The Baby Pact (Babies and Billions #5) - Holly Rayner Page 0,43

you. He would never know whether he had his father’s approval again, and that had been a hard thing to adjust to.

But now, for the first time, he felt that pain in reverse.

He wanted to know whether he could possibly still approve of his father’s actions.

It felt like the answer had to be no. If Rhea had told the truth—and his father’s documents, or lack thereof, did seem to back up her story—then his father had committed a crime against his best friend. And that was something Zach could never approve of.

If only he was alive so that we could talk about all this. If only I could get some answers!

But then again, his father had never told him anything about this when he had been alive. What reason was there to think he would be honest about it if he was here now?

Zach closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his face. This whole situation was maddening.

In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He pulled it out and saw that he had a new email from Rhea. His stomach dropped. The subject line simply read “Proof.”

He couldn’t believe the way he had spoken to her the last time he’d seen her.

Of course, he had been shocked by her pregnancy announcement. He hadn’t been at his best. But there had been no excuse for the fact that he had taken his shock out on her. After all, she was dealing with an unplanned pregnancy too.

I should have supported her. That’s what she needed.

She had attached two items to her email. The first was a video. Zach loaded it and allowed it to play.

It appeared to be security camera footage of someone’s office. He frowned, not sure what he was seeing.

But a moment later, he felt as if he had swallowed a pile of lead. The video showed a man sneaking into the office, clearly not supposed to be there. He looked around, stopping every few steps, as if to make sure that nobody had heard him.

Then he turned to face the camera.

And Zach was looking at his father’s face.

Lincoln Danes seemed not to know that he was on camera, because he didn’t make eye contact. Instead, he began to go through the drawers of the desk in the room. After several minutes, Zach saw him put something in his pocket. Then he hurried out of the room and the video ended.

Zach swallowed hard.

He did steal something.

There was no way to know what it was he had taken. But that part almost didn’t matter. The point was that he had used his position as custodian for Rhea’s father’s company to steal. Rhea had been telling the truth all along.

And I’m sure she’s right that it was the whiskey formula. There’s no reason to lie about that part.

He sighed and closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to believe that this could be true. He had wanted to believe that there had been some mistake. But here was the evidence, right in front of him. He had demanded proof, and Rhea had obliged.

A part of him wished he had never seen this video. He couldn’t forget the image of his father sneaking around another man’s office like a criminal.

No, not like a criminal. He was a criminal.

And everything Zach had, all the trappings of his new life… they had all come from this crime.

Of course, he was still a successful businessman in his own right. He had paid his father back the money he had loaned Zach to help him get his start; only after that had he gone on to make his billions. And that did make it a little better. It wasn’t as if he was explicitly living off of the money his father’s crime had brought them.

But still, there was no denying that Zach would never have been able to open EcoKitchen without his father’s help. The foundation of his wealth was corrupt. And even though all the money he had now was his own, he couldn’t feel good about it, knowing that he had only been able to earn it on the back of this crime.

What am I going to do?

He opened the second attachment in the email.

Immediately, his mind seemed to grind to a halt.

He was looking at a sonogram picture.

He had seen a few of them before, of course, in the movies and when pregnant employees had brought their pictures in to work to show off. He had never been particularly impressed. They looked like static on