Chapter 97

Hearing my mother’s confirmation about Andrew made a pit form in my stomach that never went away. Ethan and I returned to our normal routine of working far too much, but garnering a lot of support and business nonetheless. That routine was only broken when I would lay awake all night thinking about Andrew and my mother.

The way he left her. The way he promised to save her and then never did.

The way he killed Ethan’s parents while he had an unclaimed child wandering around without so much as a care in the world for me. He didn’t care about anyone but himself. If he truly cared he would have come looking.

He never even tried.

I thought about telling Ethan. Every single second there was silence, I debated on revealing the information to him. It felt wrong to keep secrets from him, to omit information, or even just know something so big that he didn’t. Especially, since this had to do with his arch nemesis - the murderer of his parents.

In a cruel way, I realized how awful my father figures had been in my life. I grew up thinking I was the daughter of Liam, my mother’s rapist. Now, I realized I was the daughter of Andrew, the killer of my husband’s family.

Things were not ideal in that way. Things were not ideal at all.

I went to work with Ethan every day, though, and couldn’t bring myself to tell him. It was embarrassing, the most shameful thing I knew.

I didn’t want Ethan to think less of me. It was easier pretending that I didn’t know my father, that he was a complete mystery to the world.

In all honesty, I wished he was. I would give anything to unlearn the information that Andrew thrust upon me with no warning.

I was working in Ethan’s office during one of his weekly meetings with his employees. I was working on a project with Mars and was too preoccupied to bother sitting through a meeting that would consist of Ethan asking questions and no one answering for fear of being wrong.

I had far more important work to do.

At least, I was supposed to. My phone started ringing incessantly with an unknown number flashing on the screen over and over again.

I ignored it at first, but as soon as it stopped ringing it just started up again. I groaned, the buzzing ingraining itself in my brain and tearing at my ear drums.

“Hello?” I answered the phone, a little annoyed. The irritability shone in my voice.

“Ava,” A deep voice boomed over the speaker.

Andrew.

“What do you want?” I asked, angrily. “Stop calling me.”

“Ava I want to talk to you-”

Click.

I ended the phone call and threw the phone on the couch in the office. The cushions acted at sufficiently muffling the vibrations.

The phone kept ringing though, and after a while there were several voicemails in my inbox. All from Andrew begging me to give him a chance and hear him out.

Ethan came in after Andrew left on final voicemail. He was angry, waving his hands in frustration.

“That scumbag!” He roared and sat at his desk, throwing himself into the chair.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming closer to him to rub his shoulders comfortingly.

“Andrew has taken one of my customers with the promise of a huge discount on the prices, I can’t compete because he’s basically paying them at the rate he’s got them at!” He put his head in his hands and groaned. Then, he sobered himself up and returned to his calm, demure attitude that he usually held himself at.

“I’m sorry baby,” I cooed in his ear. “We’ll get him though, don’t worry about it.”

Ethan sighed and went to sort through files and information on his desk in order to remedy the situation.

I felt even guiltier for having Andrew call me over and over again, for knowing that he and I were related, and everything that came in between.

The guilt pulled me apart, and I excused myself to the bathroom to listen to all of the voicemails I’d gotten over the course of the morning.

The first one was just him repeating a thousand apologies, asking for a chance to speak, asking for me to answer the phone so that we could talk. I didn’t want to talk.

I listened to the next one.

Then, the next one.

Each and every one said the same thing in different formats. He wanted us to become close, like a family should be. He wanted to make things right. He wanted to be my father. He wanted to see my mother. He wanted, he wanted, and he wanted again.

He never asked me what I wanted, but I guess I shouldn’t have expected that from someone like him.

The last voicemail, he told me that he would stop calling me and stop trying to contact me if I needed him to. He said he understood the conflicting situation I was in with Ethan as my husband, and he knew that I would want to support my husband in any way I could.

I listened to that last voicemail, suddenly feeling empty at the thought of fully pushing away Andrew.

I knew it was wrong, but I really wanted to know why he left my mother and why he never came back to look for us. I felt as though I had a right to know, and if one phone call or one meeting is all it would take to get answers to my questions, then so be it.

I could stomach one conversation to answer a lifetime of questions.

I texted Andrew and asked him to meet me for lunch the next day and he agreed, thanking me several times over the message.

I rolled my eyes, put the phone away, and mentally prepared for lunch with my father the next day. I would need the whole twenty-four hours to get ready.

During the next work day, Ethan had a lunch meeting planned. It was supposed to be private, just Ethan and a customer. It worked out perfectly so that I had the privacy I needed to go run out and meet Andrew.

I brought one of the bodyguards that Ethan hired with me, just in case this was Andrew’s way of making me feel secure enough to take advantage and kill me. Apparently he had a knack for doing things like that.

I saw him sitting alone at a table at the little cafe we talked about meeting at. I asked the bodyguard to wait nearby as I sat at the seat across from Andrew.

“Ava,” He greeted, but I was in no mood for pleasantries.

“I need to know right now,” I said to him with a firm expression. “Why did you leave her? Why did you leave us to be taken in by a man like Liam?”

Andrew’s face fell slightly and he looked down at the plate in front of him, ashamed. “I did try to find you both, but I was too late by the time I came to my senses.”

“So you gave up on the mother of your child?’ I gritted out, “Just like that?”

“I looked for you for years!” He admitted, loudly. “Once I had the money, I wanted to find you both so badly.”