Billionaire On Fire: The Complete Series (A Bad Boy Alpha Billionaire Romance) (55 page)

I covered my whole face with a pillow and
tried to let this sink in. I had to think straight here. There was no way
Zayden would ever find out about this connection, was there? Unless I told him,
of course. And while a voice in my head was egging at me to do so, I did feel
that it was not necessary for him to know everything about my family history.

However, I knew what the right thing to do
was and it was to tell him. If he ever found out any other way and knew that I
had known all along, it would be much harder for him to forgive me.

Would he really take it so badly? After
all, I had no idea my dad was responsible for such a big loss to him and if I
came clean and told him as much, he was bound to believe me. What my dad did
was not my fault and I knew Zayden, he was better than to hold it against me.
After everything we had been through together, he wasn’t going to use a fact
from a distant past as a weapon against a relationship we had worked so hard to
build.

“Honey, are you okay?” my mom asked,
sitting on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. Perhaps tonight wasn’t the best
time to tell you about this. I was just so shocked when you told me who he
really was. At first I was just mad that you were selling yourself to your
boss, but then when you told me how you felt, I just could not bear the guilt.”

“It’s okay, mom,” I said sitting up. “It’s
all okay. I am glad you told me because I am going to go out there and tell him
all of this myself. That’s the only way to have a healthy relationship.”

My mom’s eyes were still teary, but she
extended the palm of her hands to my face and rubbed my cheek. “You’ll do the
right thing, Aria,” she said endearingly. “You always do.”

Chapter
5

Zayden

At first I wasn’t too concerned by what
they were talking about. Some mother-daughter quips about dating the boss, I
supposed, which seemed like a legitimate thing for a mother to worry about.
Especially considering the fact that she knew I was making a financial
investment in this relationship, it was only natural for her to feel concerned
for her daughter. Therefore, I did not press too hard in my attempts to listen
in on the talks.

But as their voices started getting
louder, something caught my attention. They were speaking of South National
Bank – which could very well mean they were discussing Aria’s job – but then I
heard something about five hundred thousand dollars and that piqued my
curiosity, so I leaned closer to the door of the room.

When I finally heard what was going on, a
rush of annoyance spread through my whole body as I remembered the very case
they were now discussing. A couple of years ago a man named Mike Roberts –
Roberts, of course! Why hadn’t I tried to make the connection sooner? It was a
fairly common last name, so I couldn’t exactly blame myself here.

He had owed the bank a lot of money when
he declared bankruptcy, resulting in a huge loss for us! At the time the bank
was not doing as splendidly as it was now and those five hundred thousand
dollars that he owed us had caused us considerable difficulties in making some
investments. We got out of that tight spot easy enough and now in the grand
scheme of things that amount seemed rather too small to worry about.

But I could not shake off the feeling that
I was currently spending tens of thousands of dollars to help out the very same
family that had already cost me quite a lot. I didn’t want to be irked by it,
but when Aria and her mother reappeared from the room I felt another flash of
annoyance and decided that before I did something I would regret I needed to
get out of there.

“I’m sorry for taking so much of Aria’s
time.” Molly smiled at me politely. “But dinner can resume now. Would you like
another glass of—”

“Actually,” I said, looking at my watch as
though it would indicate some sort of honesty in my story. “I have to get
going. Unfortunately, something has come up at the bank and I need to rush
right away.”

“But Zayden,” Aria started protesting,
looking rather disappointed. “What could have possibly come up at this hour?
Surely you could postpone it until the morning without any consequences?”

“And lose more money? No thank you, I
think I better get ahead,” I snapped and regretted immediately as I watched
Aria’s face fall.

“Did you hear us talking?” Aria asked
beginning to tear up.

“I really have to go, Aria,” I said,
trying to sound slightly kinder. “Ned will come pick you up after he drops me
off at the bank. It won’t be very long.”

“That’s not necessary,” she said, still
looking sad. “I can manage on my own.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Aria.” I frowned.
“It’s too late at night for you to be…whatever… Ned will be here and he will
take you home safely and I really, really have to go. Thanks a lot for dinner,
Molly,” I said, trying to be polite despite the circumstances. “See you, Aria.”

I turned around and walked out without
thinking twice. Had I not gotten out of there, I would have suffocated with the
knowledge. To Aria’s defense, it did sound like she planned on telling me
everything, so she had no poor intention. Yet, it hardly changed the facts.
Whether or not Aria had been directly involved in the situation, what had
happened had happened.

---

The next day, I sat in my office playing
with my stress ball, still unable to shake off the feelings of betrayal from
everything I had heard the past day. No matter what way I looked at it, I
couldn’t help but feel like this family had scammed me. I knew that Aria didn’t
know of her dad’s connection to the bank and how he had caused me such a loss
before signing the contract. However, the fact remained that the Roberts owed
me a lot and instead of me getting paid back, I was spending even more on their
behalf. Did intentions even matter in situations such as these? I thought not,
as I bitterly thought back yet again to the conversation I had overheard.

I thought of Aria and how much I cared
about her. It was true. I cared for her almost more than was acceptable, which
is why I hated feeling like she was some kind of a manipulative scammer. She
wasn’t and I knew that, but I still could not shake off this feeling. I
wondered, had she known about her dad and my bank beforehand, would it have
changed how receptive she was to the contract? Would she have still agreed to
take so much money from me?

