His Son. Her Secret.

Chapter 10

“Oh my God… Stop moving… Why are you so fast?!”

From the living room, Belle’s voice floated in. “Everything okay in there?”

“No!” Beth shouted, irritated that they’d even ask. “Nothing is okay!”

Mal’s laughter followed.

By the time she was done with the task of dressing the little menace, Beth looked like she’d aged five years; on the contrary, the baby was clean, dry, and now staring up at her with wide, trusting eyes.

Beth felt her heart stutter. Then let out a shaky breath. “We did it.” It had almost been a disaster there for a second, but he hadn’t fallen, and she hadn’t lost her mind. The child blinked. Beth smiled. “Okay,” she said softly, brushing a curl away from his forehead, which bounced right back to brush the top of his left eyebrow. “Maybe we’re not a complete disaster.”

He must have agreed because he didn’t waste a second to stretch his hands out to her, clearly ready to get off the counter. She didn’t hesitate. As soon as she had him back in her arms, his chubby fingers curled around her shirt, and he lay his head against her chest.

Beth stilled. Something in her chest expanded and filled her with a feeling she didn’t want to label. She nearly choked on her next breath. “Yeah,” she murmured, clearing her throat. “I guess you’re stuck with me for now, huh?”

With the puke drama now out of the way, Beth returned to the living room, glad to see that someone had at least helped her mop the mess she’d left. She sat on the floor again, the baby propped between her legs, chewing on one of the soft toys she’d bought.

For a second, the apartment was calm with only the occasional tap of Belle’s fingers on the keyboard breaking the silence. So it took Beth a beat to realize that even that had stopped, and suddenly her senses told her something was wrong.

Looking up, Beth’s gaze fell on Belle, and she immediately saw her friend's wide eyes and stiff back.

“Belle, what’s wrong?”

Her voice seemed to snap Belle out of whatever had spooked her stiff. She blinked, and then Belle’s fingers flew across the keyboard, her expression shifting from shock to sharp in seconds.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I… found something.”

Right then, Avi and Mal appeared from the hallway like they’d been summoned. “Something like what?” Avi asked.

Apparently concluding that showing was better than telling, Belle turned the screen toward them.

“This,” she said.

There was a shake in the woman’s voice that had Beth leaning forward immediately to see what was going on. And what she saw stole the air from her lungs.

A picture filled the fourteen-inch screen. It was him, the baby seated between her legs, except in the picture, he was seated on a man’s lap, smiling at the camera. The picture was zoomed so the man carrying him was cut out, but there was no missing the protective hands holding the child or the matching dark suits they wore. A suit that looked absolutely adorable on the kid.

Beth’s eyes widened. Oh. My. God. Her gaze dropped to the bold print under the photograph, her gut twisting violently.

SON OF BLUE PETALS BILLIONAIRE, KALETH BURNS, kidn*pped FROM HIS FATHER’S HOUSE.

Beth’s jaw dropped. Oh, when she screwed up, she really went all out.

“Burns?” Avi’s eyes narrowed. “As in… Burns the big CEO with like a zillion dollars and a permanent scowl? That Burns?”

“Yes,” Belle said. “That Burns.”

Silence hit the room. Avi shot Beth a look she couldn’t meet. Okay, so she hadn’t just screwed up this time. No. This time it seemed she’d gone and poked the devil, and she was about to find out how hot hell could get.

After a long minute, Mal was the first to overcome the shock. She straightened slowly. “This has to be a bad joke.”

“I wish it were,” Belle answered in a solemn voice. Then, she half turned the laptop so she could see the screen, tapped a few keys, pulling up another article before she turned the screen back to face them fully. The article confirmed her words.

It read: SANTIAGO BURNS’S SON kidn*pped. Underneath was an image of the man standing at a podium in front of what appeared to be journalists.

Beth swallowed hard. Subconsciously, her free hand came up to her neck. She felt the frantic beat of her heart even as her stomach dipped and her vision grew hazy at the edges. Was it possible to pass out from shock? She didn’t want to find out. “That’s… Not great.”

“That’s not even the best part,” Belle added with false cheer, teeth gritted.

Beth grimaced. How much worse could this get? “There’s a best part?”

Her friend nodded with a scoff. “There’s a reward.”

Well, I’ll be damned. That got everyone’s attention.

