Heir to a Dark Inheritance Read Free Page A

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 lookedafter 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.
    And he wanted her to be an employee. One he could fire at a moment’s notice. A termination he could delay until a later date. A date he saw fit.
    “Did you just ask me to be the nanny to my own daughter?”
    “As a court ruling just declared, she is not your daughter.”
    “If you say that one more time so help me I will—”
    “It is up to you. Hang on to your pride if you wish, but I’m offering you a chance to see your daughter. To be a part of her life still.”
    “How can you do this to me?” she asked, the words scraping her throat raw. Everything in her hurt. Everything. He had come in, taken her newly repaired life and shattered it all around her again, and she didn’t know how she would reclaim it. It had taken so long to rebuild, to