Page 95 of Blackmail of a Billionaire

She wandered closer as he pulled a first-aid kid forward.

“Sit down,” he said.

She eased onto the cargo space mat as he drizzled a cotton pad with antiseptic and gently pressed it to one of the slices on her wrist.

She winced and sucked in a breath. “Ow. That hurts.”

“Sorry,” he said simply as he continued his work.

She chewed her lower lip. She had to get the conversation moving or try to figure out some way out of this. “You were a surgeon at your last hospital, right?”

He snapped his eyes up to her, narrowing them.

She shrugged. “It was in the report.”

He screwed up his face. “What report?”

She cocked her head. “You think Grant is a terrible ogre, but you didn’t expect him to ask his security team to pull as much information on you as they could after what happened?”

He heaved a sigh as he returned to bandaging her wrist.

“So, why did you leave Texas?”

He ripped open another package of gauze. “I had nothing left there.”

She let her eyes rise to the sky. “Did you come here just to destroy Grant?”

“Do you know everything about him, Julia? Everything?”

“Of course not.”

He wadded the packaging and tossed the ball aside. “I didn’t think so, or you’d know how he treats women. Or anybody he no longer has a use for.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh come on. You’re his fifth wife. Four wives before you, countless women. When the game is over, he just…tosses people away like they don’t matter.”

She chewed her lower lip as the words stung, not only potentially ringing true, but because of the intensely personal nature of the attack. She narrowed her eyes at the doctor. What had Grant done to him?

“I don’t want you to be the next one he does this to. Because he will.”

She shook her head at him. His extreme concern for her didn’t ring true, at least not as his only reason. “Okay, even if that’s true, why do you care? That’s on me. I made my choices.”

“When you didn’t know his past.”

“I knew I was his fifth wife when I walked down that aisle.”

“Yeah, well, you couldn’t possibly have known everything. No one did until recently.” He set his hands on his hips. The pain etched in his eyes spoke to some personal pain.

Her eyebrows knitted as she tried to piece the puzzle together. She flicked her gaze up to him, catching his profile as he stared toward the city.

Her brain slowly connected the dots. The chiseled jaw, the piercing blue eyes. His adoption. No father listed on the birth certificate.

Her features melted as she came to the only realization she could. She ran a hand through her hair before she studied him again, a chill racing through her as she grappled with the revelation with a mix of disbelief and horror. Her pulse quickened as her stomach knotted. The eerie silence of the quiet spot added to her shock. “Are you…Are you Grant’s son?”

The mere mention of it caused his features to twist with a mixture of anger and upset. “He contributed to my DNA. Beyond that, he’s not a father to me.”

Her mind whirled as the implications spun a web of confusion and doubt in her mind. Why had he never mentioned a son? They didn’t know much about each other, enough that a meeting with her brother-in-law had been mistaken for a romantic rendezvous, but still…a son?

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