Page 83 of The Mysterious Billionaire
“What do you mean, behind everything?”
“The baby’s mine.” My voice is flat.
Marcus’s eyebrows slowly rise. “What?” He looks startled. “But… it’s only been a few days. How can she know she’s pregnant already?”
“It didn’t happen at Blackridge.”
“I don’t… then when…”
“The night of the ball…” I gesture at my shirt buttons. When I turned up late to the meeting with Wren, Marcus was already there talking to her, and he spotted that I’d done my buttons up wrong. He guessed the reason why and thought it was funny.
Now, he just stares at me. “Maddie was your mystery girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know it was her?”
I shake my head. “She wore a mask. And a wig. I didn’t realize who she was until the board meeting.”
“More importantly… did she know it was you at the ball?”
I hesitate. “She said she didn’t.”
“Oh fuck. Caesar…”
“She swore she wasn’t sent to seduce me,” I say fiercely.
He’s quiet for a moment. Then he says, “Do you believe her?”
“I did. I don’t now.”
We sit and study each other for a while. I can see him thinking it all through, puzzling over the details.
“You fucking idiot,” he says eventually. “Why didn’t you use a condom?”
“I did! It must have broken.”
“Seriously?” He frowns. “Wasn’t she seeing Peter Yates?”
“She broke up with him the night before the ball.”
“So… couldn’t the baby be his?”
“I assumed it was. But she said she hadn’t slept with him for weeks. She’s had a dating scan. She’s ten weeks pregnant. The dates line up with the ball. Even so, I told her I want a DNA test.”
“What did she say?”
I scratch at a mark on the coffee cup. “She refused to have anything invasive, which is fair enough.”
“It can be done via a blood test.”
“I told her that. But if I demand one, it means I don’t trust her.”
“You don’t trust her, though. Do you?”
I don’t reply and instead massage the bridge of my nose.
“Bro, this isn’t like you,” he says softly. “You’re the least irrational guy I know. I can count the number of times you’ve been angry in front of people on the fingers of one hand. What’s really going on?”
