BILF - Boss I Like to F**k (A Billionaire Romance)

CHAPTER THREE - You’re not your dad

Ashiya

I stopped from getting more spring rolls and gave Damon a bewildered look. He used to joke a lot. I was expecting that there would be a smile on his face and then tell me that he was just jesting. He just kept a straight face as he shoved fried rice into his mouth. 

As time passed, his expression remained just as serious as a heart attack. I realized that he meant it - he didn’t want to have a family, much less a child. 

Asking Damon if he wants to have a family or his own children one day is something I never considered doing. We just enjoyed our time together, and I never thought about where it would lead.  But to hear it from someone with whom I had a year-long intimate relationship, felt like a gunshot to my heart.

I forced a smile and talked to him in a light tone. “Why? You are successful and you are generous to everyone.” He was fair to his workers and even provided daycare for those who had no one to take care of their kids while working, especially to struggling single parents. “And you are nice to kids. Imagine how you would be if you have your own wife and kids. I...I am sure you will be great.”

He tapped the chopstick on his plate, he wore a look of total disdain on his face.  “My dad was a cheating husband who had an affair with their maid, forced her actually, then had me. I  have bad blood, Ashiya. I don’t want to pass that bad trait to my kids.”

I touched his hand to console me. “You’re not your dad. You’re respectful even during your womanizing days and you are nice to other kids.”

He flinched, causing him to dislodge my hand. “Nah! Too much responsibility.” He extended his arms sideways to encompass his whole office. “This empire is my baby.”

His company was precious to him because he had to start from scratch. He was a construction working even when he was underage because he couldn’t rely much on his sick mother to send him to school.  His father didn’t want to recognize him.  He was able to get a scholarship when he won a design competition while in college and he became an apprentice to an international architect. Later on, he was sent to Dubai and was encouraged by his mentor to build his own small company with some of his friends from the university who were well-off. They invested in his company and he started to buy more companies that were down. Damon was not only focused on design and construction but on the business side as well. He became the face of his company and was able to charm investors and clients. He worked hard and played hard. 

“You don’t want a child?” I asked to confirm. 

He nodded in confirmation. “Yup! I never had a good influence.”

“What if you got a woman pregnant?”

"Been there, done that. They were fake."

Women claiming to be pregnant with his child was nothing new. He had to deal with false claims even before I became his assistant. But a man can't be fooled because he had an investment with a DNA center or genome clinic. The chances of faulty results were very slim.

"I mean, your real child this time.”

“Well, I will give them a lot of money and tell them to have a good life without me. I will tell the mother not to tell me that I am the father of her child and get a good man. I never had a serious relationship, you know that. I can’t be a good father and spend a lifetime with a woman I barely knew.”

Bitter bile swelled on my throat and I had to swallow it. So, he really wanted to stay as a billionaire bachelor. Here I was, thinking we had something special. We had been together for a year. Perhaps that was the reason why he was dismayed when I said I wanted to have a family. Why? Did he expect that I would remain as his f**k buddy until it suited him?

I forced myself to breathe even if my chest was painful. “W-What if it is me?”

His forehead scrunched and looked at her suspiciously. “You? You are on a pill, right? And I always use protection.”

“Well, pill and other protection are not one hundred percent fool-proof.”

Sure, we always used protection except for last month ago when we to stay in Amanpulo Island during the weekend and Damon decided to have a f***k fest with me. He said he must make the most out of our time together because we were too busy with work and he would leave for Los Angeles for a couple of weeks.  He took me like a ferocious animal to the point that I lost my voice screaming his name. The con.dom broke and we were in a remote area where there was no morning-after pill.

I didn’t want to mention that because his expression was already grave and dark as if Doomsday was about to come. 

“Are you pregnant?” he asked slowly.

“No,” I denied right away and shook my head. I drank water because, at the back of my head, the broken condom incident was still nagging at me.  “It was a hypothetical question. So, if I got pregnant, w-will you also slap me with money and ask us to go away?”

That was a harsh question but I was too emotional to care. Will he shun me away and our child? It was a scary thought that someone with whom I shared intimacies for more than a year decided that not share the responsibility and love of a child. 

She had met cold people in her life and experienced some cruelties as well. But Damon was taking it on a different level. 

“You are not pregnant so why ask me that question?” His chopstick landing on the plate with a loud "thunk" illustrates his unwavering stance on the matter.

“You started it.” My voice raised. “It was just a question. Why are you mad at me?”

His lips pressed in a thin line and his fork with a clenched fist. As if he was just reigning in his temper. “Let’s not discuss it. It is ruining my appetite.”

I was not able to reply because the tension hung in the air. How could a simple conversation end up like this? We were happy and we missed seeing each other. We even made love not an hour ago, for Pete’s sake. 

In the end, I had to put down my pride. We can’t argue with just a silly incident when he was tired and lacked sleep. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It was not my place to ask or force you to change your mind.”

“Just eat. This is the last time that I want to hear about this from you.

Whenever I argued with Damon, he was the first one to apologize even if I was the one who was wrong. He would rather apologize and lose the argument than make me mad. But now, not only did I was the one who apologized but he preferred that the subject would not be mentioned again in the future. As his lover, I felt like he shut me down on such an important issue.

Was having a baby really that distasteful for him? Would he really treat me and our hypothetical child like trash and he would go his own merry way when the time comes? 

Had it been another time, I wouldn't really care if the father was dead weight and didn't want to be a part of my kid’s life. I was able to take care of my sister when my father was too busy gambling and I was even younger then. How much more now that I am an achiever and can hold things on my own? I could raise my own child.

But this was Damon, the man whom I had been with for a year. The man who crept inside my heart. But his revelation and outburst really didn’t sit well with me. 

We continued to eat in silence and we were not able to recover from the mood. A while ago, we made love and they were one. Now, we are facing each other yet there was an ocean between us.

I tried to tell myself not to take it seriously. Maybe he was tired from the trip and the topic didn’t seem right. He was not in the mood so he easily got irritated. 

I didn’t know how to lighten the mood. It was Damon who was usually funny and sweet. How do I bridge the gap this time?

The knock on the door broke the stillness in the room.  It was followed by the voice of a woman. “Damon, are you in?”

“I’m not,” Damon answered and cracked a smile. 

The door opened without warning and a woman around Damon’s age with a sheepish smile entered the room. “Hello there,” she closed the door with a click, “jet setting d.ick. I learned from the reception that you are here.”

She was the main architect of the Philippine branch of Savas Builders and had been a good friend of Damon -Kalisha Robredo. 

She was 5’2” in height and had an hourglass-shaped body. She preferred her auburn hair in a layered bob. She was into semi-casual ruffle white shirts and paired them with beige flared pants. Her peach pointed heels with thin heels gave her an extra height.

She gave the impression of being strict to me and to her colleagues. She was holding her iPad close to her chest and she looked like she was ready to discuss business even if it was not on the schedule. 

“What a way to greet your boss, bi---” I cleared my throat as a warning. Damon was still rough around the edges sometimes. I told him that it was not respectful of him to call a woman a b***h even if it was a close friend. Thankfully, he listened to me. “Kalisha, join us for breakfast.”