THE AFFAIR BABY

Blaine will marry Ariel

I sat and watched as Takeda-san’s assistants, all dressed in black suits, helped the old man away, back to his suite somewhere in the mansion.

“Are you OK?” My mother turned to me.

“Yes, mom.” I replied, just as the phone began to ring loudly.

It was Ophelis’s.

She walked away from the table to the far side of the room, her heels clicking away.

“She could not even bother to take her shoes off before coming in. Why will grandfather not hate her? This is all her fault.” I heard one of the Takeda grandchildren say to her cousin.

Both women glanced at me.

I looked away quickly to find Ophelia watching me from where she was talking on the phone.

I could only see her lips moving, but she was too far to hear anything she was saying.

“Ophelia.” Her father shouted over the phone, startling her.

“Yes father.” She said in exasperation, as she looked at the pale, brown-haired girl that was turning her life upside down.

It was difficult to believe Blaine had slept with this woman. She was pretty, like any mixed asian girl, and had nice curves on her from her Armenian mother. But she was still not her.

How could Blaine leave a former Miss World, and go for that slight thing?

“Listen,” Her father said menacingly. “You will lose more than your credit card access if you don’t make Blaine marry you in a week.”

She gasped.

“Father, how do you expect me to..”

“That is none of my business.” Her father growled over the phone. “This is all your fault, you had the man eating out of your palms, but you toyed and toyed with him till you lost him to a twenty-year-old girl.”

“Twenty two.” She could not help saying.

Ariel was twenty-two, at least that is what she had heard.

“Does that make you feel better? That you lost your man to a twenty-two-year-old instead of twenty.”

“Father.” She said, embarrassment washing over her.

She had not liked Blaine very much, was not even sure she wanted to marry him, but the thought that he would be leaving her for someone else, instead of her dumping him, was just too much to handle.

“One week, Ophelia. I will not lose out on Mõshon’s shares because of your stupidity. If you are not married to Blaine in one week, I will cut off your mother’s life support.”

And he ended the call.

Ophelia felt her knees shake.

When she looked up, the b***h was watching her.

“Miss.” I heard someone beside me, drawing my attention away from Opehlia who had been looking at me like she wanted to eat my heart.

“Yes.” I turned to see a maid bowing next to me.

“Takeda-san said to take you up to your suite so you can rest.” The girl said.

I nodded, and glanced at my mother.

She stood up, and everyone’s attention turned to us.

I tried not to look at anyone as we went up with the maid.

I was no fool. I knew these people had no love for me. And after that whisper I heard just now, I knew my children were not safe.

The maid took us down a large hallway, up a flight of carpeted stairs, and down a narrower hallway.

I heard noises coming from one of the closed doors. Although I could not hear them, I needed no seer to tell me they were talking about me.

I glanced at the door.

“Bring your voice down, Aoi. Anyone could be listening.” Heidi Takeda glanced away from the closed door.

“How can you be so calm about this? This is your son we are talking about.”

Heidi sighed, and went to sit on a couch in her room.

“I cannot believe Ruby found her way back with her daughter after twenty-two years. She could not get the inheritance the first time, so she decided to try with her daughter.” Aoi said with disgust on her face. “People truly have no shame.”

“My son, at least, doesn't,” Heidi said.

“An affair with mother and daughter. Ruby was right, if my thirty-year-old son," she emphasized, “did not go messing around with a young girl, none of this would have happened.”

“Okãsan. You cannot possibly blame him. I thought the girl was at least twenty-five when I first saw her. She is at fault here. She is worse than her mother even, sleeping with a man old enough to be her father.”

“Well, according to your logic, there was no way she would have known either. Blaine could pass off for a thirty-year-old man. Have you looked at him?”

“Are you on her side?” Aoi squinted at her in confusion.

“Of course not. The company my late husband and son worked for is about to go to a stranger.”

“How do we stop this?” Aoi came to sit beside her.

Heidi smiled sadly at her. If Blaine had been more cooperative, this should have been his wife. But after that whole Ruby business, all their plans had collapsed.

“Blaine will marry Ariel.” She sighed.

“What?” Aoi shot up in disbelief.

“It is too risky not to. There are still about six months before she has her baby, we cannot leave her exposed like that.”

“Okãsan.” Aoi protested in horror.

