Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 29807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 149(@200wpm)___ 119(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29807 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 149(@200wpm)___ 119(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
“I’m going to change. I’ll only be a minute,” I tell him before I dart into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me. Jonas must be crazy. I must be more crazy because I just left my son with him.
Though I know neither Gia nor Luca would have let Jonas hold Jax or walk me to my room unless they trusted him. I trust their judgment, which in turn tells me I can trust Jonas.
Yeah, I am definitely losing it. Wait. I’d almost forgotten that no one had introduced us. How the hell does he know my name?
Chapter 7
Jonas
I have a son. I have a son. I have a son.
The phrase swims through my head, drowning out every other thought, like why is my fiancée living on the Ward estate above their garage? Why is she pretending she doesn’t recognize me? But most of all, why the fuck has she kept my son from me?
This is the fruit of my damn loins. Despite my recent actions, I don’t consider myself a particularly violent person. I wasn’t the type to get into useless fights as a teenager and my weapons these days are my bank balance and connections. It’s easier and cleaner and more fulfilling to ruin someone’s life while sitting in my office on the fiftieth floor of a high rise in Hong Kong overlooking one of the busiest and richest harbors in the world than running around punching people in the nose.
Yet there’s a dark current snaking its way through my veins. He has eyes as blue as my own. The urge to punch a hole through the wall is nearly overwhelming. Darby hid from me for almost three years. That’s bad enough but she kept my kid from me? I never got to touch her belly and feel this boy’s first kick. I didn’t get to sit in the doctor’s office and hear the thwump thwump thwump of his heart. I didn’t get to see him being birthed, listen to his first cry, see him take his first steps.
I was robbed of this and it makes me want to bend metal. I get my phone out.
“I want the plane to be ready in twenty minutes,” I instruct the pilot. “Add two passengers to the manifest: Darby Harris and Jax…” I pause. I bet that woman didn’t put my name on the birth certificate. “Harris,” I spit out. The first thing that is happening is I’m changing his name. This is my kid. He has Darby’s oval shaped face and her dark brown hair, but his eyes, his smile, his nose—it’s all me. I don’t need a paternity test. My DNA is all over his face.
My eyes shoot to the closed bedroom door. Darby’s been quiet in there for far too long. I hoist Jax a little higher and stomp over to the door. “Let’s go,” I order.
No child of mine is living over a garage. There’s a slight shuffling noise and then a tentative, “Go where?”
“Home.”
“This is home.”
I glance around the space. It has a small but clean kitchen that flows into a living room with a brown leather sectional. Between the two sits a table with a highchair pushed up close. There are three doors down this short hallway which I presume leads to a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms but the whole place could fit into my penthouse living room. “Not much of a home.” Not good enough for my son, that’s for damn sure. ”Where’s the car seat?”
I’m taking my son home whether Darby agrees to it or not.
The door jerks open and my fiancée appears with her hands on her hips and a suspicious look pasted across her face. “Why do you want to know where the car seat is?”
“Because you’re leaving, or I should say Jax is leaving and if you want to continue seeing him, you‘ll come, too.”
“You can’t keep me from my son!” She tries to reach for Jax but I’m far taller than her and quicker.
“Why not? That’s what you did to me. You’ve kept my son from me.” I head for the door. She lives over a garage, which means somewhere there’s a car with a car seat.
“I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know,” she wails and the cry sounds genuine enough that I hesitate but reason kicks me in the gut. How can she not have known? Had she been fucking another man? My gut tightens at the thought. My Darby with someone else? The concept doesn’t compute. She’s mine. She’d been mine since the moment I laid eyes on her. No other man should have laid a hand on her. I blow out an angry breath and try to corral my temper. Jax is curled up in my arms with his little nose burrowed into my neck. I’m not going to ruin this moment so I keep walking.