Chapter 38 – Anna
THIRTY-EIGHT
ANNA
She told herself she was never going to tell him. She knew it was probably a lie.
“I’m pregnant,” I breathed out. “I took a test right after I missed my period. I’m really regular so…How about that, huh? First time I had unprotected sex and I’m knocked up. Those odds aren’t good.”
I waited for him to react, but he said nothing. Just stood there staring at me.
Finally, he blinked.
“Are you going to keep it?” he asked me.
I should just say no. Yes, it was Texas, but I had savings, thanks to E.G. Which meant I had options.
I wasn’t poor and homeless anymore. I had a car, if I needed to leave the state.
Of course, I’d tried to give him back the Volvo. After…it happened, I’d left the car in the parking lot in the office complex.
It was a company car. I no longer worked for his company. I’d parked it in his appointed space so there would be no mistaking my intent.
He’d had it returned to my apartment complex with the keys in it. It was either use it or let it get stolen. It wasn’t worth the effort of fighting him, so I kept it.
Yeah, I knew how high handed he could be.
I should tell him I already scheduled an appointment out of state.
A clean swift break.
But he was already broken and I couldn’t inflict another wound like that.
Not to mention, I couldn’t lie about something like that.
It was stupid, but I didn’t want the kid to think I’d ever considered an abortion.
Because I hadn’t.
I shrugged. “Never had a family, so this kid is it. Figured we’d stick it out together.”
At that, he pushed past me into the apartment, giving me no option other than to follow him back inside.
“Look, I’m sure you’re going to have a host of legal things for me to sign and stuff,” I said, following after him. “I’m not taking any money, which I’m sure is stupid considering you’re a billionaire, but I’m not letting you tie me up with a bunch of strings. I already talked to Tom…”
He shot me a look over his shoulder. “Tom Daniels knew about my child before I did?”
I rolled my eyes. Did he seriously think I was going to call him?
“Whatever,” he said, reading my expression and quickly getting over it. He was now moving towards my bedroom.
What the heck was he doing?
“I needed to understand my benefits,” I said, following him. “I’ve got six weeks paid maternity leave and I can take up to another six weeks in unpaid leave.”
He pulled something out of my closet and tossed it on the bed. I realized it was the duffel bag. The same one I’d packed that day in the motel room all those months ago. The one that had held all my worldly possessions.
All my worldly possessions and one other thing.
“Pack,” he said, pointing to the duffle bag. “Whatever you need to hold you over a few days. I’ll have someone come by and get the rest of your things.”
I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Hookay, so asking you on a scale of one to ten what kind of Neanderthal you’re going to be about this is probably pointless. We’re talking a solid one thousand?”
He whirled on me. “You’re carrying my child. You’re living in my house. You’re not working. You’re not taking paid leave. You’re the mother of a future billionaire. Act like it.”
“This blows.” Probably not something the mother of a future billionaire should say, but it was how I felt.
“Tough.”
“So, the plan is straight up kidnapping me? That is your actual plan?”
He blinked. “You’re not packing. Why are you not packing?”
“Because I’m not going anywhere, E.G,” I groaned. “Because I’m staying here. I’m going to work at my new job on Monday, and you need to deal with that. When you’ve had time to think about this, we can talk. Right now, you’re over-reacting.”
He shook his head and sighed. His hands running down his face and looking at the ceiling as if praying to a higher power.
After a beat, he pinned me with his laser green eyes.
“Flowers, you can’t win. You can’t even begin to fight me.
My resources are endless. You know this.
For the next nine months you’re living with me, in my house, until you have my child.
Then, and only then, will we have a conversation about our future. ”
Our future. There was a time when I might have felt differently about that statement. But he was right. Fighting E.G. was like battling the ocean, or the sky, or outer space.
There was one thing he needed to understand, though. One thing that was non-negotiable.
I felt it, an instinct I didn’t know I had inside me. It felt similar to the emotion I’d felt when I saw the pink lines on the pregnancy test, only sharper. Darker.
More dangerous.
I walked up to E.G., got in his face, gripped his chin in my hand and forced him to look at me.
