Beating the System

by E V Darcy

  Had Fiona told him he wasn’t allowed near her after the blonde had caught her fleeing his bedroom? Was it more a case that he didn’t think he could control himself around her after their near-kiss? Did he really think he was going to get rid of her so easily? Oh she didn’t think so!

  She’d walked all the way across the city, thrown her royal weight around to get up to his office, got involved in a physical altercation just to see him, and threatened two members of the public with the most notorious prison in the country; she was not going without getting what she’d came here to get. She didn’t care if it was her own grandfather waiting for him inside.

  Hattie squared her shoulders, looked him straight in the eye as she smiled innocently, and said the one thing that would get her in that office with the door closed behind them and an explicit message that they not be disturbed.

  ‘Roman, I’m pregnant.’

  Roman poured himself a very generous scotch and downed it in one. He felt Hattie’s eyes on his back as he took a breath and began to pour himself another.

  Pregnant. God, he’d always feared the day when she’d marry some smiling European aristocrat her grandfather found her or a charming American heir to a billion-dollar fortune—he’d seen plenty of them attending her seminars as he’d sat in the back, hidden away in the shadows. They’d fawn all over her afterwards, smiling and joking, giving her compliments as if she were a curious thing. He supposed to some men, a woman with a mind as sharp and clever as his Henrietta’s was a novelty.

  He always prayed it wasn’t one of those guys she chose.

  Of course, after the elaborate wedding, some months later, would come the next announcement; a picture of the proud parents to be, Hattie holding her stomach protectively, as she smiled and waved for the press before asking for their privacy to be respected.

  And then the baby would appear, looking nothing like him. Him, the one who was supposed to be with her, who had adored her since he’d first laid eyes on her. Who’d held his grandmother’s engagement ring at seventeen-years-old and thought of giving it to the woman whose eyes were currently burning a hole in his back.

  He downed the drink in two gulps.

  ‘Want one?’ he asked, his throat burning from the whisky. It was supposed to be nursed, sipped, and savoured, not thrown back like water.

  ‘I don’t think that’s wise.’ He didn’t know if she was referring to having one herself or the third glass he poured.

  ‘Well, some would say getting pregnant isn’t wise,’ he sneered as he turned back to her. ‘But there we have it.’ He saluted her with the glass before he drained it again and dropped it back to the cabinet’s shelf. He left the doors wide open—he was certain it wouldn’t be his last today—as he marched back behind his desk, thinking that perhaps a barrier between them would help keep his emotions at a distance too.

  Hattie sighed and closed the door between his office and Sue’s before slowly coming to meet him.

  He swallowed as he watched her walk towards him, picturing her in the near future larger, rounder, her skin glowing with the radiance all pregnant women apparently had, her hair shimmering with health and vitality. He wanted to vomit the scotch back up all across his desk at such a thought.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. He couldn’t understand why she’d come to him of all people with… this? Maybe it wasn’t about… that. Maybe she’d just used that to get into the office with him, perhaps it was something else she needed to see him about…

  He held his breath in hope.

  ‘I told you, I’m pregnant.’

  So, it was… that. He released the air in his lungs slowly, careful not to heave the heartbroken moan he wished he could let out into the world.

  ‘And what does that have to do with me? It’s not mine.’ He was amazed how neutral his voice sounded, and he thanked whatever part of him that had always made him seem cold and aloof for working overtime right now. ‘Go and find the poor bugger who impregnated you and take it up with him.’

  She had that quizzical look in her eye, the one that assessed you as if you were a puzzle to solve, and he wanted to turn away from that stare, just in case she saw something he didn’t want her to see. She placed her hand over her stomach and Roman found his eyes following the movement, unable to breathe as once again the image of her with a large, fully pregnant form took seed in his mind.

  She looked beautiful.

  ‘That would be difficult.’ She said the words slowly and carefully, not as if he were stupid, but as if she wanted to make sure he fully understood what she said next. ‘Seeing as Jensen’s dead.’

  His eyes snapped up to hers, his mouth falling open. Was she insinuating that her baby was Jensen’s? That his own brother had impregnated her? No, it was bad enough knowing they’d slept together, that his brother had taken what he most desired, but to leave part of himself to her? To forever bind them together in a way he never could?

  ‘And so no, while it isn’t yours, it is your niece or nephew’—yes, that was exactly what she was saying—‘so I’d say that puts you in a position of responsibility towards it.’

  ‘Pardon? A position of responsibility? How?’

  She made a disgruntled sound before pulling out the chair in front of the desk and taking a seat. She placed her bag in her lap and gazed at him.

  ‘I want him or her recognised as Jensen’s child. I want them to have the Tyrrell name and I want them to be entitled to what Jensen’s left behind.’

  Roman slowly took his seat and folded his hands together as he assessed her. She wasn’t lying; he’d always been able to tell whenever she tried. It was why he chose to listen to her economic forecasts over others. But it didn’t make sense why she wanted the child recognised with his name; the Snape name had far more pull and reach than the Tyrrell name did, no matter how successful or rich his family became. And of course, when his father eventually died, the child would be entitled to Jensen’s share. If said child was indeed Jensen’s.

