The Billionaire's One-Night Secret

Handle It Yourself

I didn't tell my father. That was the whole plan.

I figured I had at least a couple more months before my body started making decisions for me, before I'd have to explain anything to anyone, and honestly, after the morning I'd had in Lawrence's office, I wasn't exactly rushing toward another conversation where a man in my life looked at me like a problem with a due date attached.

But Rosalie was a step ahead of me... She told him first.

I still don't know how she found out. Maybe she saw me at the doctor's office, maybe Camille let something slip to the wrong person at the wrong party, maybe Rosalie just had some kind of radar for exactly the worst possible moment to ruin my life. Either way, I got a call from my father's assistant on a Tuesday afternoon, polite and clipped, informing me that Mr. Westridge would like to see me at the house that evening. Not a request. An instruction, delivered through a third party, the way he'd been running my entire childhood.

I almost didn't go. I sat in my car outside my apartment for a solid twenty minutes trying to talk myself out of it, running through every version of the conversation in my head, none of which ended well. But some stubborn part of me still wanted to believe that maybe, this once, he'd surprise me. Maybe grief had cracked something open in him since the funeral. Maybe he'd hear about his grandchild and something ancient and human would kick in.

I should have trusted my first instinct and stayed in the car.

He was waiting in the study when I arrived, the same study where he'd told me to handle the funeral costs myself three months earlier. Rosalie was there too, arms crossed, standing near the window with an expression I could only describe as smug anticipation, like she'd bought tickets to a show and couldn't wait for the curtain to go up.

"Sit down," my father said, not looking up from whatever he was reading.

"I'll stand."

He finally looked at me then, and I watched his jaw tighten, the muscle jumping under his skin the way it did right before he was about to say something he'd clearly already rehearsed. "Rosalie tells me you're pregnant."

There was no point denying it. "Yes."

"And the father?"

I hesitated, and that hesitation apparently told him everything he needed to know, because his face twisted into something cold and disappointed before I'd said a single word.

"Some man you don't even know the name of," he said, and it wasn't a question, it was an accusation dressed up as a guess. "Rosalie mentioned there were rumors. Something about a mix up at a hotel."

Of course she knew the details. Of course she'd been collecting them like ammunition, waiting for exactly the right moment to hand them over.

"It's complicated," I said, which was the understatement of my entire year.

"Really, I don't think it's complicated." My father stood up now, and I could see it building in him, that particular kind of cold fury he specialized in, the kind that never raised its voice but somehow still filled a room. "It's humiliating. Do you understand what this does to this family's name? Westridge Holdings has spent forty years building a reputation, and you're about to hand the tabloids a scandal wrapped in a bow."

"I'm your daughter," I said, my voice cracking despite everything I did to keep it steady. "Not a headline."

"You're both, apparently."

I looked at Rosalie, hoping for one flicker of decency, one moment where even she might think this had gone too far. She just watched me with something almost gleeful in her eyes, like she'd been waiting years for a moment exactly like this one, a moment where I finally fell far enough that she could step over me on her way up.

"I've made a decision," my father said, and something in his tone told me I wasn't going to like it. "Rosalie will take over as heir to Westridge Holdings, effective immediately. She's shown far better judgment than you have."

I actually laughed, a short broken sound that surprised even me. "Better judgment. She's never run anything in her life."

"She's never embarrassed this family either."

"You're disowning me." I said it out loud because some part of me needed to hear the words to believe them, needed to make him say it clearly instead of letting him hide behind corporate language about judgment and reputation.

"It's my duty to protect this family," he said, which wasn't a no.

"Protect this family from what exactly? From a baby?"

"From scandal." He sat back down, already reaching for his papers again, already treating this like a meeting that had run slightly long. "You'll be removed from the will. Your access to company accounts will be closed by the end of the week. I'd suggest you figure out your next steps quickly."

Rosalie finally spoke, her voice syrupy sweet in a way that made my skin crawl. "I really am sorry it had to be this way, Violet."

She wasn't sorry. Not even a little. I could see it in the way her mouth twitched trying not to smile.

I stood there for a long moment, waiting for something, anything, some small c***k in my father's expression that might mean he still loved me somewhere underneath all this cold arithmetic he'd built his whole life around. It never came. He didn't look up again. He just kept reading whatever was on his desk, like I'd already left the room, like I was already a problem that had been filed away and closed.

So I left. What else was there to do.

I walked out of that house with nothing but my car keys, a baby growing inside me that its own father had already tried to pay away, and a family that had just made it very clear exactly how much I was worth to them, which was apparently nothing at all once I stopped being convenient.

I sat in my car outside the house for a long time after that, not crying, just sitting there in this strange, hollow quiet, running numbers in my head the way I always did when things got bad. How much money I had left. How long I could survive on it. Whether there was anyone left in this world who might actually help me instead of using me as a lesson in what happens when you disappoint people who never really loved you to begin with.

That's when I thought of my aunt Maria, my mother's sister, a woman I hadn't spoken to in years, a woman my mother always got quiet about whenever her name came up. I didn't even know if she'd answer the phone.

I called her anyway. I didn't have anyone else left to call.