Page 45 of Misdeeds of a Billionaire

He shook his head. “The baby didn’t make it,” he croaked.

The baby didn’t make it.The baby didn’t make it.It whipped in my brain like the hollow cries of a windstorm.

My heart cracked and the first tear rolled down my cheek. His words—they felt like a stab in my chest. How could he say those words knowing he’d just used me, thrown me away like trash. Ruined my family…taken my father.

His kind and my kind didn’t mix.

The words played on repeat, piercing my brain. His father. His fiancée. My baby.

No, there was no “my baby” anymore.It would seem God agreed. I was good enough to fuck as a side piece. Not good enough to love.

Overwhelming emotions whirled inside me. Suffocating me. Drowning me. The pain was too much to bear. I wanted oblivion.

“We need to talk,” I whispered, my voice oddly calm.

“Not now, baby. We’ll talk once you’re better.” He grazed his fingers over my knuckles. “Just get some rest.”

I shook my head. I needed to rip off this Band-Aid once and for all. My eyes took him in, memorizing every inch of him. He was handsome, even when he was in this state. His expensive, white shirt bloodied. His sleeves rolled up, exposing his muscular forearms. His scruff gave him an edge. My fingers itched to touch him.

His eyes penetrated through me, down to the heart he broke. And I still craved him, even though I didn’t think I could ever forgive him.

I loved his eyes. Intense. I knew how dark they’d turned when he buried himself deep inside me. Midnight blue. I hated them all the same, because they could so easily deceive me.

“Byron, I need you to do something for me.” The words were heavy on my tongue. Or maybe that was the medication. They should have pumped me full of it to heal this ache in my heart.

“Anything, baby.” God, when he looked at me like that, I felt like his entire world. One night with a man changed so much. It changed me.

I licked my lips. It didn’t ease my tension nor ache.

“You and I were a mistake.” My ears buzzed and the machine started beeping. Louder and faster. The pain piercing through my ears matched the one in my heart. “I need you gone. That one night is haunting me and destroying me. Every part of me and my life.” My chest squeezed so tightly that each breath came out on a wheeze. “Please leave.”

I saw pain flash through his blue eyes, but he averted his gaze.

“Is that what you want?”

The pain of losing him clawed at my chest all over again, threatening to open it. To break me. My heart screamed “no” but my brain had to be stronger.

Slowly, I let my pain morph into something else. Something dark and cold. Something irrevocable. Hate. Bitterness.

“Yes.”

Barely above a whisper, the single word broke my heart completely.

Chapter19

Byron

Six Years Later

Scout Island Scream Park in New Orleans.

My nephew Kol, Alessio—my slightly older half brother—and I boarded a train resembling a minecart that would take us through a ghost graveyard. Neither Alessio nor I were small men, our knees poking out of the cart, and poor Kol was almost smothered between us like lunch meat. He didn’t seem to mind though, his eyes darting left and right. He couldn’t wait for this damn cart to start moving so we’d get spooked.

My sister and her husband along with their kids were in the cart behind us, and they looked just as ridiculous as we did.

“Goddamn it, this is my first visit to an amusement park,” Alessio grumbled. “I would have come sooner if I knew these seats were so comfortable.”

I detected a sarcasm in his voice and chuckled. “Don’t tell me you never snuck into the traveling fairs to hitch a ride.”