  ‘Okay, tell me why I should believe it’s Jensen’s child you’re carrying.’

  ‘Because it is.’

  ‘I can’t just accept your word on that.’

  ‘I slept with Jensen the night before he died, I hadn’t slept with anyone since before Victoria’s wedding’—he noticed a slight blush to her cheeks at her confession, but she maintained her confident composure—‘and if it was from that dalliance, I’d have been huge at the wedding.’ Again, she wasn’t lying.

  ‘Say I believe you—’

  ‘I’m willing to do a paternity test. Although, I suppose with you two being so genetically similar, it could be questioned which of you were really the father.’ She raised her brow at him in challenge, but Roman’s mind broke for a second.

  Him, the father of her child? He bit the inside of his lip to stop from closing his eyes and getting lost in a daydream of how that child would be created, of the family they could have had.

  Instead, he managed to spit out, ‘Why are you here demanding they be recognised?’ He watched her face scrunch up in confusion.

  ‘Because it’s their right? Call me old fashioned, but I believe a child should take their father’s name.’

  ‘The Snape name carries a lot of pull across the world, between that and your fortune, the child would have doors thrown wide open to them. Especially if they turn out to be as bright as their parents.’ Her tongue poked out again, curling over her upper lip as she considered his words.

  ‘They would still be entitled to what Jensen left though; his trust, his penthouse…’

  Roman reached up and rubbed his eye. If they didn’t count that day in the hospital, this was the longest conversation they’d had since they’d left university, and the most trying.

  In their university days, she’d always been open with him, had just blurted everything out without his even needing to ask. And while she was currently answering his questions truthfully, he could tell there was something more to this than just a child
being born with what they were entitled too, something she didn’t want to reveal. And with Hattie he knew he was going to have to tell her straight to get his own answers.

  ‘Cards on the table, Henrietta’—her eye twitched and Roman filed that away for later—‘there isn’t anything for the child to inherit. Yet. Not until my father dies. Then the company and my father’s fortune will- Would have been split between me and Jensen. Although…’ He leaned back in his seat as he considered the future he hadn’t really yet digested. It was still difficult to think that Jensen was no longer with them. ‘I suppose now it will be split between myself and my nephew… or niece.

  ‘Look, I know you spent the night with him—’

  ‘No, he had a trust.’ She interrupted, her voice insistent. ‘From his grandfather, he told me he inherited it when he turned eighteen! He was so happy to be free, to not be under anyone’s control. And I need—’

  ‘He said that?’

  She nodded. ‘The day we graduated. He said he was finally free, that your… your father couldn’t control him any longer.’

  Roman closed his eyes and shook his head. Cursing his brother again. He’d only ever thought of himself. He hadn’t thought of how his walking away, his freedom as he’d so declared, had stopped Roman from any sort of adventure. If Jensen had stuck around, worked with Roman to achieve what their dad had wanted for them, perhaps both of them could have had such freedom. Instead, Roman had been left alone to learn the ropes, scrabbling to climb his way to the top so he’d be able to take the reins their father had hoped they’d take together, conforming more and more to what their father wanted from him. No, Jensen had been selfish and unrepentant for it.

  ‘There was a trust,’ he confessed. ‘But, Henrietta, he quickly burnt through it. For the last few years, he had been living on a stipend my father gave him.’

  ‘What? No! He had a penthouse in Avon and all the cars and—’

  ‘Selling the penthouse was a condition of our father helping him. He had to sell it and hand the proceeds over to Dad who invested it to help pay towards his lifestyle again. He gave him a monthly allowance, which Jensen would always blow… I’m sorry,’ he added as he watched her face fall more and more with each new revelation.

  He’d only found out about his brother’s irresponsible behaviour after the funeral, when he’d been forced into taking a month-long mourning period. When he’d asked about the penthouse and the trust, and his father had sat him down and revealed the frivolity of his brother’s lifestyle. He’d been bitterly disappointed in Jensen, but Hattie looked absolutely devastated. There was definitely more to this than she was telling.

  With what she’d have inherited from her father’s fortune, he had no idea why she was so perturbed by this. His and Jensen’s trusts were a drop in the ocean that cocooned their country compared to hers alone.

  ‘No, it can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘It can’t…’

  ‘Henrietta, I don’t understand. Surely your own inheritance far outstrips—’

  ‘I don’t have anything!’ she snapped, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘I can’t get it and now I never will!’

  ‘I don’t understand, your father was—’

  ‘A sick, twisted son of a bitch!’ she shouted, slamming her fist down on the table between them. ‘He was cruel and unloving in life and death. Even dead, he can’t help sticking his finger in the mix, trying to control our lives, shaping our futures just as he did when he was alive.

  ‘He said he’d come back, Roman! Jensen promised he’d come back and he didn’t! And now I’m left pregnant and up shit creek without a paddle!’

  That… was a lot to take in. Roman blinked and stared at Hattie as she covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  Had their time together been more than a single night? Had they actually been involved? Was grieving more than just losing her friend, was she suffering for the loss of her love too?

