According to Maria’s paperwork, when she had gotten pregnant she’d been working for a company who’d let her go a few months into that pregnancy.
He wasn’t a fool.
Someone had gotten her pregnant, and seeing as the company she once worked for only dealt with wealthy customers, it made Tobias curious about who the guy was.
Did he know him?
Had he eaten lunch with a man who’d disowned his claim to his child?
He had no intention of keeping Adora his dirty little secret. She’d be the mother of his child, and once she was pregnant, he had every intention of doing things right.
She wouldn’t fit with his parents’ idea of a perfect wife, but he really didn’t give a fuck about that one way or the other. She’d be perfect for him. It was like he woke up one morning and just wanted to have something for himself, to please himself, not his parents. He’d done that before, and they were never happy. He’d witnessed his brother’s destruction at their hands. There was no way he’d go down the same way. They had a whole host of women lined up to fill the position of nursing a future Bennett. Women who came from wealth just like him.
None of them fired his blood the way Adora did.
When Maria finished her work, he noticed she went around his apartment another time, just fixing the odd thing that was out of place.
She was an impeccable worker.
The best really.
Within a few minutes she had her things, and was heading out the door.
“Thank you, Maria,” he said.
She turned toward him, and nodded.
Her English wasn’t great, which meant whoever had fathered Adora, spoke her language.
Tobias watched her leave, and he didn’t like the twisting in his gut. Maria was a nice woman, kind and quiet.
Men with money, with power, with privilege, they’d have seen Maria, taken what they wanted, and spat her back out.
He didn’t like that someone had shirked their responsibility in raising a child. In fact, it pissed him the fuck off. If he couldn’t handle the consequences why not bag that shit up?
Sitting behind his desk, he logged onto Adora’s banking accounts, and saw that she’d not touched a cent of the money he’d given to her.
Stubborn woman refused to take what he’d freely given her. The loans were all paid for, and her name was no longer marked by bad credit.
Flicking his pen between his fingers, he knew he was going to have to make her spend some money.
“Why are you so fucking stubborn?”
Bringing up Maria’s documents, which he’d also requested, he glanced through her service history, seeing the company she’d worked for roughly around the time she’d gotten pregnant. He recognized the name, and attached to Maria’s name was a list of houses she’d been dealing with.
He recognized every single name on the list. There was no way to narrow it down, which only served to piss him of even more.
His cell phone began to ring, drawing him out of his very pissed off mood at the fact he couldn’t play detective, and when he saw Julia and Andrew Bennett’s name on the screen, he groaned.
“Hello,” he said.
“It’s about time you answered, Tobias. I don’t like to be kept waiting,” Julia said.
That was his mother. A real piece of work.
He couldn’t recall a time when she even asked him how he’d been.
“What is it?” He rubbed at his eyes, really not wanting to speak to his parents right now.