A Billionaire's Secret Baby - Chapter 24

“Ninety six,” I grunted. “Ninety seven. Ninety…eight!”

A hundred pull-ups. There are professional athletes who wake up and don’t have the energy to do a hundred pull-ups. But of course, it was not about energy. It was about motivation. And I was highly motivated during the three-hour workout I’d just subjected myself to, during which I’d already beaten all my personal bests and was about to beat another.

“Ninety-nine,” I cried, and then came the last one. Every muscle in my body was burning already, but I didn’t care. Anything not to think about what had happened since I’d got back to New York this morning.

I collapsed onto the floor, and lay flat on my back, almost weeping from the pain. When I got up, I could see myself in the mirror, angry, red-faced, and soaking with sweat. I warmed down for a while, and then hit the shower. But even a gentle comedown from the enormous levels of physical strain I’d been under wasn’t enough to stop my legs from turning to jelly.

The revelation that my father was alive had shocked me. But that he was the one who forged the birth certificate? I should have known. When the detective said it was impossible to forge my dead mom’s signature, I should have remembered that Max Lowe, the deadbeat to rival all other deadbeats, would know how. He’d forged a bunch of my mom’s stuff when we were kids—he even used to joke when I was little about how he could sign checks from her to the bank and they’d cash them.

“Not like you ever had a checkbook of your own, you bastard,” I muttered in the shower. But I really had thought my dad was dead somewhere. Seeing him again had made me feel…well. What had it made me feel?

Nothing much, I thought, as I sat in my bedroom, looking out across the skyline in a robe.

But I sure had felt something looking into Lola’s eyes that night on the shore by the lake. I knew that she was difficult, unpredictable. But now I no longer knew what to think. I’d been coming to think things about Lola that I’d never thought about anyone else—that she was kind, that she was dependable, reliable. I liked her—maybe more than liked her.

But seeing her standing next to Max had sent me crazy. It had showed me something I hated about myself. That deep down, I was vulnerable. And there were the two people left alive in the world to whom I was vulnerable.

My phone rang, and I looked across absentmindedly at it. I didn’t feel like taking any calls, not now…

But it was a blocked ID calling.

I stared at the phone for a moment. I hadn’t had a single moment of contact with Luca. He was wanted now in connection with the fire at The Blue Orchid, even if his testimony—that I was a fraudster—was still about to drag me to court. There was an APB on Luca, his bank accounts were canceled, and his passport had been frozen. Could it be…?

I picked up the phone, and answered it.

There was nothing for a moment, only some light static.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello, ‘Lex.”

It was Luca.

“This is a surprise,” I said. “I thought you’d be halfway across the world by now.”

“Couldn’t resist watching you go to jail, ‘Lex.”

I sighed. “I ran into someone the other day. My dad, as a matter of fact.”

“Your dad? What a nice surprise.”

“Well, hardly,” I drawled. “After all, Luca, he’d come to get a good look at me. After you blackmailed him into screwing me over.”

“I didn’t blackmail anyone,” said Luca quickly. Even though his Caller ID was blocked, he was taking care not to say too much that could be incriminating. “If I did employ your father for anything, I can promise you that the work was well-paid.”

“All I want to know is, how’d you figure out he could do it?”

“It’s amazing what you find looking through old records and documents. I knew I had something to use against you the minute I found a couple of your father’s old forgeries.”

“And what have you got now, Luca?” I said confidently. “Now that I’ve found out what you did and how you did it, and everyone’s closing in on you.”

“I’m so glad you asked, ‘Lex,” said Luca, and then in the background, I heard something.

It was just a muffled noise. But it sounded like a whine, a little cry. Immediately, I thought of Lola.

“What have you done?” I said, in amazement.

“I always wondered why you were so protective of Lola Ryder. And then I found her kid’s birth certificate. Like I said, it’s amazing what you can find. I bet the wedding was her idea. Hoping to reunite her baby with her baby-daddy, no doubt…”

“What have you done with her?” I bellowed. What was he even talking about? I was shaking. Lola’s little girl, the little girl with the blue eyes—

Wait. Blue eyes. I thought of my father.

Then I thought of Macy.

It can’t be.

“Give her back!” I said.

