Billionaire's Hidden Heir

CHAPTER2

"How could you do this to me, you liar!" Adrian yelled in the office, having rushed through the door without knocking.

Feeling her heart race in her chest, Tess stuttered in her chair. She had barely recuperated from their last meeting with him, and here he was again, barging into her world as she very well remembered.

Feeling ashamed, she got up and raged, "I beg your pardon? Who the hell do you think you are?"

Bristling with rage, Adrian strode over to her. "Who is the boy? Tess, Who is he?"

She could sense the tension in her stomach but stood her ground. “You don’t get to know.”

He had slammed his hands onto her desk, which made her jump at the loud jingling noise. "It is my business. This boy is my spitting image.”

Gritting her teeth, for it was about vengeance instead of anger, she managed, "You are not even his father. You don’t know anything about him."

At first, his eyes narrowed at her, and that was when she felt the shiver. Surprised, Tess sat quietly while staring coldly. Wrath did not at all involve words. It was as though he was scrutinizing her, wondering how many other such outbursts were likely to go uninterrupted.

He said these words in an uncomfortably silent fog that ice cold glistened inside her. “Tess,” you’re not that naïve, are you? You think I would not figure out this little concealment after everything?”

She wasn’t moving. Still, his words were heavy on her chest.

“Because I told you there is nothing in there which has to be kept hidden.” He also straightened his back. “Do you think I won’t recognize my own blood? ‘Do you think I won’t be able to sense that?’. Her heart ceased to beat. He was closing in dangerously. Trying to escape the trap laid upstairs, she thought it best to end the conversation with him then.

But he didn’t give out. “You had no right,” Adrian wasn’t screaming this time but it was evident in his eyes that all the pain and rage was barely withheld. “If he is such a child and is in my possession, no one has the right to keep him from me.”

Tess faced him, unable to explain to herself how come she stood like that. There were a lot of reasons why she hid Leo or every reason in her head of why it was the right thing to do. Step by step she paled and froze. Adrian is looking at her, it’s impossible to lie to him anymore. Now that any one of Adrian’s delusional eyes is a few inches away and wants the truth, and watching her normal defenses erode.

No, not at all. “I had my reasons,” she said gently, after turning her back to him.

“Who said it is you who will dictate my options?” he answered in a fuming tone. “You don’t get to say whether or not I’m part of his life in any capacity.”

She spun back in fury. “You can’t just come out of nowhere and play the role of a father, Adrian! You weren’t there!”

There was a clouding of his forehead. “Because you didn’t tell me.”

Tess’s fingers began to tremble. It was as if her entire being was some deadweight that drowned deeper into the marsh. This wasn’t the script he was supposed to follow. Everything was under control, and any potential crisis was painstakingly planned out. But not anymore. Everything was coming apart at the seams.

Adrian advanced toward her. “You owe me the truth, Tess. Is he my son?”

Her throat ached. The atmosphere was overlaid with lead. She was capable of more than bellowing, why did she wish everyone to leave him? She couldn’t utter these words.

This time, she faced away, and fisted the edge of her desk until the skin of her knuckles turned white. “I don’t owe you in any way,” she bit out, gritting her teeth to hide how emotional she really felt.

Adrian grunted, and released his breath more in rage than any other emotion. “You owe me an explanation.”

His attitude irritated her. But she still did not care to look at him. Neither of them. Not with the fear of seeing what she knew he would understand. Shame. Grief. Anger. And even worse, the reason why she had swallowed it for so long.

“I have shifted from there,” she said, rather cutting off Adrian in his rattle, her voice quivering. “So do you.”

Adrian depressed those lips, shaking his frustration out inside him. “I am as I am, Tess. I am not going anywhere. And that is the last consideration. Do you think that you can move away from me as you did before? Not this time.”

She said nothing. She had nothing to say. The reality was too acute and she did not think that it would be appropriate for her to say anything to such an extent, that she knew she would shatter like glass. She was not prepared for such a circumstance. Not yet.

But, Adrian wasn’t finished. He took a step closer, lowering the volume but retaining the intensity. "This is not over, Tess. You know that I am not like this.”

It was only now that she turned to face him, something strange and painful swelling up in her chest. "And you, Adrian, know how stubborn I am. Well, at least not anymore.”

There was a palpable silence between them that spoke of a war in which each had waged a grudge against the other and would not give in to defeat. There was an electric charge in the atmosphere, which spoke more of what had not been spoken for years.

