Billionaire Baby Daddies: A five-book anthology by Connelly Clare

Author:Connelly, Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-23T16:00:00+00:00

Nine

MARCO WAS STILL AS a rock, except for his eyes, which moved to Will of their own accord. His own surprise was mirrored there. “You never mentioned that,” he said quietly.

Grace nodded. “I know. I don’t talk about my childhood.”

It was a hint most people would have heeded. But not Marco. Marco needed answers. “You were adopted?”

Grace had moved away from all of this. She’d left her past way behind her. The day she’d married Steve, she’d become Chicago royalty. Someone beautiful and rich and respectable. By mutual agreement, they’d buried her past, hidden the truth of her upbringing.

“Yes.” A closed answer. One that didn’t invite further questions. Old habits died very hard.

“Where did you live?”

She compressed her lips and turned to face Marco. “Does it matter?”

“Where did you live?”

“Excuse me,” Will stood, reaching for the empty take-away containers and stacking them together. His departure was an obvious response to the tense line of questions Marco wouldn’t let drop.

“Where did you live?”

“Look,” Grace sighed, sitting back in her chair but averting her gaze. It was easier to speak when she wasn’t looking into his eyes. “My past is … my past.”

“Tell me.”

It was the pleading tone of his question that did it. If he’d simply demanded, in his dictatorial fashion, she might have resisted. But the softness of his question broke through her barriers and she nodded jerkily, with no idea where to start.

“I was born in Florida,” she said softly and then, the truth of her parentage sat around her neck like an albatross.

Trusting this man with it was terrifying, and yet she found herself speaking almost against her will.

“My dad … my dad was,” she sat back deeper into her chair and drew her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. “He was a drug king pin,” she said finally. Her words were hollow, without emotion. “And by all reports, a horrible, violent, cruel man. He used to pimp my mom out. And then one day he killed her… and then he disappeared.” She swallowed, refusing to look at Marco. “A neighbor found me after three days. I wasn’t even four years old. Walking around this enormous mansion we had on the Glades.” She flicked her eyes to him but looked away when she saw the strength of emotion in them.

“I don’t remember, of course. But I’ve heard the details often enough.”

“Heard from whom?” The question was hoarse.

“I was put into a sort of witness protection for orphans. My dad was a felon. Wanted for murder. Obviously there were concerns about what he might do to me, given his history.” Her voice cracked. “When I was eight, he turned up dead. So I was released from the program but by then,” she shrugged. “No one wanted to adopt a kid like me. So I was fostered out.”

He nodded slowly, trying to reconcile this new information with the picture he had of Grace. She didn’t notice; the story was unfolding inside of her, finding release in the silence of his response.

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