A Baby for the Billionaire

18

"You mean I'm not decent?"

"I mean that I need you to tell me once and for all what your blessed problem is. What did I do to you, Juliet? No, I don't want you to answer that, I don't have to apologize or explain anything, I just want us to reach a deal and stop pushing my authority to the limit."

"Treat me better. That's all."

"Can't you see I'm trying? But if you don't do things well, if you don't leave that attitude, don't expect anything different from me."

"I thought you had self-control, isn't that necessary in someone who has to manage such important matters every day?"

"Yes, you're right about that."

He is silent for a moment.

Sighs.

And he adds:

"I had self-control. Not anymore. I have lost it... I have lost everything."

He stays like that, with the words suspended in the atmosphere and he doesn't have to finish the sentence to understand what he means when he says that he has lost everything, it is clear that he is referring to his wife.

The situation makes me a little bad because it is not a matter that I should talk about or why meddle, however I pull at the opportunity that he has just left available.

"Is that the problem, Mr. Deniz?"

He just looks at me.

It seems to me an impossible code to decipher while I also look at him, trying to hold those penetrating eyes that even make me forget what my name is.

"That's the thing, isn't it? You don't talk about it...with anyone."

"Don't go there, Juliet."

Aha, I think I've found that sensitive chord.

It is the moment when I just discovered which of the cables can be the most dangerous, but also the one that is likely to boost and detonate the bomb rather than calm its power.

"Why, Mr. Deniz?" I try not to sound recriminatory in my voice, but it is and I can't help it. "Why don't you talk about it with anyone?"

"You know it's because the press made it public and I don't know how it got to your ears, but just don't you dare mention it."

"I know this because, curiously or paradoxically, the day we were going to speak for the first time was the same day that the..."

"Shut up."

"Yes. I will not say. But that doesn't mean that sooner or later you won't have to talk about it. What cannot be expressed in words is purged in thoughts and sooner or later they conclude that it is expressed in the body, in behavior."

"Now you're a psychologist too?"

"I am human. Like you."

It goes a little further.

Geez, this is already too much. Very close.

But the tension of the topic of conversation makes it even more difficult to face.

"Sir," I insist. "For the sake of your son...of your family...of the people around you and also for the memory of...her...you need to talk to someone about it."

"Don't go there. You are not worthy nor do you have any right to evoke the memory of Zara. Do not do it!"

He takes a step forward.

I back off.

I crash into the closed door.

And I hear a thump that manages to make my heart kind of pop, letting me know that maybe I shouldn't have gotten my fingers so far into those wires.

Mr. Kerem just punched the door behind me. I shrug, noting the rumble that's still echoing through my head.

He pulls away.

I do that too.

And he steps out.

Just like that.

He goes.

I stay in his room, with his things and also with a petrifying sensation of chills that seeps deep into my bones because we have evoked the memory of his dead wife.

It's as if she were here...with me...and she knows that I want her husband, but at the same time she terrifies me.

I can breathe her presence in the room.

Exasperated, I wake up and leave the room too, closing the door and taking the magnetic insurance card in my possession.