For a second, everything seemed stifling and tempers threatened to boil over. Instead, however, Adrian moved back, his features becoming ugly. "Okay. But do not think that this is over."

Even before Tess could answer him, he swiveled around and stormed out, leaving Tess standing dazed, her pulse still throbbing and thoughts scattered.

She eased herself in the chair effectively removing all the tension in her neck, bringing her hands to her face. She had no idea how long this fight would last. Such was not Adrian. To walk away is hardly likely to be his kind of soldier. And with each step he took closer to the line, each chapter she kicked back and fought.

The very truth that might tear it all down.

That night, Tess was in bed looking at the ceiling. Leo slept in the next room, completely unaware of the turmoil that was building in her life. Over the years she got used to keeping him safe, creating a life for them both. But now there was Adrian, bursting through the door like a bloody whirlwind Ready to bring down everything she gated up.

The phone on the nightstand buzzed, and it brought Tess to reality from her contemplating thoughts. She reached over feeling lazy as if someone would be sending an email in the middle of the night but instead saw another message from the unnamed number.

“Meet me tomorrow. 9 am. Café Verona. You need to know what’s coming”

Her Heart skipped a beat. Who is this? And what do they know?

Horrible thoughts began bursting in her head night and day. Adrian was already bad enough, but this… this was something else. No, she needed to be the one acting, it didn’t matter what it was.

The following day as the sun came up, she was at Café Verona at a few minutes to nine and all her nerve endings were on full alert. She roamed the room looking for anyone suspicious, but there was nobody. Getting coffee, she took a place near the window fidgeting with her ankle beneath the table.

Time went on, and she did not receive those who wanted to see her. Checking the time on her cellphone, she verified that the appointment details were correct. Everything seemed correct.

Just as she was about to give up, a man slid safely into the seat across from her. Tess blinked and recognized him at once. It was the same gentleman from yesterday. The gentleman who had hurled a photograph of Leo on her work desk before.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, her tone low and contemptuous.

The man appeared to be perfectly relaxed, his back protruding against the chair. “Let’s just say I have reasons to be rather interested in Adrian Black’s undoing.”

Tess made a frown as though trying to understand what he meant. “What do you expect from me?”

He nodded towards her lips and smirked. “Oh no, this is not about what I want. No. It is what you have to know.”

Her heartbeat increased. “And what is that?”

The man tended towards her as he continued in a tone barely above a whisper. “It is not just you that Adrian is after. There are greater forces at work in this game, Tess. People who will not think twice about wiping out everything you treasure.”

Some of Tess’s unanswered questions began to bug her, and adrenaline rushed into her body. “What are you saying?”

The man’s eyes shone with an expression that Tess had never seen anywhere else, she couldn’t shake the creeping sense of peril it carried with it: “Adrian’s empire is plunging to its doom. The funny thing is, he does not yet know it. But the vultures are already circling. And if you do not remove yourself from his domain of business, they will go after you as well.”

Tess froze and felt cold shudders run down her body. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you are clever,” the man said matter of factly. “Clever enough to detach before you become an involuntary casualty.”

Tess brought her fists together under the table. “I’m not Blank out.”

The man’s smile was perhaps one of satisfaction, indicating perhaps that he had anticipated her reply. “All right.”

"You only have to note how it may all be reluctantly resolved… you could have easily lied low."

He got up from his seat and right after that slid a small envelope towards her, which she pretty accurately interpreted to be hers. ‘That’s for you. Read it thoroughly.’

Without saying anything further he turned and walked off and never came back into the building, getting lost outside within the masses.

Tess was gaping at the envelope as her palms were sweating. After a few anxious moments, she stretched her hand out but touched the coarse paper around the envelope instead. Her curiosityless head felt doom whenever this thing was revealed, but it was obvious it was massive.

Her heart pounded as she opened it and pulled out a single photograph. It was grainy, clearly taken from a distance, but the image was unmistakable.

It was a picture of her and Leo, standing outside their house. And next to them... was a shadowy figure.

Then there was a man whom she didn’t know and he was in the picture.

She reverently turned the photo around from the picture side and went pale after reading what was written on the reverse.

‘We are watching.’

Tess instinctively made a sound, her pupils dilated due to shock. Whoever it is, they figure, it’s not only Adrian that they want, it’s Tess and Leo that they want too.