“You try to take my child, you try to use your resources to separate me from my baby, and I’ll be gone. Into the wind. And you will never, never, find us. Are we clear about that?”
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, I saw only sincerity.
“I swear to you, Anna, I would never do that. I just have to…I have to protect you. I have to protect you both for as long as I can. I’m asking. No, I’m begging you to let me do that.”
It all came down to trust. If you asked me six weeks ago, did I trust E.G.?
Yes. He’d never lied to me. Never done anything that was inconsistent with what he’d said.
On this issue, we understood each other. I was sure of it.
“If you’re not going to let me work, what am I supposed to do for nine months?”
He smiled then. Like something suddenly occurred to him. A side benefit to my being pregnant.
“Lucky for you, I haven’t filled your position yet.”
Talk about walking back into the lion’s den.
Again, I walked through my options. There was nothing to be done today. Maybe I should have had a better plan waiting if he showed up at my door, but I honestly didn’t think he would.
I thought…I believed…it was over. I was ready to live my life without E.G. in it.
I looked at the duffel bag sitting on the bed and thought how fucking twisted this all was.
“You can wait in the living room,” I told him. “I don’t need you staring at me while I pack my underwear.”
“Fine. I need to make a call anyway.”
“Yeah, Ricky. Sorry to bug you last minute like this. I appreciate it. Fifteen minutes works fine. Thanks.”
The duffel bag tossed over my shoulder, I walked back into the living room. E.G. was standing there running his hand through his hair, his phone pressed to his ear.
On the phone with Ricky, apparently.
“Why do you need to call Ricky?” I asked him.
“I can’t…drive you. Not like this. Where is my cat?”
“Hiding under the bed. Apparently, you suck as a cat dad and he’s scared of you.”
It wasn’t true. Rocco was lounging on top of my laundry basket, which was his favorite place outside the bean bag chair, when he wasn’t draped all over me. But any chance I had to stab E.G., I was going to take it.
The amount of pain I wanted to inflict on him was no joke.
“All the cat stuff is in the front coat closet.” I said, dropping my duffel bag on the floor.
“That’s it?” he asked, looking at the bag. “Seems light.”
“It’s a few days’ worth, including some work clothes. I’m going to give Tom the respect of talking to him in person. And if I’m resigning-”
“You are.”
I glared at E.G. “If I am resigning, I’m giving at least a month’s notice. Things just started clicking in the office. We were starting to get into a rhythm and it’s unfair to disrupt that without some notice.”
“A rhythm, huh?”
“Yes,” I hissed, hearing the tone in E.G.’s voice. “Leaving him suddenly without coverage is not fair and I won’t do it. And if you say one word about me leaving you abruptly-”
“I won’t,” he said, quickly.
“Tom’s a good guy. He and I have an easy working relationship, without any of the freaking weirdness we had between us. It was delightful. I bought him a bagel on my third day and he was like, ‘Thanks, Anna, that was nice of you.’ It was crazy!”
“How very predictable,” E.G. muttered. “I’ll talk to Tom if you want. Explain everything.”
“No, you won’t. I’m an adult and I’ll handle my own shit,” I said. “Fuck. This is going to be so messed up.”
E.G. shoved his hands into his front pockets. “Ricky will be here in about ten minutes. Do you need me to get the cat in the carryon bag?”
“You didn’t drive here?”
I wondered if my leaving had spiked his anxiety, but it was one of the ten thousand things I told myself I couldn’t dwell on.
“I have to tell you something,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “It might help make sense of things. It might make everything worse because you’re about to see how deep and how far the crazy goes.”
“There’s more?” I asked him. His beloved wife was killed in a car accident while he was driving. How much worse could it-
“Allison was pregnant when we got into the car accident. No one knew but me and the doctor. Not our families. Not the media. No one.”
“E.G.” I whispered. “No.”
“My driving anxiety is about to get worse,” he admitted. “Everything is about to get worse.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. Then patted him on the shoulder. “This is going to be so messed up. Get Rocco’s toys,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll get the cat.”