Worth More Than Money Read online

  No wonder he knew so much about art.

  How absurd had my bullshit excuse for a life become? An ex-Russian mobster paid my way into college sports by bribing the damn scout and the school to go along with it. I shut my laptop and shook my head as I tossed everything off to the side. Why the hell had the old man cared enough to do it anyway? Surely he had better things to do, like look over his shoulder. I was nothing but an angry kid with a drunk father and a mother who abandoned me. I didn’t matter.

  So, why did the old man stick his neck out for me?

  It didn’t make sense, and that only pissed me off more. The more answers I got, the more questions I had. Why the hell did Anton fucking Volk give enough of a damn to care about what happened to me? I grew into a man that had more money than good sense; and unlike Anton, I was busy fighting off people who wanted my money and were willing to lie, cheat, and screw me over for it.

  Talk about a damn existential crisis.

  My initial determination to never go into town again was put aside, and suddenly a trip to town was the only thing I thought to do once I figured out I’d downed the last of the alcohol the night before. I threw a coat over my shoulders and grabbed my keys, heading straight for the damn liquor store. Another bottle of amber liquid would chase all this shit away and maybe I could get another night’s sleep without Michelle, Anton and the damn Russian mob rolling around in my head.

  I wanted to drown out all thoughts of her. All the memories. All the questions swimming around in my conscious mind. I wanted to rid myself of all of it. I wanted to get back to the days before Anton died. Before I was saddled with his estate. Before his entire life was laid out on a platter and before Michelle had tumbled her naked ass into my bed at two in the morning. Before I’d lost my mind and my soul to that dastardly woman.

  She was nothing but yet another lie within the web of lies that was my world. And I wanted to forget about her.

  Parking my convertible, I hopped out, heading straight for the back wall of the liquor store. How absolutely poetic. I stared at the fresh batch of wine from my own damn vineyard, complete with the label I had put my stamp of approval on just a couple of weeks ago. Poetic justice, that’s was what all this was. Getting piss-ass drunk on my own vineyard’s wine in a town that hated every single thing to do with me.

  Turns out I hated every single thing to do with me, too.

  Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Turning my head, I found my father standing there, hunched over on a cane and picking up another bottle of cheap liquor. Immediately, I forgot about my need for alcohol and headed after him, watching him as he limped down the side of the store. He didn’t even bother to stop at the cash register, and just tossed some money onto the counter before walking out the damn door.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed, as I followed my father out the door.

  He paused on the sidewalk, then slowly turned to meet my gaze. He looked like shit. His eyes were glassy and a spot of drool hung off his bottom lip. Only a few strands of hair stuck up from his bald head and his teeth were practically rotted out of his mouth. But those eyes.

  Angry as ever and filled with a fire I recognized all too well.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  My father’s eyes dropped down my body before he cleared his throat. But he didn’t give me any sort of a reaction other than that.

  “I’m your son,” I said.

  His eyes panned up to mine and I could’ve sworn I saw his cheek twitch with a frown.

  “So?” he asked.

  My pathetic excuse for a father turned his back on me, but I stepped in front of him. That asshole wasn’t getting away from me this time. Not by a long shot.

  “I haven’t seen you since high school, and you don’t have anything to say to me?” I asked. “Don’t you wonder what I’ve been doing? What I’ve been up to? Where my life took me?”

  His glassy stare zoned out, and I wondered if he had even heard me.

  “Don’t you want to know what I’m doing back here?”

  His silence was infuriating.

  “Do you even want to know anything?” I asked.

  And then, my father gave me a reaction. He shook his head from side to side. He didn’t care, and likely never had. And he sure as hell never would now. I felt something inside of me crumble away. The last of my resolve as my father pushed past me with a strength that still shocked me. He slammed into my shoulder, knocking me off balance, then clamored into his rusted-out shit-box and drove away. Swerving down the damn road like he always had.

  Leaving me there, alone and fending for myself.

  Like he always fucking had.

  I moved mindlessly to my convertible and got in, but I didn’t move. I didn’t crank it up, I didn’t pull out of the parking space, and I didn’t head back to Anton’s. I sat there, replaying the incident over and over again in my head. The look in his eyes. The anger at the fact that I had chased after him. The sharp downturn of his disapproving frown. My success meant nothing to him. My billions meant nothing to him. My professional athletic career and my vineyard didn’t mean shit to him. My money bought me all the things in the world. Women to sit on my dick. Houses in any part of the world I wanted. The best clothes, the best food, and the best hotels in the premium seasons.

  But one thing it didn’t buy me was my father’s love.

  The one thing it didn’t buy me was a family.

  For most of my childhood, I had denied the reality of my father’s apathetic attitude towards me. But once Anton took me in that night—giving me a home, his attention and his care—I was able to change. I was able to slowly admit the truth to myself. Anton single-handedly showed me how family was supposed to treat one another. All of the most important lessons Anton ever handed down to me happened before I went off to play college ball.

