Exposure_A Stone Billionaire Series Novel Read online

  Then he drags me out of the restaurant, and I protest the whole time.

  ***

  “Ava!” Evan calls through the stall door. “How long does it take to pee on a stick?”

  “This is extremely unorthodox, in a women's washroom,” I call back, pregnancy test in hand as I open the stall door. “It takes time you have to… I'm not discussing this with you. I can't believe you insisted on doing this… in here.”

  “I told you I wanted a beer,” Evan takes another sip of his beer, at his favorite pub, in the women's washroom.

  He sits on the counter.

  At least he had the foresight to put an out of order sign on the door and pay the bartender to give us a few minutes.

  “This isn't how I want to find out,” I remind him.

  I almost don’t want to know.

  I slide the cap on the test before putting it on the counter.

  I sit down on the counter beside it, only to realize my jeans are a little tighter than I anticipated. And I've barely eaten anything.

  I stand back up.

  “You're unreasonable,” I tell him.

  The jeans are just in my head.

  They are not tight.

  “I'm also your brother. Do you realize how fucked that is? We're the Stone Darlington siblings. Our cousin Caleb? He's also a wreck; you'll love him,” Evan changes the subject to distract me.

  Evan mulls over his beer for a moment.

  “Oh my god, if you're pregnant, that would technically make him Uncle Caleb! He'll get a kick out of that,” he laughs.

  “I'm not pregnant,” I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Even if you are, you've got a support system. Fuck Corban,” Evan smirks and raises his glass to me.

  “Apparently I already did that,” I joke.

  Evan laughs harshly. “Yeah you did. Give her here,” he smirks.

  He raises his hand to high five me, and I entertain him by clapping his hand back.

  “I also fucked him up for you. I think I deserve a thank you for that,” Evan tells me happily.

  “Yes Evan, thank you for beating the shit out of my husband, possible father of my possible child, and all-around dirt bag,” I snicker.

  He takes another sip of his beer.

  “But seriously, you aren't alone. You don't need him unless you want him. I mean, you can forgive him if you want, I wouldn't think less of you,” Evan shrugs.

  Is that him or the beer talking?

  “Are you serious right now?” I stamp my foot.

  “Whoa!” Evan puts his hands up. “I was just suggesting that if you wanted to, for the sake of the baby having two parents, I would support that even though I beat him up. If you want to divorce him, that's cool too. As long as I get to beat the shit out of him again,” He laughs.

  He glances down at the test.

  “I'm not pregnant,” I shake my head.

  It's just not possible.

  “Yes, you are. Look,” He points down to the test.

  When I look down the test reads pregnant.

  I'm torn for exactly a second because this baby isn't just Corban's, it's my son or daughter growing inside me.

  I will not resent him for being the father of this baby.

  I can’t, because this baby was made from our love for each other.

  The tears sliding down my cheeks are happy ones.

  Being a mother?

  Even if it's something I didn't realize I wanted, it's something that I want now.

  I couldn't imagine anything else.

  Even if I am alone. I could do this, I think, I could easily be a single mother, that would be as normal as anything.

  Of course, I'll have to tell him, and he'll want to be with me, but I will have to stand firm in my choice because there's too much between us to make things work.

  “Are you okay?” Evan's hand is on my shoulder.

  “I'm good actually,” I stick the pregnancy test in my purse. “But now, unfortunately, I must go back to New York, because-”

  I'm cut off by the sound of Evan's phone ringing.

  “Stone here,” He answers with an annoyed tone. “Yeah, I'm Athena's nephew, okay, okay. Is she okay? Holy shit. Okay. I'm coming.”

  He hangs up the phone, with a concerned look on his face, before downing the beer.

  “What's up?” I feel my stomach drop, my heart suddenly pounding wildly out of my chest.

  “Athena was in a car accident,” Evan looks bewildered.

  ***

  Both of us rushing through the hospital is enough to cause a stir because Evan screams, and when he doesn't get the answer he wants I cry.

  The two of us make such a scene that Athena's doctor finds us before we find him.

  “She's just coming out of surgery; there was some internal bleeding,” The doctor explains after he brings us into a private room. “She'll be out of surgery momentarily, but if there's someone else you need to call in the meantime, do it. She'll recover just fine.”

  Evan swallows hard I can see him swallowing harder and harder as he clutches my hand.

  He does not cry.

  Athena and Evan have a very close bond.

  She took care of him for a very long time, she was almost like a mother to him. Even if she was barely old enough to know what to do with a child, she did her best with him.

  When Noah couldn't be there, and he was away for business, Athena kept him with her.

  There may only be roughly seven years between them, but Athena still acts like his mother.

  “What are we going to do? Do we call Noah?” He asks finally.

  “He'll just rush over here, by the time she's out of surgery, there's nothing he can do,” I try to soothe him with a calm voice. “Where's her boyfriend Shouldn't he be here?”

  “I feel like he's part of the problem,” Evan presses his lips together. “What do we do? Wait until she's out of recovery?”

