Heir to a Dark Inheritance

She didn’t feel like she was drowning now. She could breathe again, her heart finding its rhythm.

“Mama!” Leena’s exclamation, so filled with joy and relief. And Jada broke to pieces inside.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, more for her benefit than her daughter’s. “It’s okay.” And she knew she lied. But she needed the lie like air and she wouldn’t deny herself.

“She does not like me,” Alik said, his voice frayed. For the first time since she’d seen him, he was betraying his own discomfort with the situation.

“You’re a stranger,” she said.

“I’m her father.” He said it as if a one-year-old child cared about genetics.

“She doesn’t care if you’re related to her or not. Not in the least. I am her mother as far as she’s concerned. The only mother she knows.”

“We need to talk.”

“What about?”

“About this,” he said, his voice slightly ragged, a bit of that smooth charm of his finally slipping. “About what we need to do.”

She didn’t know what he meant, but she knew that right now she was holding Leena, so the rest didn’t matter.

“Where?” she asked.

“My car. It is fitted with a car seat.”

“Okay,” she said. Going with him should feel strange; after all, she didn’t know the man. But the court had found no reason he couldn’t be a fit father. That meant they were going to send her baby off with this man, by herself. So she was hardly going to hesitate over getting in his car with him, all things considered.

She swallowed hard. There was no one else to do this. She was the final authority here, the only one who could change things. And she would take every second with Leena she could get.

She followed him out of the courthouse and down the steps. He pulled out his phone and spoke into it. She wasn’t sure what language he was speaking. It wasn’t Russian, English or Hindi, that much she knew. A man of many talents, it seemed.

A moment later a black limousine pulled up against the curb and Alik leaned over, opening the back door. “Why don’t you get her settled.”

She complied mutely, putting Leena, who was starting to nod off after her traumatic afternoon, into the seat and then climbing in and sitting in the spot next to hers. She hadn’t wanted to take any chances that he might drive off while she was rounding the car. Paranoid, maybe, but there was no such thing as too paranoid in a situation like this.

She was momentarily awed by the luxuriousness of the car. She’d ridden in a limo after her wedding, but it hadn’t been anywhere near this nice. The seats lined the interior of the limo, leaving the middle open. There was a cooler with champagne in it.

That made her bristle. Had he been planning on celebrating his victory over champagne? A toast to stealing her child away? She wanted to hit him. To hurt him. Give him a taste of what she was dealing with.

“What is it you wanted to speak to me about?” she asked, her voice sharper than she intended.

He closed the door behind him and settled into place. “Drink?”

“No. No drink. What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“How did you meet the child’s mother?”

“Leena,” she bit out. “Her name is Leena.”

“What sort of name is that?”

“Hindi. She’s named for my mother.”

“She should have a Russian name. I’m Russian.”

“And I’m Indian, and she’s my daughter. And really, aren’t you some kind of arrogant, thinking you can come and just take my child away from her home, away from her mother and then, on top of it all rename her?”

His dark brows shot upward. “I will not rename her. It is not a bad name.”

“Thank you,” she said, cursing her own good manners. She shouldn’t be thanking him. She should be macing him.

“Now,” he said, straightening, his posture stiff, like he was about to start a business meeting, “how did you meet Leena’s mother?”

“Just…through an adoption agency. She told me the baby’s father was dead and that she couldn’t possibly raise the child on her own. It was a semi-open adoption. She was able to choose the person she wanted to take her. It wasn’t easy for her.” She remembered the way the other woman had looked after giving birth, when she’d handed Leena to Jada. She’d looked so tired. So sad. But also relieved. “But it was right for her.”

“And the adoption?”

“Normally they’re finalized within six months of placement. In Oregon the birth mother can’t sign the papers until after the birth, which makes it all take a bit longer. And we were held up further because…because while she listed the birth father as dead, it wasn’t something that was confirmed. She had your name, but there was no record of your death, and neither could you be found to sign away your rights. And it hadn’t been long enough for you to simply be declared absentee.”

“And then they found me.”

“Yes, they did. Lucky me.”

“I am sorry for you, Jada. I am.” He didn’t sound it at all. He sounded like a man doing a decent impression of someone who might be sorry, but he personally didn’t sound sorry at all. “But it doesn’t change the fact that Leena is my daughter. I can’t simply walk away from her.”

“Why not? Because you’re just overcome by love and a parental bond?” She didn’t believe that for a moment.

“No. Because it is the right thing to do to care for your children, your family. Leena is the only family I have.”

At another time she might have felt sorry for the man. As it was, she felt nothing.

“Caring for her would mean having her with me,” she said.

“I can understand how you might see it that way.” He looked out the window. “She does not like me. She cries when I pick her up. And frankly, I don’t have the time to be a full-time caregiver to an infant.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because the other alternative was having nothing to do with her, and that was not a possible solution in my mind.”

“So what does that mean then? You’re just going to hire nannies?”

“That was my thought. I was wondering if you would like to take a position as Leena’s nanny.”

“You what?”

Jada couldn’t believe the man was serious. The nanny? To her own child? An employee of the man who was stealing everything from her?

Leena was her light in the darkness. She was everything to her. Being her mother had become the entirety of Jada’s identity. And her daughter had become her whole heart.