“I will. But I want something in return. Five million dollars, to be exact. In unmarked bills, in a suitcase. Call me when you get hold of it—shouldn’t be hard for a rich guy like you, huh? Catch you later, ‘Lex.”

“You’re a monster,” I said.

“Oh,” said Luca, “one more thing. I do hope you don’t manage to alert the police to what’s going on. Otherwise little Macy….well,” he sneered. “Otherwise your baby girl might not make it to seven. And how would Mrs. Lowe feel about that, huh?”

He put the phone down, and I stood there, feeling my whole world as it fell apart.

***

I didn’t have time to get a driver and I wouldn’t have gotten one if I did. I sped into Queens through the rain, which was heavy now, verging on a thunderstorm. When I got to Lola’s apartment, I sat in the driver’s seat, shaking with rage and something else. So this was fear, true fear. The fear of losing the things in the world which matter most to you.

I slipped inside through the open door and bolted up the stairs. But when I got there, I could see the door to Lola’s friend’s apartment was open.

I went inside, and what I saw made me feel sick. The upturned table, the crayons on the floor. Little pictures of a happy sun smiling down on a house. A drawing of a lady with red hair that said Mommy next to it in childish, curly handwriting.

Lola and Sara were on the sofa, shaking. From the looks of it, they’d only just got back. Another man was standing by the entrance. When he saw me come in, he fumbled with the shotgun in his hands.

“NO!” I said, raising my hands. “No, no, no. I’m a friend. I’m a friend of hers,” I said, pointing at Lola.

She looked up at me. But there was nothing there I could do, nothing I could say which was going to calm her down. All I could see in Lola’s eyes was a dark look of disappointment.

“I’m going to help,” I said. “Luca’s just called me. We’re going to get her back.”

I thought Lola would scream. That she would shout and call me a bastard, that she would tell me I was nothing but a no-good scumbag who didn’t deserve her. And she would have been right about all those things. But instead, she frightened me with how calm she was. How evenly her voice chimed in the room, while her hands and her shoulders shook.

“You’re not going to do anything,” Lola said. I looked at her, shocked by the quietness with which she spoke.

“What do you mean?” I said. “We’ve got to pay it if we want to get her back.”

“This is your fault,” said Lola. “And I don’t want you to do anything.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “We can go to O’Rourke. We can tell him everything, he can stop all of this.”

“No, Alex,” said Lola, and I could see the dark circles under her eyes, from the sleepless night I’d just inflicted on her.

“He says if we go to the cops, he’ll…” said Sara, before her voice was choked by more sobs.

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“You don’t trust me, right?” said Lola. “Never did. Well, here’s something I should have told you a long time ago, Alex. This is your fault.”

I felt like I’d been slapped.

“Lola,” I said, but I could hear myself tripping over my own words. “I know. I know Macy’s my…I mean, I know what happened.”

“If only it hadn’t happened,” she said.

“What?”

“I said,” said Lola, “if only it hadn’t happened. If only you hadn’t been the one I…then she’d be okay…” she trailed off into tears, and raised her hand to her mouth. The strongest woman I knew, and here she was, weakened at last by the loss of the person in the world who meant the most to her. Macy.

And who was I to stand here? In the room where Macy had been taken, and tell her she was wrong?

If I hadn’t left Lola last night, this wouldn’t have happened.

If I hadn’t taken her away from her daughter in the first place.

If I’d never met her at all. If I’d never wanted her. If I’d never put her in the position I had, where Luca blamed her and me for ruining him.

If I’d never decided to go through with that stupid wedding in the first place.

It was my fault that Macy was gone. Macy, my daughter. Macy, the girl whose identity Lola Ryder had kept from me for years.

Somewhere, in the buzzing stillness of the room, with Lola crying and seeing Sara and her uncle staring grimly at me, I remembered a voicemail I’d gotten a long time ago.

“Alex? It’s Lola. We met in Denpasar. I need your help. I don’t want anything from you, but please, get in touch with me.”

She’d needed me. And I’d let her down.

Who was I to stand here, like I could help anyone?

My own daughter was somewhere, distressed, helpless and small. And I couldn’t even take care of her mother.

I turned and left the apartment. I ran down the stairs, and as I did, I turned around and thought I saw something for a moment. A small boy, with dark hair and blue eyes, saying don’t go.

But I turned my back and left the building, walking into the rain.