  Roman covered his mouth with his hand as he leant his elbow on the table, pulling in deep breaths through his nose as he tried to settle the sudden queasy feeling in his stomach.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ Hattie announced, quickly standing and looking around the room. He joined her, pushing his seat back so hard it rolled into the window behind him and bounced away again.

  ‘Bathroom!’ he pointed towards a second door in the room that led to his private suite and heaved a sigh of relief when she made it. Cringing at the sound of her retching, he gently nudged the door closed to give her—and him—some privacy.

  He rubbed his hands over his mouth as he tried to come to terms with everything he’d heard so far.

  Why the hell hadn’t his brother used protection? Why wasn’t she on the pill or something? They were grown adults, for crying out loud! Smart adults! And just how did you get pregnant in this day and age with the plethora of birth control options available?

  Or, what if they had used something and it had failed?

  That thought scared the crap out of him as he tallied up his dalliances over the years, and thanked his lucky stars Fiona hadn’t come to him with such a problem either; he would never raise another man’s child. He’d had that conversation with his fiancée very early on when he’d caught her with her first affair. He shuddered at the thought of any offspring Fiona might have, his or not.

  He heard the toilet flush and the tap being run, jarring him back to the problem at hand. Jensen’s child could be the only Tyrrell heir. The babe in Hattie’s womb could hold the entire Tyrrell line on its shoulders. If he didn’t recognise it, he’d be the last of the line because he wasn’t unleashing a Tyrrell-Martin creature on the earth.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Hattie’s voice was frail and sorrowful as she stepped out of his bathroom. She kept her gaze to the floor, her shoulders hunched, and her usually confident stride was more of a shuffle as she made her way across the room. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

  He swallowed and reached out as she walked by, taking her arm in his. She glanced down at the touch, far lighter than it had been the day of Jensen’s funeral.

  ‘Why does Jensen’s death stop you getting your inheritance?’

  She tore her gaze away from his fingers, biting her lip as she stared across the room. She was warring with herself over something and he just wished she’d tell him. Wished he could roll back the clock fifteen years and not make the mistakes he had back then. Perhaps if he could, she’d be carrying his child after a long and happy marriage. He shook himself of such stupid daydreams. Those had died years ago when he’d picked the wrong door…

  He slipped his hand down the line of her arm, until his fingers brushed her wrist. He heard her soft hitch in her breathing at the contact of skin on skin and he cheered inside that he still had such an effect on her.

  Maybe all hope wasn’t lost? Maybe the door that he’d thought closed forever, could once again open for him?

  ‘Please, Henrietta, tell me,’ he urged as he took her hand in his and led her to the leather sofa. He sat and encouraged her to take a seat next to him. She sighed as she did and stared out over his desk towards the vista of the city, but she didn’t let go of his hand. If anything, she held on tighter, using him as an anchor to tether her to the world as she had all those years ago.

  ‘My father… The will…’ She swallowed, took a deep breath, and started again. ‘My father decided to include a stupid, barbaric clause in the will. It stops us from claiming our share until we meet two stipulations; marriage before we turn thirty-five and an heir within five years. Out of the four of us, Victoria is the only one to have met one of the stipulations. She’s working on the second.’

  ‘So, you need to get married?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, you have to be married to the father of the child. It doesn’t matter which way around it happens; child first-marriage later is also acceptable. But with Jensen gone…’

  She’d get nothing. So that was why she’d come looking for Jensen’s trust. She’d be left
penniless without it.

  ‘You have no savings?’

  She shook her head. ‘I spent them on renovating the house last year. What I have left I’m currently living on.’

  ‘But the house was insured, yes?’

  ‘It was owned by the trust my inheritance is held by. The insurance pay-out goes straight to them.’ So she didn’t have two bits to rub together.

  ‘I see. Henrietta, do you know what day it is today?’

  ‘Thursday,’ she answered automatically, not even a flicker of hesitation.

  ‘No, I meant the date. What date is it?’ She shrugged, her gaze still unwavering from the view his office afforded.

  ‘They’re kind of blending into one at the moment,’ she confessed.

  ‘It’s the first of April.’ She simply nodded, seemingly not getting his point. ‘Jensen used to love today; he’d pull the biggest tricks, always make me the fool.’ He let his words sink in. Her lashes fluttered, bringing herself away from the far distance and back to the there and then. Slowly, she turned her head to face him.

  ‘I’m not lying to you.’

  ‘Henrietta, what proof do I have to—’ He cut himself off as she scrambled to get her bag open, grabbing her phone and quickly unlocking it. She found whoever it was she wanted to call and put it on speaker. It rang once, twice, a third time before a woman’s surprised voice answered.

  ‘Hattie? Are you okay?’

  ‘Victoria, can you please tell my companion why you married Cormac.’

  ‘What? Because I love him, of course.’

  ‘No, Victoria. I need you to tell them the real reason.’ The line was silent for a few beats before Victoria spoke again.

  ‘Hattie, what’s going on.’

  ‘Victoria, I need you to do this for me. I supported you with Cormac—’

  ‘You called him a whore!’ Roman flinched at the vitriol in Victoria’s voice and glanced at his companion. Her eyes shifted guiltily, and her right one fluttered again; she’d definitely been in the wrong about something.