REJECTED, THEN THEY FOUND OUT I WAS A BILLIONAIRE

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE CALL

Richard couldn't move. The phone continued ringing in his hand.

Mum.

The name stared back at him from the screen. For fourteen years, that name had existed only in his memories, old photographs, and the contact list he had never had the courage to delete. His mother's number had been disconnected shortly after her funeral. So why was it calling him now?

He had kept her contact card for reasons he'd never fully examined, not out of denial exactly, but something adjacent to it. A small, irrational hope that one day the number might ring and prove the last fourteen years had been some enormous mistake. He had never expected that hope to actually be answered, and certainly not like this, not in the middle of running from armed strangers with his hands still shaking from a gunshot he'd heard less than an hour ago.

There had been a version of him, years ago, who used to imagine conversations with her. Small, ordinary things. Telling her about a promotion he never got, or a girlfriend she never met. He'd stopped doing that eventually, sometime after he met Cara, because it had started to feel less like grief and more like a habit he couldn't justify keeping. Now the phone in his hand made every one of those imagined conversations feel like unfinished business he hadn't known was still open.

"Richard." Grant's voice sounded distant. Richard didn't answer. The phone kept ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. His thumb hovered over the screen.

"Don't answer it," Grant said.

Richard looked up. "Why?"

Grant stepped toward him. "Because whoever is calling knows exactly what they're doing."

Richard's eyes dropped back to the phone. The ringing stopped. Silence. Then, immediately, the phone vibrated. An incoming message. Richard opened it.

*Answer the phone, Richard.*

His stomach twisted. Grant saw the message.

"Give me the phone."

Richard pulled it away. "No."

"Richard."

"You've been lying to me since I got here."

"I'm trying to protect you."

"From what?"

Grant's mouth opened, but no answer came.

Richard laughed bitterly. "That's what I thought."

The phone rang again. *Mum.* Richard stared at it. This time, he answered.

"Hello?"

For several seconds, there was nothing. Only faint static. Richard's grip tightened around the phone.

"Hello?"

Then he heard breathing. Slow. Unsteady. Someone was on the other end. Richard's heart began pounding.

"Who is this?"

Silence. Then a woman's voice.

"Richard?"

His knees nearly gave out. He grabbed the edge of the desk. He knew that voice. He had not heard it in fourteen years, but he knew it. His mother's voice.

His lips parted. "Mum?"

Grant's face changed completely.

The woman on the phone breathed shakily. "Richard..."

A tear slipped down his cheek. "Where are you?"

No answer.

"Mom, where are you?"

"I don't have much time."

Richard's chest tightened. "Where are you?"

"Listen to me." Her voice was quieter now. "Don't trust Elias."

Richard slowly looked at Grant. The lawyer had gone completely still.

"Don't trust..."

The line went dead.

Richard stared at the phone. "Mom?" Nothing. "Mom!" He checked the screen. Call ended. His hand began shaking violently.

Grant reached for him. Richard stepped back. "Don't touch me."

"Richard, listen."

"You knew."

Grant said nothing.

"You knew she was alive."

"I didn't know."

"She just called me!"

"I know."

"You heard her!"

"I heard her."

Richard's breathing became faster. "She said not to trust you."

Grant closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, something in his expression had changed. Not fear. Resignation.

"There are things I should have told you."

Richard stared at him. "Start with my mother."

Grant pulled out a chair. "Sit down."

"No."

"Richard..."

"No more sitting. No more secrets. No more telling me to wait." His voice cracked. "I buried my mother." Grant looked away. "I stood beside her coffin." His eyes burned. "I watched them lower it into the ground." His chest rose and fell heavily. "You don't get to tell me now that she might be alive and then ask me to sit quietly."

Grant remained silent.

Richard wiped the tears from his face. "Tell me the truth."

Grant looked at him for a long moment, the kind of look a man gives when he's finally deciding to stop protecting someone from something. Whatever calculation had kept him silent through the ballroom, the office, the parking garage, and the ride here seemed to give way all at once.

Finally, Grant spoke. "Your mother didn't die fourteen years ago."

Richard froze. "What?"

"She disappeared."

Richard stared at him.

"The woman who was buried was not your mother."

For several seconds, Richard couldn't understand the words. "What are you saying?"

"Your mother's disappearance was part of the same operation that caused your father to disappear."

Richard shook his head. "No."

"Richard..."

"No." He backed away. "You told me she died."

"That's what I was instructed to tell you."

"By who?"

Grant hesitated.

Richard stepped closer. "By who?"

Grant looked him directly in the eyes. "Your father."

Richard's mouth went dry. He thought back to the phone call, to his mother's voice, thin and rushed, warning him away from the very man now standing across the desk. If she had been telling the truth about Grant, what else in this room could he actually believe?

For a moment he said nothing at all. His father. The man he'd spent twenty-two years believing was buried in a small cemetery outside the city, the man whose grave he used to visit every year on his birthday because he had no other way to mark the day, had apparently been alive this entire time, watching from somewhere, deciding it was acceptable to let his own son believe his mother was dead too. Richard's hands curled into fists at his sides. Whatever kind of man built a fortune worth billions, he was starting to understand, was not necessarily the kind of man who deserved to be grieved.

"My father was dead," Richard said, but the words came out hollow, like he was testing whether saying them again might make them true.

"He wasn't."

The room seemed to shrink around him. Richard stared at the man standing across from him.

"Then where is he?"

Grant didn't answer.