All Chapters of HE PAID ME TO FORGET MY SON…NOW I WORK FOR HIM: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

🌹TESSA🌹“The documents are complete and all bills have been paid.”The man Raymond brought with him—I had decided he was a lawyer from the moment he walked in without introducing himself and opened his briefcase on the chair beside my bed like my hospital room was a conference table—slid the papers toward me without looking up.“Please sign here, Ms Hart.”I was still in the bed. They had not even given me a day. I had delivered this baby six hours ago and my body was still doing things I did not have the energy to think about and Raymond Reddington was standing at the foot of my bed in a suit watching me with the patience of someone who had somewhere else to be.I looked at the papers. Then I looked at my son in the plastic hospital bassinet beside me. He was asleep. His chest was rising and falling in that fast shallow way that newborns breathe that had terrified me the first time I noticed it until the nurse explained it was normal. I had spent the last six hours learning him. Th

🌹TESSA🌹I wiped down the table for the third time, the damp cloth dragging in slow circles over the same spot of wood grain I had been staring at for the past five minutes.The bar was quiet for a Tuesday night, just a few regulars nursing their drinks at the counter and a couple in the corner who had not looked at each other in the last hour. I tucked the cloth into my apron and checked my watch. Another hour and a half and I could go home to Wayne. That was the only thought that kept me moving through nights like this, the only thing that made the aching in my feet bearable."Tessa."I turned and saw my manager standing at the end of the bar with his arms crossed over his chest. He never came out of his office during service hours. He never called anyone over unless something was wrong. My stomach tightened as I walked toward him."Can I see you in my office for a moment?" He did not wait for my answer. He just turned and walked toward the back, his footsteps heavy on the worn flo

🌹TESSA🌹I had just found my son and there was no way I was walking away from him again.The thought sat in my chest like a second heartbeat, steady and insistent, pushing against my ribs with every breath I took. Even if I only got to watch from afar. I would make do with that. I would stand in the shadows and memorize the curve of his jaw and the way he moved through the world and I would tell myself that it was enough.I prayed he would forgive me later in the future. When he was older. When he understood that I did not want to give him away, that I had no choice, that I would have done anything to keep him but I could not keep him because I had nothing.I prayed I would get this job.I took a deep breath and I looked down at my flat shoes, scuffed at the toes from too many walks to the bus stop and too many nights standing behind the bar. I looked at my cheap clothes, the blazer I bought from a thrift store three years ago that still did not fit quite right across my shoulders, t

🌹TESSA🌹 Mrs. Brooks walked ahead of me without looking back. The sharp click of her heels against the polished floor marked a rhythm I followed mechanically, my gaze fixed on the back of her immaculate blazer. The hallway stretched endlessly before us, glass walls on either side revealing rows of employees hunched over their computers. Not a single one looked up as we passed. Their shoulders were rigid, their movements precise, and the only sound was the distant hum of machinery and the relentless tapping of keyboards. I watched them and wondered if they could see it on me. The fear. The desperation. The fact that I was walking toward the man who had paid me to forget my son. My palms were slick with sweat and I pressed them against my thighs, feeling the rough fabric of my cheap blazer beneath my fingers. My heart was already racing, a frantic drumbeat that seemed too loud in the quiet of the corridor. Mrs. Brooks stopped at the elevator and pressed the call button. The doors s

🌹TESSA🌹I stood in front of the cracked mirror in my cramped bedroom, my small wardrobe scattered across the bed behind me. Blouses and skirts and dresses I had bought from thrift stores over the years lay in a heap, each one discarded after I had held it up to my body and felt the familiar sinking sensation in my chest.Nothing looked right.Nothing fit the way it was supposed to fit.The blouse that had seemed acceptable in the dim light of the thrift store now looked faded and worn, the fabric thin and cheap against my fingers. The skirt that had felt professional in the cramped dressing room now seemed too tight across my hips, too short, too wrong for a place like Reddington Group Holdings.I pulled on another blouse and turned to the mirror. The fabric strained across my chest. The buttons pulled, creating small gaps that revealed the skin beneath. I tugged at the fabric, trying to make it lie flat, but it would not cooperate. I looked at my reflection and I felt the familiar