“She has Otõsan’s shares,” Heidi finally shouted in irritation. “Do you understand what will happen if any of the Souji grandsons learn of that in those six months and sway her to marry him. They will automatically become the major shareholders of Mõshon.”

Aoi’s eyes widened.

Heidi hissed in irritation, thank goodness the woman’s brains were finally working.

Ariel was now a walking time bomb. She could easily tip the scale that the Takedas and Soujis had fought hard for over three generations to keep even.

“For all our good, Blaine has to marry Ariel. After she has the baby, we will take him, and throw her back to the gutters she crawled out of.”

“She would fight back.” Aoi said. “She might have gathered powerful allies in those six months.”

Heidi looked at her angrily. “The dead cannot fight back.”

***

“When are you coming back, Mom?” I asked my mother over the phone.

She had been gone for hours now, and it was beginning to get dark outside.

“Soon, my love. I just saw this cute coat for the baby. I am heading to the checkout counter.” She responded and hung up.

It still felt odd to talk about a baby.

Never in my life did I think I would have a baby this early. I had returned to Japan to find a job of all things.

The door burst open and Blaine walked in. His gray eyes were clouded and angry.

I stood up nervously.

“How long did you and Ruby plan this?”

“What?”

He shook his head.

“I liked you. I trusted you so much I unburdened myself to you that night. I had no idea you had an agenda.”

His accusation stung. He was making me sound like some evil seductress.

“Agenda? You could have told me too you had a fianceé, and I was just a rebound.”

“We were on a break.” He shouted angrily. “You think I would cheat on Ophelia?”

I looked at him in shock, feeling shame for the hundredth time since this whole nightmare began.

Why had I been so stupid that night?

Why had I been so stupid to sleep with a practical stranger, because we shared deep conversations for three consecutive evenings?

All the familiarity I thought I felt towards him that made me lower my walls was gone now.

“You got what you wanted. Get ready, we will go to the courthouse in the morning. The church wedding will happen this weekend,” Blaine said, and walked out.

I will not cry

I repeated again and again, as tears clogged my throat.

Foolish Ariel. Foolish foolish Ariel.

I should never have accepted that waitstaff job. I should have swallowed my pride and begged my mother for money.

It was only for a weekend. I would have survived till the next Monday I got the new job.

If I had stayed home, I would never have met Blaine, that one night would never have happened, and I would have been a respectable employee at Mõshon, instead of the chairman’s mistress.

“You homewrecker.” I heard the familiar words as my bedroom door flew open again, and Ophelia stood in the doorway.

I said nothing.

What was there to say? I had finally become my mother, a homewrecker.

“If there is anything I hate most in the world, it’s social climbers,” Ophelia said, and kicked the door shut with her heels.

I frowned.

Should there not be a guard posted at the door? I saw one earlier.

Opehlia walked closer and placed her hand on my belly, smiling darkly.

I flinched, stepping back.

“You are going to quietly miscarry this baby.” She said.

“What?”

She produced a tiny bottle, and held it up to my face.

I stepped back, as the danger I was in registered in my mind.

My eyes glanced at the door. Maybe I could make a run for it and scream.

Ophelia's eyes followed my gaze to the door, and she smiled.

She took out her phone and raised it to my face.

“Your mother?”

I warily stepped close to peer into the screen.

It was indeed my mother. Whoever was making this video was walking behind her as she walked around the supermarket.

“As soon as she steps out and goes down to the parking lot, my man would blow her brains out.”

I froze.

“The time you have to make a decision is dependent on how long she shops for.”

I felt an immediate urge to use the bathroom.

I could not let my mother die. At the same time, I could not kill my babies.

Ophelia pushed her phone into my hands, and went to sit on the bedroom couch like she had all the time in the world.

I could not think as I watched my mother, completely unaware that an assassin was behind her.

I was sweating, and my vision was getting blurry as I thought of a way out of this.

These people were nowhere in our league.

They were evil trillionaires who have done dirty things to each other over the years if the rumors could be believed.

“I will take it.” I said quickly as I saw my mother begin to walk out of the supermarket.

I was going to take a risk, and hope I got to the hospital in time.

“Good.” Ophelia stood up and handed me the bottle.

I kept my eyes on the screen as my mother neared the door. I drank the whole thing and let the bottle fall to the floor.

Ophelia nodded and took her phone from me.

“Shoot her.” She said, drawing the phone to her lips.