  We grab drinks and sandwiches and wait out the rest of the surgery.

  We read stupid British gossip rags about the Royal family.

  We argue about calling Noah again.

  I argue in my head about calling Corban to tell him about our baby.

  When Athena comes out of surgery, she is incoherent.

  But stable.

  She falls asleep.

  So, Evan and I take turns going home to change, sleeping in the chair beside her bed. When I return in a fresh pair of jeans and a sweater, Athena is awake and tearful.

  “Are you okay?” I am immediately at her side.

  “Just a wreck,” She smiles, happy to see me.

  Her normal, cheerful demeanor is gone.

  “I thought we were done with all the messy bits, about me being a child out of wedlock and all that shit you know? And then Nicholas goes and has that woman in his apartment, and I crash my car. I thought he was done cheating,” she announces.

  She sniffs.

  Apparently, none of the Stones cry, but me.

  “Oh, my god,” I take a deep breath.

  “He admitted to everything. He's been having an affair, he didn't want to get married, he was staying with me out of obligation. He realized I was nothing, and wanted someone with more to offer,” Athena admits.

  Athena doesn’t cry, I think she’s simply angry.

  She’s strong, and even if she wanted to cry, I don’t think she would.

  I remember in the early days I would fall asleep crying, dreaming of the old days when our relationship was complicated but more straightforward.

  Now it's just too complicated.

  I feel relief, however, because Corban never cheated.

  It doesn't feel any more fixable.

  My next suggestion is the only one I have. “Maybe we should all just go back to New York when you're cleared to fly.”

  “Yes, that sounds good,” Athena nods. “Let's just go back to New York?”

  I wonder how the hell all of our love lives are a mess.

  Maybe it’s the Stone
curse, as we call it.

  “We're Stones,” Evan says. “All our love lives are always such a fucking mess.”

  It's like he's always reading my mind.

  Then he goes off to find the doctor, to see how long it will be before she can fly.

  ***

  When the Stone jet lands at MacArthur airport in Long Island, Athena and Evan head straight for Athena's apartment in Manhattan, but I have someone I need to see.

  Ava Darlington.

  I know my birth certificate reads Ava Darlington, but I feel it in my veins, I feel like Ava Stone.

  However, she's been dying to meet me.

  This is one person that I feel it's important to see, just to gain some perspective.

  Her massive Long Island estate is well staffed, and she stays here year-round, well away from the rest of the Darlingtons who tend to summer and spring in different places.

  My grandmother likes to stay in one place; she loves the familiarity.

  Though she has plenty of staff, a woman with familiar eyes is the one who answers the door when I pull up in a taxi.

  She knows who I am immediately, allowing me inside before she envelopes me in warm arms, aged with years of experience.

  “Oh, you look so much like your mother and your father,” She explains as she tugs me towards the sitting room.

  I follow her willingly, as we sit on worn couches, and she asks someone to bring drinks.

  All the doors out to her spacious patio are open, the smell of the ocean filling the room, and I can see why she stays here year-round.

  “I'd love living here too,” I comment with a smile.

  “You're nothing like Elizabeth,” Ava senior tells me. “I was afraid you'd be like her, but I guess you would've had to grow up, as a Darlington, to know what kind of person she was.”

  “What was she like?” I ask curiously.

  “She was very intelligent, we all thought she’d grow up to make something great out of herself. Of course, there was something not right about her, we could tell. We all knew it but telling her that would send her spiraling into one of those dreadful rages. More trouble usually ensued. When her obsession with Noah started, we thought that their relationship would keep on level ground, but,” She pauses shaking her head.

  “If he didn’t want to marry her, I would’ve understood, and I did. He tried to reason with her, and when he tried to be honest with her, she was suddenly gone,” Ava sighs. “We should’ve forced her to go see a doctor, we should’ve done more.”

  She stares out at the ocean for a moment.

  Then she continues. “I pitied him all these years, chasing after that woman. You look like your mother, but you have your father's eyes. He was so different before he met her. You would've had to know him back then, but he was carefree, he had high hopes for his future.”

  She recalls the past with some hesitancy.

  “Then his father died, and he just poured money into finding the two of you. We tried to stop him after a while, said it was hopeless,” she admits.

  “Did you think it was hopeless?” I ask.

  “No. I knew she would crawl back into his life, any woman who would go to such lengths to keep his flesh and blood from him, she would resurface at some point. And she did,” my grandmother explains.

  “Enter Evan?” I ask.

  “When Evan came along, your father was determined not to make the same mistakes, and then she disappeared again, and he was left with a child to take care of on his own. That's when we gave him Magda; she was a sweet woman, we knew she would do well with him,” My grandmother pauses as someone brings us lemonade, and pours two glasses, with a plate of croissants I've seen before.

  “Her family has worked for ours for generations,” My grandmother explains further. “It's been this way forever,” She shrugs. “We never thought anything would change… until Elizabeth ran away. We couldn't believe we'd lost two family members, let alone one.”

