Even now, after all this time, I still responded, what a fucking idiot.

  Thankfully, whatever I saw, was there one minute and gone the next, but that niggling feeling still lingered.

  That hold I was afraid, will last a lifetime. I’m by no means a gullible man, and even in my younger days when we’d met, I wouldn’t have said I was weak; but she’d come damn close to bringing me to my fucking knees.

  Bah, enough of this shit, since when had I become maudlin, like a fucking old woman? There was no point in thinking about such things. I refuse to put myself through that shit again.

  I preferred to focus all my energies on the business these days, ever since dad had had a stroke on the golf course I have been at the reins. A little earlier than I’d expected, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I was born to this after all.

  And as with most fucked up situations in life, it had come at that low point, so my success will ever be tainted with that fuckery, because had she not crushed me, I wouldn’t have given it my all as I had. No, I was too busy being sucked into her.

  I slammed out of my car in the private garage under my family’s office building, thoroughly disgusted with myself. I should be celebrating my latest triumph, instead I find myself embroiled in my own personal hell.

  ***

  There was someone sitting in my outer office whom I ignored as I went towards my inner sanctum.

  Janet jumped up from behind her desk with a list of missed calls and other detritus that I wasn’t much interested in at the moment. “Thanks Janet.” I took the notes from her and kept it moving.

  We have all the modern amenities as was to be expected with a company this size, but I still preferred handwritten notes, you never know when the lights might go off.

  “Oh and sir, that young lady is back, she’s been back every hour on the hour in fact. She says it’s very important that she speaks with you and she won’t go away until she does.”

  “She’s not one of those environmentalist activist types is she? I would think after the last time they’d learned their lesson.”

  I hate having to play the heavy with people who were only looking out for their best interest. But half the time they didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about, and I was never in the mood to teach them shit.

  “Uh I don’t think so sir, I get the feeling that this one may be personal.”

  Personal? Hah, that’s a laugh; I haven’t had anything ‘personal’ going in a long time. Not unless you count the lukewarm relationship I had with Camille. “Fine, send her in.”

  I was barely seated before she came in the room. She was dressed in an old ratty coat, and had the ugliest wool cap in creation, pulled down to her eyes, while they in turn were covered with cheap plastic sunglasses.

  Though she was relatively unrecognizable in that get-up, something about her struck me as familiar. The hairs on my arms stood on end and my body did something it hadn’t done in almost six years.

  “Who are you?” I almost wanted it to be her. I felt my body tense as if to spring. “Take off those glasses.” I held my breath and waited while she reached up slowly, as I made my way around the desk so that I was now standing in front of her.

  I had to get close for this, had to be sure that it wasn’t my imagination. It wouldn’t be the first time; I’d imagined her too many times over the years before I finally exorcised her from my mind and heart.

  My hand came up and went across her face before she was even finished removing them. The loud sound of the slap reverberated around the room. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  I actually lost my sight for a few seconds, and the pressure in my head did not bode well for her. Such a strong reaction to someone I was sure that I was long over.

  “Please Cord, you’ve got to listen to me, please.” I refused to look at her, reused to give in to the fucking longing to look at her one more time.

  “I don’t have to do shit, now get out of here before I do worst to you, and don’t come back.”

  She reached out for my arm but I brushed her off and stepped away. “Don’t you fucking do it.” Now I did look at her, and the look I gave her had her retreating a few steps for preservation.

  She cried as she reached into the old bag she carried and pulled out something. It looked like a picture of some sort that she then tried passing off to me, but I ignored that as well.

  She dropped it on the desk and turned to leave. At the door she stopped and uttered two words that said so much and yet said nothing at all. Not after all this time.

  “I’m sorry.” She left without another word and I was finally able to breathe again. I looked around me as if coming out of a trance or something and asked myself just why the fuck she still had this hold on me.

  I told myself to ignore the picture and her, to forget that she ever came here, that I’d ever clapped eyes on her again after having abolished her to the outer regions of my existence.

  I slammed my office door and paced to the bank of windows and back. Why was she here? Why the fuck now when I had just started to get my life together?

  After the number she’d done on me, I had been damn near broken. I could understand if she’d said goodbye, at least given me a reason for wanting to go, but to sneak off in the middle of the night with not a word, and to stay gone for so long? It was obvious my mother had been right about her all along.

  She’d been after my money, and when no engagement ring was on the horizon, she cut her losses. But more fool she, the day she left was the day I had planned to propose.

  Every time I think that that’s the cause though, something inside me rebels, and I guess that’s my reason for unrest. Why I was never able to put the whole thing behind me, no matter how hard I tried. The girl I had given my heart to was never after anything but me.

  What the fuck did she want with me now? Hadn’t she done enough, had she come back here to finish me off?

  My mind vacillated from one thing to the next. There had to be a reason that she was here now, and I knew enough to know that it wasn’t going to simply be because she’d decided that she missed me after all this
time.

  But did I even want to know? I was honest enough to admit that a part of me will always want her, that if given half a chance I will have her stripped and under my cock as fast as she could fucking blink. Fucking asshole.

  I looked at the picture that was left lying face down on my desk, wanting to ignore, but strangely compelled to take a look.

  Even as I reached for it I knew that whatever this was it was going to have some kind of an impact on me.

  I turned it over not knowing what to expect either way. It took me a second to figure out what I was looking at before I was heading for the door at a run.

  “Janet, did she leave an address or anything with you?” I looked around for her in the outer office but of course she was gone. My heart was pounding in a way that it hadn’t in quite some time.

  I felt a touch of excitement course through me at what this could possibly mean. “No sir, but I did notice that she was carrying a suitcase so that means she’s from out of town. I would start at the local motels around here first if you have a name.”

  “No, I’ll do it myself.” I turned back to my office and sat down hard, all thoughts of the day’s deal gone from my head, as I pondered this new development and what it could mean.

  I ran my finger gently over the image in the photo and felt a stirring in my heart, as well as a budding anger. “That bitch.” I flew out of my chair and was on the move before I remembered that I didn’t know where she was.

  I couldn’t get my fingers to work or my mind either it seemed. Everything moved in slow motion as if there was a thick invisible fog surrounding me, making my limbs weak.

  I didn’t allow myself the time to dwell on all the implications, first things first. She had proven herself to be a fickle bitch, who knows what would happen if I didn’t catch her now.

  I couldn’t take that chance, couldn’t risk it. I calmed myself enough to remember what the damn phone was for and put it to good use.

  My heart was in my throat with every false start. Each time I heard we don’t have anyone registered by that name, a part of me that had only just been opened, bled a little.