She had been desperate in the situation.
There was no doubt about that. The fact that she had agreed to the contract to
begin with meant that she was willing to go through some lengths for her mom’s
hospital bills. But would this have made things different? Changed her mind?
There really was no way of knowing as it was already too late now. I had
already made half the payments. Shaking my head, I sighed deeply as I saw
Aria’s head wrapped around my door. How long had she been standing there?

“Do you have a minute?” she asked me
nervously.

“Sure, come on in,” I said, despite still
feeling some irrational anger towards her family and Aria too. “What can I do
for you?” I asked bitingly as she sat across from me. “Besides what I have
already done, I mean.”

Aria looked taken aback. She opened her
mouth and closed it again, as though unsure how she was going to communicate
with me.

“I don’t…I mean I just came in to check
if,” she paused momentarily and added, “You have been acting rather strange
since last night.”

“Oh, is that right?” I asked, getting more
and more annoyed. “How so?”

“Well first of all, you ran out of my
mom’s house without so much as a warning and a very poor excuse,” she snapped.

“Don’t take that tone with me. Not when
your family—” I stopped mid-sentence. “Nevermind.”

“You overheard us last night, didn’t you?”
she asked, looking resigned all of a sudden.

I shrugged. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. You
and your mother simply weren’t as quiet as you obviously thought you were.”

Her face took on a deep shade of red as
she looked away from me, breaking eye-contact. “Well, if you heard everything,
you must have also heard that I had no idea that South National Bank had
anything to do with my father’s bankruptcy. And that as soon as I found out, I
had the full intention of telling you!”

“But you didn’t, did you?” I demanded
angrily.

“Yeah, because it would have been so easy
to tell you considering you stormed out of my mother’s house last night and
haven’t spoken to me since!”

She was right. I hadn’t even given her a
chance to come clean about the whole situation since I had been so angry. Why
should I give her a chance? Why should I give her anything more when I had
already given so much to her family? A fresh surge of anger began to bubble up
inside me so I reached for the stress ball, hoping Aria wouldn’t notice.

“Why are you so angry with me?” she asked
after a few minutes of complete silence where neither of us so much as looked
at one another. “I’m sorry, Zayden! Had I known about this at any point before
the contract, I would have made full disclosure before letting you…I’m just…I’m
sorry that you had to suffer financial loss because of my father. As a direct
victim of his shenanigans, I can safely say I understand how you must be
feeling right now.”

“Oh, have you lost five hundred thousand
dollars to a man only to later find out you were paying his ex-wife’s hospital
bills in order to help out his daughter who you had just happened to fall for?”

“That’s oddly specific. I’m going to go
with no.” She attempted a weak smile, trying to change the mood of the conversation.
It worked slightly as the look on her face made me want to kiss her. But I was
still angry and looking at Aria’s face, I wished I wasn’t.

“Look, I know you didn’t know about any of
this,” I said, exasperated with her, the entire situation and myself. “But it
doesn’t change the facts, does it? And I can’t help feeling…and I’m sorry for
what I am about to say, Aria, because it’s really not your fault directly… but
I can’t help feeling like I’ve been scammed by your family.”

She looked like I had just slapped her
across the face as tears began to visibly surface in her eyes.

“You don’t know how much your dad cost me.
And on top of that, I am paying for your mother’s hospital bills…like what the
actual—”

“But I am paying you back for it,” she
snapped, fighting back tears. Aria was never one to show weakness, that much
had been firmly established. “I am not sure you have actually read this
contract you keep referring to because if you had then you would remember a
very important clause at the end of it, which I might remind you. I insisted we
add to the contract and even refused to sign the whole thing without the clause
that states as soon as I graduate from college, I will begin paying you back
for the hospital bills in installments. Or have you forgotten that entire
encounter where this deal would not even have existed if you hadn’t agreed to
let me pay you back!”

“I haven’t forgotten,” I said, getting
more annoyed. “But that still puts me at a loss of, let’s see, about five
hundred thousand dollars!”

“There is nothing I can do about that!”
she exclaimed, clearly starting to get very frustrated. Her answer pissed me
off too. What did she mean she couldn’t do anything about it? It was her
father, after all, who owed me the money. And after all that I had done for her
and after finding out what her father caused my bank, she could just sit there
and act all helpless like there is no way for her to rectify the situation?

“Yes there is,” I said, more out of anger
than anything else. “You can pay me back the five hundred thousand dollars
after you graduate too. Installments are okay.”

For the second time that afternoon, Aria
looked like I had slapped her across the face, which was unfair from where I
stood, considering I was just asking for my own money back. And not even right
away.

She looked like she had been searching for
an appropriate response for a while when she finally just said, “Wow.” She was
clearly dumbfounded.

“Just because I don’t actually need the
money, Aria,” I prodded after her lack of response. “Does not mean it is okay
for people to run off with what is mine, no matter the circumstances. I don’t
care how rich I am or how much money I have, I am not okay with any business I
run facing any sort of a loss. It’s part of being a businessman. If I didn’t
learn to care about every single penny that flowed towards me where my
businesses are concerned, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today. So you
have two options from here on. You can take this personally, get really
offended and start another fight, which you know how that is going to end. We
have already been through that motion. You’ll get angry, show me a lot of
attitude and haughtily walk out of here only to return in a couple of weeks
when your mom’s hospital bills are due because you realize in the last minute
that you need me more than you care to admit. Or, we could go for the simpler
option, which is you take this with a stride – just like one business oriented
person to another – and agree to pay me back and we move on, picking up where
we left off. So which option will it be then?”