Page 55 of Violent Little Thing

“This child is around four and a half,” Apollo said. “Would put her being pregnant right around the time that you went to jail.”

Court covered his face with his hands and pressed his fingers into his eyeballs.

“That would explain why she stopped coming around,” Court mused. “At one point, Missy and Zee were on my side. Then did a complete one-eighty. There one second, gone the next. They never were very vocal about agreeing with Seth’s vendetta against me, but they didn’t exactly help me, either.”

“Kid’s medical bills are in the millions,” Apollo sounded distant. “He has a private nurse. A private doctor. A private estate. Almost as if he’s being hidden from the public.”

“Seth was obsessed with genetics,” Court grumbled. “Freaked the fuck out when he found out that Lauri and I were pregnant with our first. Urged Lauri to go get tested. We refused, because it wouldn’t matter if the kid had any issues or not. We would’ve happily raised the child, healthy or not. But Seth raised such a big stink that Lauri eventually caved.”

“Well,” Apollo drawled. “That’s because the man has two hundred and eighteen kids.”

Silence. “What?”

“He used to sell his sperm.” Apollo sounded amused. “In college, before he was a billionaire. He sold his sperm to get by. As of what I’ve been able to find using those genetic sites everyone loves, there are two hundred and eighteen hits on the website linking all these children together. And these are the ones that have uploaded their own DNA to the website. There could be more.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “He was probably scared you were siblings.”

Court’s lips twitched. “I’m originally from Greece. I was adopted by my parents at the age of two. Seth had nothing to worry about, being best friends with my parents for as long as they had. He knew that there was no way that we could be related.”

“About that…”

I paused and looked at the phone. “If you tell me that Lauri and Court were related…”

“Not related, no,” Apollo mused. “But it does show that you were adopted…by your mother. Your father is your biological father.”

Fifteen

Barbie sure has a lot of nice things for a woman whose knees don’t bend.

—Charleigh’s secret thoughts

Charleigh

The day had only degraded from there.

Having too much information about his life in a too small amount of time, Court had shut down.

Understandably so.

Court had growled that he was ‘done with today’ and had left before he could grab his phone or anything.

I’d caught up his phone, shut down his office, and had done everything that I needed to do for the rest of the day before leaving myself.

My first stop for the day was my mother’s, because I needed to talk to her about moving in for a bit while I found somewhere to stay.

I found her on her front porch smoking.

“Mama,” I said as I leaned in and hugged her tight. “I thought you quit.”

“I did,” she sighed. “It’s just been a stressful day.”

I leaned my hip against the deteriorating porch railing. “What else happened?”

“She asked me to stay at work, and I refused.” Dad came out onto the porch and wrapped me up in a bear hug. “How’s my girl doing?”

I gave him a quick rundown about my day.

“I can’t believe you’re working with that girl.” Dad shook his head. “I’m surprised I haven’t had to bail you out of jail yet.”