The Billionaire's Secret Baby のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 201 - チャプター 210

I carried Makayla to her room, which was barely bigger than a closet. Deira was going to change her into pajamas, so while she did that, I looked around the apartment some more. It was a mess. Just from what I could see with my eyes, there were several problems that needed to be fixed, and I shuddered to think about what problems might be hidden in the walls. This was how they lived?The more I looked around, the more my heart sank. Before, I'd mostly offered to help Deira because I felt I owed it to her. But seeing the conditions they were living in was like a punch to the gut. It made me sad, and I also felt a pang of guilt. After all, weren't things this way because I hadn't been around? I knew that wasn't my fault, but I couldn't help feeling responsible for it anyway. I sat down on the couch to wait for Deira to come out, determined that I would do something to assist them.When she did come out, she seemed surprised that I was still there."You didn't have to wait," she said."I

The time stretched on. I was sure it had been hours, but the clock on my phone told me it had only been about 20 minutes since the police had arrived.I looked up, and realized one of the police officers was motioning us over. I practically ran over to him."Ma'am," said the police officer, "we actually think we've found something." He took me into the convenience store at the corner where they'd gotten the owner to check their security cameras. One of them pointed across the street at the row of stores opposite. They ran the tape back about 40 minutes, and showed me the footage. A small blond girl entered the frame and went into the toy store across the road. I gasped in relief."That's her. That's Makayla," I said. The officer nodded. "We reviewed the rest of the footage and she doesn't appear to have come back out."I was already halfway to the door by the time his sentence finished. I rushed past Cassius, who had just come back from the park."Deira, what is it?" he asked, but I d

DEIRA I had steeled myself for a fight when I called Cassius, so I was surprised when he agreed not to contact us. I almost felt bad, but then I remembered the way it had felt when Makayla was missing. I went over all the reasons that had led me to this decision. It had been nothing but chaos since he'd come into our lives, and I needed some time to let things calm down, and to figure out exactly how we could move forward.It had obviously been a mistake, jumping into some version of a happy little family where he could watch Makayla while I worked overtime. I blamed myself for that as much as I blamed him, because there was no way he could have known how unprepared he was to be a father. But I should have known. I had decided I couldn't let him back into Makayla's life this time until I was sure that he understood all the responsibilities that came with that. The trouble was, I didn't know how to be sure about that. There was no test for parenthood. Would I know in my gut when he wa

CASSIUSThat night drinking with Scott was probably the most drunk I'd ever been. True to my word, I had managed to get so drunk I forgot all about Deira and Makayla. Unfortunately, the next morning reality came rushing back to me, and brought with it the worst hangover I'd ever had. My head was killing me, and even the dimmest light seemed too bright. I forced myself to drink some water, and then called my assistant to reschedule all my meetings. The hangover was too severe to even think about working, and I decided to just go back to bed.After I let my assistant know that I would be unavailable, I sent a text to check in on Scott. Once he confirmed he was fine (though in a very similar state to me), I turned off my phone so that no one could bother me. I wasn't worried about missing any calls, because the only people I wanted to talk to were Deira and Makayla, and Deira had just told me the day before that she wouldn't be contacting me for a while.When I woke up again, it was dar

DEIRAAfter Cassius left that night, I got a terrible night's sleep. It had seemed obvious from the way he reacted that he hadn't known about his ex, and hadn't been the one who told her about Makayla. That made me feel better about him, but worse about the situation as a whole. He had said that he would deal with it, but what was his plan?I tossed and turned all night, and finally gave up in the early hours of the morning. I got up and made coffee and sat thinking through the last few days. As I thought over our conversation from the night before, I realized that I had dumped all my emotions on Cassius, even though he wasn't the cause of some of them. I hated to admit it, but I might have been too hard on him. And if he hadn't told his ex about Makayla, then I probably did need his help in dealing with her.So again, I found myself lurking around his office at lunchtime. The door was closed, but this time I just went up to his assistant and asked if he was in. She shook her head."D