  Did any of that change now that I knew what Anton had done? It wasn’t like Anton could’ve bribed the damn NFL to draft me. Even an ex-Russian mobster didn’t have that kind of pull. I did that myself. Anton’s money might’ve gotten me out of this damn town and into college, but I got myself into the pros. My own intelligence made me millions, and my business-savvy mind made me billions after I’d’ gotten hurt.

  No. Nothing changed by knowing Anton had greased the wheels. Because once he gave that cart a steady push with the grease he’d snuck on there, my legs had to keep the cart moving.

  And I moved it all the way up the damn mountain myself.

  My father was a shithead, and that contributed to my own path of destruction. But that didn’t mean I had to stay on that road. That didn’t mean I had to contribute to someone else’s path of destruction. And suddenly, she came flooding back to my mind.

  Holy shit, the things I’d said to her.

  Pressing the heels of my hands in my eyes, I thought about my argument with Michelle. Seeing now how much my father had affected me unleashed the error of my words and my ways. And if that woman really was pregnant with my child, I needed to know for sure so I could be there for my child. Be there for her.

  Make some sort of a family out of what I had willingly created.

  If Michelle was carrying my child, then I refused to be the kind of father mine was to me. If that really was my child she was growing, I refused to be the kind of companion my father had been. I wouldn’t hang her out to dry. I wouldn’t perpetuate that abuse any longer in my life. I wouldn’t feed the cycle. No, I was going to break it.

  Starting with the supposed mother of my child.

  I had enough money to take full custody. If she didn’t want the child—if money was what she was really after—I had more than enough to pay her off and take the child under my wing. I had an infinite amount of resources to give my child anything they could ever want without having to deal with the pain of a money-hungry mother.

  Either way, there was one fact that remained.

  I sure as hell wasn’t abandoning my child the way my father had abandoned me.

>   Time to find Michelle.

  Chapter 10

  Michelle

  I wiggled my foot as I sat on a doctor’s bed, waiting for my test results. Nick had been adamant about coming with me, but I didn’t want him back in the room with me while I got checked out. My leg shook and my heart raced in my chest. There was still a chance those tests were wrong. False positives happened all the time. I read about them on the internet. And my periods were always irregular. There was still a chance all of this was circumstantial and that I hadn’t screwed up my life the way I thought I had.

  “Well, Miss Danforth, I believe a congratulations is in order.”

  The doctor came in all smiles as my stomach plummeted to my toes.

  “So I am pregnant,” I said.

  “You are,” the doctor said. “Judging by your HCG levels, you’re somewhere between two and three months along.”

  And that only made things worse.

  “Is there any way to get a more accurate date of conception?” I asked. “Maybe narrow that window down to two weeks? Or possible one?”

  “Establishing an ironclad conception date isn’t easy, Miss Danforth. Especially since you aren’t far along in your pregnancy at all. If you’re asking for a test to determine paternity, it’s best to wait until the child is born and do a simple blood test. Anything determining paternity at this point is invasive, and you risk harming the fetus.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “A paternity test while pregnant requires a hairpin needle to be inserted through your abdomen and into the—”

  I held up my hand and signaled the doctor to stop talking. The mere idea of a needle going straight into anywhere was enough to turn me off to the idea. Not only did it make me sick to my stomach and weak in my knees, the idea of putting my child at any risk for anything wasn’t good enough. If I was going to start being a good mother, it meant making decisions that were best for my child.

  Even though they weren’t the best for me.

  Embarrassment and shame filled the pit of my gut. Of course, I’d find myself in this position. Sleeping with two different men within a month of one another, and now I didn’t know whose child I was carrying. Yes, Andy and I used protection. But condoms broke all the time. I had obviously gotten pregnant while being on the pill for the past five years. There was nothing in my mind that wasn’t possible any longer.

  “A paternity test now is expensive, Miss Danforth. A paternity test after the baby is born is close to nothing,” the doctor said.

  “It won’t be necessary,” I said.

  I refused to put my unborn child at risk. Regardless of who the father was, I would love my child and nurture him or her the best way I saw fit. Paternity wasn’t that important anyway if I was going to be raising this child on my own. Andy sure as hell would never come after me. He only wanted me when other men wanted me as well. And Gray?

  Screw him.

  “How does everything else look?” I asked. “I have been experiencing worse and worse bouts of nausea.”

  “Which is normal until you flip into your second trimester. And some women carry their nausea all the way through. What we don’t want is your nausea impeding on your ability to hold down food and water. And if the vomiting because severe enough where it erodes the esophagus and you begin bleeding, that requires a hospital’s intervention. But don’t worry, nothing like that is happening to you right now.”

  The doctor placed his hand on top of my trembling one and I tried to offer him a smile.

  “There are a lot of resources to help women like yourself in your situation, Miss Danforth. I don’t want to be rude or overstep, but I’ve put some documentation in this bag for you to take. Information, things for you to fill out and turn in. North Dakota takes single motherhood seriously. Use the resources at your disposal.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I appreciate it.”