Mal didn’t miss a beat. “How much?”

Belle grimaced at the clear tone of interest in the woman’s voice. She imagined Mal had already pulled up her mental calculator and was ready to hit the numbers. Nothing got Mal’s blood pumping like Money. Subconsciously, Beth’s fingers flexed, as though to assure herself that the child was still with her and no one had grabbed him from her.

Tapping her finger on the casing of her laptop, Belle’s lips pressed together for a beat. “Enough to fix our problems with a little extra to disappear after. Five million.”

Damn. A pregnant silence fell once more. Beth’s gaze dropped to the child. Kaleth. Kaleth Burns. Santiago Burns’s son, who would have thought? And who would have imagined the reward? Five million. She didn’t need to wonder what the others were thinking. She knew. This was their chance to make the money they should have made on the job before she’d gone and derailed the plan by playing savior. But… Were they really going to do this?

***

“Sooo…” Mal stretched the word, arms folded tightly across her chest, eyes glued to the laptop as though she could somehow materialize the money out of it if she stared hard enough. “We’re really going to act like that isn’t the best thing that’s happened to us in weeks?”

No one answered right away. Avi and Belle shared a look. Beth drew a deep breath. She was still seated on the floor with Kaleth, but the child was now peacefully sleeping across her lap, unaware of the chaos his identity had just caused.

Her teeth ached from how hard she clenched her jaw. “Don’t go down that road. It’s not happening,” she stated as calmly as she could.

Mal let out a short laugh. “Says who? Everyone is thinking about it.”

“That’s not what everyone’s thinking.” Even as she said it, Beth knew she was only lying to herself. “You are being…”

“Smart?” Mal cut in.

Beth’s head snapped up. Her nostrils flared. “More like cold. As usual.”

Mal didn’t even flinch.

Across the room, Avi stood by the window, still as stone. Watching. Beth could practically picture the wheels turning in the woman’s head. Calculating. That was the thing Avi and Mal had in common. So it was no surprise to hear the words that came out of her mouth when she finally spoke.

“She’s not wrong.”

Beth still shook her head. Disappointment clogged her throat. “Seriously?”

Avi shrugged; she must have been going for nonchalance, but Beth thought it looked stiff. “We walked away with nothing from the job. No watches. No cash.” Her gaze dropped to Beth’s lap. “Just him.”

Beth’s stomach twisted. “He has a name.”

Avi ignored that. “And now we find out he comes with a reward big enough to fix everything.”

“That money isn’t ours.”

Mal pushed off the chair she’d been leaning against. “It could be. We just have to play this right.”

“No.” Beth’s voice came out sharp. Immediate. “We are not claiming that money. It’s not like I just found him lost at the corner of the street… I took him.”

“We saved him,” Mal shot back.

Beth’s eyes widened. “Oh, it’s ‘We’ now, is it? What happened to this being all about me? My responsibility? My f**k up? Well, guess what? It’s my decision, and I say we are not taking advantage of Kaleth. Saving him doesn’t mean we get to sell him back like we’re doing his father a favor.”

Belle cleared her throat, cutting off Mal’s comeback. “Technically… Returning a kidn*pped child is doing his father a favor.”

Beth stared at her. “You can’t agree with them.”

“I’m just saying how it looks,” Belle said, wincing slightly. “Not how it feels.”

“That’s the problem,” Beth snapped. “It shouldn’t just be about how it looks.”

Right then, a small sound cut through the tension. Kaleth babbled something in his sleep, soft and happy, like none of this had anything to do with him. A beat passed as everyone just watched him.

Then Avi exhaled slowly. “We don’t have the luxury of feelings right now.”

Beth let out a dry chuckle. “Right. Because survival now means cashing in a kid we pulled out of a basement? Come on, Avi, are we just throwing away our moral compass at this point?”

“Our moral compass gave that boy a safe place to sleep for the past three nights,” Avi said, sharper now. “But we are still broke and have bills to pay. A life depends on it, or did you forget?”

How could she forget when she’d been reminded of it every day? Beth’s jaw tightened. She tried and failed to swallow down some of her anger. “No. I didn’t forget.”

Of course, Avi wasn’t fazed by her tone in the least. “So you know what we have to do.” She stepped closer like a predator smelling blood and going in for the kill.