  Then Ava smiles at me, “I can't believe how much you look like her. I expected you to look more like him, from everything Evan told me, you're more of a Stone. Evan waivers back and forth, Noah likes to work, Evan doesn't like to do anything.”

  Ava is thoughtful for a few moments, listening to the ocean, closing her eyes.

  “I used to wonder if they would've worked, your parents. Elizabeth would've probably been a different person; I used to think that. Maybe you would've been an entirely different woman,” Ava senior says thoughtfully.

  “They wouldn't have worked,” I tell her automatically, and I don't know why. “I'm sorry-”

  “No,” My grandmother cuts me off. “You're very intuitive. Your mother is headstrong; your father is just the same. They were always too similar, and I saw that right from the beginning. Your mother was so blinded by how in love she was with your father; she didn't see it. It's… how you complement each other that makes a relationship work, that makes a marriage work.” She looks across the room to an old wedding photo.

  “Your grandfather and I were married over fifty years,” my grandmother smiles warmly. “It was an arranged marriage, but we were so different, we knew how to complement each other. It was horrible in the beginning, we fought like cats and dogs, but it turned into a passionate love affair that lasted for… over fifty years.”

  My mind automatically lands on Corban.

  Corban.

  We automatically began to fight.

  Different as night and day.

  I knew he was spoiled, he came from money, and he just wanted to get his way.

  I was unwilling to reason sometimes, and other times I was willing to reason with him, but he just wanted what he wanted.

  He was all business.

  I was never like that.

  Somehow, we mesh well.

  I wonder if my mother never happened if we had met anyway, if we had somehow fallen together without my mother's inference, if we would've lasted over fifty years like my grandparents.

  I know Corban, and I are opposites.

  How many times did he sleep in later than me?

  He came from money, whereas I've fallen into it.

  It's right in front of me now, and I don't want it.

  He did everything he could to keep his business, include sacrifice us.

  I would sacrifice anything to make all that messy stuff, that tore us apart, disappear. I would do anything to have this simplified.

  But I know life isn't that simple.

  “Life isn't simple,” I tell her.

  “No, it isn't. But don't let your mother's actions poison you like she poisoned herself. She did a lot of things that hurt not only you, but us, and your father. Don't become like her, don't let what's hurt you, become a part of you,” She tells me wisely.

  Wizened with age and how Elizabeth has destroyed parts of her, and me, I know that she is right.

  However, that doesn't mean I can be with Corban.

  I can forgive him for what he's done in time.

  But can we be together again.?

  This hurts me in so many more ways than I ever expected it to, but it's the truth.

  Chapter 29: Corban

  July 1, 2017

  Everything I've worked for is slowly collapsing!

  It's almost as devastating as losing Ava.

  Not as hard as losing Ava, but hard.

  I made Clint offload all his stocks and bought him out with everything I had in my savings.

  I didn’t want him to be implicated.

  He protested, but after what he's done, he knew he didn't have a choice.

  As for Elizabeth?

  She's right where she was before I left.

  In New York, raking in the money, and as far as she knows, I did what she wanted, and I am debt free to her.

  It's all over the papers that I kicked my partner out, and my investors are split fifty-fifty.

  Some of them are siding with Clint, who's building up his own company.

  The other half, the smart
half, know that he doesn't have me.

  Or Noah.

  And my brain.

  They also don't know what I'm about to do.

  I feel bad, but Noah tells me this will turn out just fine, they are rich, they aren't heavily invested, and they have other investments.

  I may never run another billion-dollar company again.

  But I will survive.

  Getting Ava back, is the thought that keeps me going.

  That's what keeps me searching through all our LA servers wirelessly for that first copy of Corona 150.

  I know it's somewhere.

  I need to find it, otherwise, I will have to re-write all the code entirely from scratch, which won't take days, but it will take time.

  That will just keep me away from Ava longer.

  Our setup is perfect.

  Everyone is going to be away, possibly for the week for July 4th, and then, when everything is said and done, and the city is back to normal, the papers will be singing that Elizabeth Darlington, of the Darlington family, is disgraced for running a high-class prostitution ring.

  Noah steps out from the heat and into my apartment, which is near freezing, because it's the only thing that helps me remember I am alive.

  I'm alive.

  Still breathing.

  My blood is still pumping.

  That's good.

  Because without Ava I feel a dull ache all the time.

  I can't wish that Clint had never messed up, or that I'd never met Rowan, or that none of this had ever happened because then, Ava may have never come into my life, and lit up the sky as she did.

  I fell in love like I never have before, and I never will fall for another woman like that again.

  She is still my wife, and she will always be my wife.

  I will not allow her to slip through my fingers.

  I need to prove to her that I am still a worthy man. I am still the cocky, arrogant, son of a bitch I always was.

  And with that, I'm still a man who knows how to avoid his mother.

  “Your mother is off to Switzerland with her latest. She sends her best, wishes she could meet your fiancée. However, this is a business trip, and she needs to go with him. Good work on avoiding her, though, I'm not sure you can avoid Olivia forever,” Noah huffs.