The Tycoon's Secret Affair (The Anetakis Tycoons #3)(40)

He picked up the envelope again, smiling as he turned it over. He only hesitated a moment before tearing it open and unfolding the letter within.

He scanned the contents, the perfunctory remarks thanking him for his business, and finally he got to the bottom where the results were posted.

And he froze.

He read it again, sure that he’d missed something. But no, there it was in black and white.

He wasn’t the father.

Icy rage flooded his veins, burning, billowing until he thought he would explode. Again. It had happened again, only this time it was different. So very different.

What had she hoped to accomplish? Would she, like Joanna, wait for him to form an attachment to the child before leaving? Use the child as a bargaining tool?

Was Kirk the father or was he yet another man she dangled from her fingertips like a windup toy?

Older and wiser? He wanted to puke at his stupidity. In his arrogance, he’d imagined that he’d never be deceived as he’d been in the past, but what had he done to prevent it?

He looked down at the offending document again. His hands were shaking too much to keep it still. Damn her. Damn her to hell.

She’d wormed her way into his life, into his family’s lives. His sisters-in-law loved her, and his brothers had accepted her. Because of him. Because he’d brought her into their unsuspecting midst.

Never had he felt so sick. He wished he’d never opened the damn thing.

What a fool he’d been. What a fool he’d always be. All this time wasted on building a relationship that was based on lies and treachery. He’d bought the house of her dreams, done everything in his power to make her happy.

And worse, he’d bought into the fantasy as well. He’d begun to believe that they could be a family. That he’d been gifted another chance at a wife and child. That he’d finally been given hope.

He stared bleakly at the paper in his hand. The worst part was he had to have played right into her hands by offering her a settlement regardless of her child’s paternity. She won either way. And him? He’d lost everything.

Jewel clutched the printouts to her chest and hurried to Piers’s office. She knew it would hurt him to find out Eric’s fate and that Joanna had abandoned him two years ago, but the most important thing was getting Eric out of his current situation.

Nausea rose in her throat at the thought of the young boy in so many foster homes. Had he harbored the same hopes she had when she was a little girl, only to be disappointed over and over?

She didn’t knock but burst through the door, breathless from her pace. She stopped abruptly when she saw Piers sitting at his desk, a document crumpled in his hand, his expression so horrible that she nearly forgot why she’d come.

“Piers?”

He turned his cold gaze to her, and she shivered as a chill washed up her spine.

She took a step forward. “Is everything all right?”

He rose slowly with calculated precision. “Tell me, Jewel. How did you think you would get away with it? Or did you just want to prolong the truth until you had me completely wrapped around your finger?”

Her heart sank. How had he found out about Eric? Why was he so angry?

“I was on my way to tell you now. I thought you’d want to know.”

He laughed but the sound was anything but joyous. It skittered abrasively over her skin, and she shrank away from his obvious anger. Rage. That was the word for it. He vibrated with it.

“Oh yes, Jewel. I wanted to know. Preferably when this whole charade began. Did you enjoy hearing me spill my guts about Joanna and the deception she perpetrated? Did it give you satisfaction to know that yours was even more sound?”

She shook her head in confusion. What was he talking about?

“I don’t understand. Why are you so angry? And at me? I didn’t do this, Piers.”

He gaped incredulously at her. “You didn’t lie to me? You didn’t try to foist another man’s child off on me? You amaze me, Jewel. How you manage to sound the victim. The only victim here is me and the poor child you’re pregnant with.”

Hurt crashed over her, making her fold inward in a familiar defense mechanism she’d perfected over the years.

“You hate me,” she whispered.

“Are you suggesting that I could love someone like you?” he sneered.

He thrust the paper forward. “Here is the truth, Jewel. The truth you never saw fit to give me. The truth I deserved.”

She took the paper with a shaking hand, tears obscuring her vision. It took her three times to make sense of the words and when she realized what it said, she went surprisingly numb.

“This is wrong,” she said in a low voice.

Piers snorted. “You’d still keep up the pretense? It’s over, Jewel. These tests don’t lie. It states with absolute certainty that there is no chance I could be the father of your child.”

She stared up at him, tears trickling down her cheeks. He was cold. So cold. Hard. And unforgiving.

“You’ve waited for me to fall,” she choked out. “You’ve been waiting for this since the day I called you. It’s the only outcome that was acceptable to you. You weren’t going to be satisfied until you proved I was no better than Joanna.”

“You have quite a flair for dramatics.”

She scrubbed angrily at her tears, furious that she’d allowed him to make her cry. “The results are wrong, Piers. This is your child. She is your child.”