Read Serving HIM Vol. 6: Alpha Billionaire Romance for Free Online

ripple of sensation, it was almost laughable. Except it wasn’t funny.
    A memory came to me. One of my father’s old friends had a daughter who was five or six years younger than me. I remembered her because she'd had a crush on me when I was a senior in high school.
    About five years ago, rumors started that she was pregnant, fairly far along. Then she was in France. A few months later, she was back. And she wasn’t pregnant.
    I ran into her at a party over the holidays about a year later. She was young, had her whole life ahead of her. But she was just a shadow of herself. Haunted, almost gray by the misery that weighed her down. She was also a far cry away from the girl I remembered. She had been bright, happy, and now she was a shadow.
    My mother was still fiddling with her skirt and I asked her again, “Did the girls know?”
    “Dominic, you must understand—”
    I shot up from the chair, glaring down at her. “Well, I don’t! I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. All I wanted to do was feel like I belonged somewhere. It was never here.” She flinched at my words and I tried to soften my voice. “I know you love me. I know you tried. Solomon never did. He never cared and he certainly never tried. He couldn’t make his disgust with me more obvious. It was almost a relief when he turned his back on me.”
    “You and I both.”
    At my mother’s soft words, I lifted my head, studying her. She couldn’t have caught me more off-guard if she had slapped me.
    “Do you think that was easy?” She rose and moved to the small bar tucked in the corner. After she poured herself a glass of sherry, she tipped it in my direction. “Please pardon the rudeness. I realize it’s early.”
    She took a sip, sighed, then tipped her head back.
    I'd never seen her look more human.
    “You can't know what that year did to me. But Solomon…” When she said my father’s name, her face twisted in a scowl. “He acted like nothing had happened. Oh, he put on a good show when people asked about you, when the police came around, when it was expected of him. But when I was lying in bed at night, crying, grieving, worrying? He carried on, business as usual. He told me things sometimes just weren’t meant to be and if it was that hard on me, we could always get another baby.” She laughed again, but it sounded more like a sob this time. “As if you could be replaced.”
    I took a moment to process the words, to understand that my feelings of anger and abandonment towards my father were justified, that they weren't just in my head. Then I pushed it aside. I already knew what an asshole Solomon Snow was. I needed things I didn't know.
    “I need to know how it worked.”
    Slowly, she lifted her head and gazed at me. After a moment, she nodded. “I don’t know any details or specifics. It never occurred to me to ask. When they told me they could help me get a baby, a newborn, all I cared about was getting you.”
    “Okay.” I nodded. If there was something illegal going on, they probably weren’t going to let out a bunch of information, anyway. “Who were they, what did they want, how did it happen?”
    She looked away. “It was easy. They wanted five hundred thousand dollars and I paid them. Not all of it up front, of course. I wasn’t a fool. It was twenty percent up front. I offered to provide for medical care when it arose, but they said it wasn’t necessary. The girl’s family was to provide for the prenatal care. They just wanted to make sure the baby had a good home and would be loved and cared for.” She took another sip of sherry, her eyes distant. She was smiling now. “Three weeks later, they brought you to me. I spoke with several people, but there was one man who seemed to be in charge. I gave him the rest of the money. He left.” She glanced at me. “That was it. I never heard from them again.”
    “That was it? Just as easy as that? What about background checks, documentation, anything?”