  “There’s a copy of your test results in there as well as a three-month supply of prenatal vitamins. Come back and see me once they run out. We’ll get you some more, and at that point we can do an ultrasound test to check for the gender of your child and any abnormalities that might be forming.”

  “Abnormalities?” I asked.

  “Nothing is wrong right now. You’re not deficient on any vitamins, your hCG levels are up, and your symptoms are all typical. You’re fine, and this child is fine. Everything we do from here on out is precautionary.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I really appreciate your help.”

  “In that bag is a list of items you need to start cutting out of your diet. Things like caffeine, green tea, some types of fish. Put it up somewhere or stick it in your purse. It’ll help keep you and your growing child safe throughout your pregnancy.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Do you have a ride home?” the doctor asked.

  “My brother’s out in the lobby,” I said.

  “Good. Go out and make an appointment for three months out, and I’ll see you then.”

  “Thanks, doctor.”

  I made the appointment, then walked to Nick’s car. He didn’t bombard me with questions, and I was glad for it. Because too many things were running through my mind. I needed to find another job. I needed to get myself into a place where I could raise my child safely. Preferably a place near where I decided to work so I wouldn’t have to shovel money out for a car and gas and insurance. Then, there were things for the baby. A crib. Diapers. Clothes. A babysitter so I could keep working. Health insurance.

  Shit. My child would need health insurance.

  “Have you thought about telling Mom yet?”

  Nick’s voice pierced my thoughts and a heavy sigh left my lips.

  “I need to. She’s not going to be happy, but I do have to tell her,” I said.

  “I’ll be here every step of the way. I’ll provide whatever buffer you need me to.”

  “I love you, Nick. But don’t make this trip home anymore miserable on you than it has to be.”

  “I’m not miserable.”

  “You hide it well, but you hate this place just as much as I do,” I said.

  “Then how about this? You’ll tell Mom, she’ll explode, then we’ll sit down and coordinate our lives. I’ll find a place to go, and you can come with me. I’ll help you raise your kid. I’ll be that fun, weird uncle. We can split bills, I can babysit.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that, Nick. You have a life to go live. Things to contend with.”

  “I’m not leaving you in this damn town to shrivel up and die, Mich. We’re in this together.”

  He wrapped his hand around mine, and I felt guilty at the first thought that ran through my mind.

  I wish Gray felt the same way.

  “Don’t worry about Mom,” he said, as he released my hand. “She’ll adjust to the idea. And if she doesn’t, we leave. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I really wish it was,” I said under my breath.

  When Nick and I pulled into the driveway we saw Mom’s car sitting there. My stomach rolled with nerves as I pushed out of the car and walked to the front door. I guess now was the time to fill her in. She was home from work, had probably already taken a nap. It was the best mood I’d be able to catch her in.

  But the second I walked in and saw her sitting at the kitchen table, I knew something wasn’t right.

  “Mom?” I asked.

  “So what the hell’s your plan now?” she asked.

  Nick walked in behind me as my mother’s eyes panned up to mine.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Did you really think you could wash back into town and hide a baby from me?”

  My jaw dropped open as I clutched the plastic bag at my side.

  “I’m friends with one of the nurses at the clinic,” she said flatly. “She called me the second your tests ran through.”

  “That’s illegal,” I said. “You’re not on my HIPPA statement.”

  “Welcome home. So what the hell are you going to do
now?”

  “Mom, stop it,” Nick said.

  “You stay out of this,” my mother said. “What the hell were you thinking, Michelle? Getting knocked up? Charging back into town? Did you think you could stay here rent-free? Raise your child under my roof while I spent my hard-earned money feeding your mouths?”

  “That’s not what I thought at all,” I said.

  “And she’s got a job, by the way,” Nick said.

  “Oh, really? And what job is this?” my mother asked.

  I was curious to know that, too.

  “A friend of mine from high school just opened up his own bar in town. Called Devil’s Delight. Michelle just accepted a position to waitress there.”

  Nick squeezed my shoulders, cluing me in on what I needed to say next.

  “Yep,” I said. “Just accepted this morning.”

  “So, you’re gonna be pregnant with some bastard child while working in some smoky, dingy, run-down bar in a hometown you tried to leave behind because you thought you were better than us.”

  “I never thought I was better than you. I just wanted to strive for something better for my own life. And I’m still going to get it. I can waitress at the bar and still have time to do my medical transcription work. That’ll bring in enough money to get my own place and feed my own mouth and raise my child without you breathing down my damn neck,” I said.

  My mother slowly rose to her feet, but I stood my ground. Andy wasn’t going to push me around, Gray wasn’t going to push me around, and my mother wasn’t going to push me around.

  “Who’s the loser father?” my mother asked.

  I bit down onto the inside of my cheek as a sick grin crossed her face.

  “Looks like you’re not much better than me anyway,” she said.

  “Give me two weeks and I’ll be out of your hair for good.”

  “Trust me, I couldn’t get you out of my hair if I wanted to,” she said.

  “Mom, enough,” Nick said. “Whatever the hell’s gotten into you, cut it out. Your daughter’s pregnant and she needs you.”