Page 2 of The Billionaire's Secret Heir

Beckett quieted at the command, an instinct left over from childhood. His father hadn’t raised his voice often, but when he did, obedience was almost automatic. Beckett swallowed and sat down in his chair at the other head of the table. Sander got to his feet and crossed the room slowly, dropping a folder in front of Beckett.

“This is a copy of the contract I have drawn up with my lawyer regarding the future of VDKI. I will be stepping down sooner than I had intended. This outlines my requirements and stipulations if you are to assume control of VDKI.”

Beckett skimmed over the contract, hitting just the important bits and tuning out the legalese. His collar felt suddenly tight around his neck and he undid the top button with one hand, flipping through pages with the other. His throat still felt constricted and he loosened his tie. By the last page, Beckett’s lower back had begun to sweat.

“You really mean to do this,” Beckett said.

Sander’s gaze did not soften. “I have been preparing you for the last ten years for this. I want to ensure that our company stays in the Van de Kamp family. This is for the future of our family as well as the business. I do this for you, zoon.”

His father stood tall, all signs of aging Beckett had noticed gone. Sander met his eyes with a cool blue gaze. Was that pity in his eyes? Beckett bristled.

“You think that I don’t want this?” Beckett’s temper flared hotter. He wanted to remove his suit jacket, but knew that he was beginning to sweat through his shirt.

“Do you not?”

“We aren’t a monarchy, needing inbreeding and heirs. This isn’t the dark ages.” Beckett stood so quickly that his chair spun out behind him, striking the wall. “Your requirements are ridiculous and outdated.”

“No, we are not royalty. Still. I value this and will stand by it. I am doing this for you, even if you cannot see it.”

Beckett turned to the windows again, pacing alongside them, the traffic on an overpass below him at a dead stop. At the end of the room, he turned back to his father. “How long?”

Sander shrugged. “Six months. Perhaps less.”

Beckett wanted to yell, but instead buried the rage somewhere deep inside of his chest. His words came out cool and firm like metal. “It isn’t even possible. I’m not in a relationship. Even if I were, I couldn’t have a child in six months.”

“I realize this. You will still have a position here, but the company will go to Graham until you produce an heir.”

Beckett would have laughed, but he was too shaken with rage. “Graham doesn’t want the company! He doesn’t know the first thing about running the day-to-day or our growth projections. I’ve been doing this for years, even with you supposedly at the helm.”

“I trust that you will catch him up. Graham may not want it, but he has told me that he would do it.”

Beckett felt the bottom drop out of the room. He rested his palms on the conference table and leaned forward. “What did you say?”

Sander moved to the door. With his hand on the knob, he turned back to Beckett. His father looked … sad. Which only heated the fire in Beckett’s belly hotter. “Talk to your broer. This will be for the best. For your best.”

His father left Beckett alone in the conference room, feeling like the entire world had skidded on its axis and stopped. His breath came in short pants and he could feel that his shirt underneath the suit jacket was probably transparent, soaked through with sweat. Needing to calm himself before he walked back out into the office, Beckett circled the table, counting his laps.

Graham couldn’t want to run the company. There is no way he told their father that he would do this. He knew it would kill Beckett. He hadn’t worked at VKDI since they were in high school, and barely then. He wanted nothing to do with Van de Kamp International, but preferred to work remotely on software development so he could be at home with his wife and children.

Family.

The word felt like a curse in Beckett’s mind. It shouldn’t have. His parents had been incredibly happy together, up until the moment his mother died of a stroke fifteen years ago. But that event was perhaps more formative than all the happy years before.

Coming home from Yale to find his strong, confident, calm father a complete emotional wreck had been a shock. His mother lived for a week after the stroke, but never regained consciousness. Every day Sander fell apart a little more while Graham and Beckett tried desperately to get him to eat, shower, change his clothes, or move an inch from her bedside.

Beckett had to take over day-to-day operations at VDKI until his father could come back to work, which took almost eight months. This brought Beckett’s life into a laser focus. He went back to Yale after missing a semester and a half and opted to miss his own graduation to attend a VDKI board meeting.

Beckett had come to see that it worked better this way. As he had told his father, being born into wealth was completely different than working your way up to it. Especially in terms of finding a woman who was interested in anything more than his bank account and status. He had only quick, skin-deep flings with women that left him feeling empty, especially after he became a Christian and saw his behavior in a new light. Ava had been his only relationship since then, and that hadn’t worked either. Before Ava, he hadn’t thought of getting married. She had worn him down, which wasn’t a good reason to make wedding vows. Clearly, her reasoning had been more about the money anyway.

Now his father had put it into writing and was trying to make him get married for the company. How could he think that Beckett could have a happy relationship through force or coercion? All the years of hints, threats, reminders—Beckett had written them off as a broken-hearted man’s empty words.

Before he left the office, Beckett picked up the contract. He would have his own lawyer look at it for some kind of loophole or weak spot. He was not about to give up his rightfully earned spot at the helm of Van de Kamp International.

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