A Baby for the Billionaire

17

KEREM

"I come to your room, Thammy?"

"Of course, no problem. I have to give Ali a bath and you can help me if you like with his clothes before I go out for a walk."

"Yes of course."

I hear the governess exchanging words with my son's language teacher. Juliet has started to speak to Ali in Turkish with some words that seem to amuse the little one, because of the accent or because they are familiar to him since we spoke Turkish with Zara. For weeks that language has not been spoken at home.

Still the alerts go off in my head. Firstly because we have a two hour break after lunch until an intense afternoon and evening of listening to some enthusiastic entrepreneurial speeches begins and because Neville still hasn't gotten me anywhere else to go.

He's on these inquiries right now, alerting his mobile talking. Elijah also meets us in the living room set in one of the hotel's common rooms. He is reading and passing a folder with some of the ventures that are part of the firms.

"No, it is good for the child to distinguish who should change and bathe him and who is in charge of the teaching task. It's not good to confuse you and mix things up" I warn them both, pretending I'm reading my tablet too, but my ears are on them. Ali is resting right now in Juliet's arms since after lunch, he tends to take a little nap.

"Yes sir. As you say," says Thammy, submissively.

And as I expected, Juliet doesn't behave like that.

"It's also good that the father changes his diapers and teaches him to say daddy in his native language, I think. I do not know. It's just that I don't have a degree in pedagogy either."

Elijah, sitting next to me in the wide chair, chuckles under his breath.

I turn to him and nudge him.

"What's wrong with you?" I tell him.

"Dude, don't deny it. That one was good."

"My role is also to supervise the multidisciplinary task, I don't want to seem intrusive, Mr. Deniz," Juliet says.

I dodge her and turn to Neville, closing my tablet case, getting to my feet and going over to my assistant who just hung up on his cell.

For some reason the look on his face I don't like at all.

I need good news.

He sighs.

"Sir, the apartment is not far from here."

"I told you that apartment, the photos are horrible and I'm not going to leave my son."

"You can take him with you."

"And what would I do with the child?" Stop talking stupid, Neville."

"I'm sorry sir."

I sigh and look at him, regretting having spoken to him like that. He was with me when the Zara thing happened and before too, he's someone who absolutely doesn't deserve that I talk to him the way I just did, but something inside me seems to have been unleashed, perhaps because of the fury that Juliet constantly gets in my way.

Right now, for example, I'm listening to her laugh with Elijah and I already know what she's up to. I gave her the order to stop playing that little game, but she doesn't seem to have understood it at all and I don't want to get even more drastic.

It puts all my limits to the limit and I don't like that, at the same time that it ignites a spark inside me that may or may not be anger, the truth is that that spark had been out for a long time.

Anyway, I don't want her sleeping in my room.

"You can go to my room and I to yours, with Juliet."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Why sir?"

"Do you want to spend the night with my new employee? What the hell is this, a kind of cabaret where she offers herself to everyone around me?"

"Sir, I don't think Juliet is attempting anything you suggest."

"What I think is that it would be better for that girl to stay away from my people if she doesn't want to break the Guinness record for the woman with the shortest time spent on a job."

"You've been a bit hard on her from the start."

"Because she looked for me at the beginning."

"Let me get back to the apartment thing: Shall I cancel the reservation?"

"Of course! If we move, we all move or none of us. I cannot fragment the group that will work with me these days assiduously, Neville."

"Yes, sir," he says decisively.

I try to turn around and go to my room, but two things stop me. The first is turning to him and apologizing or thanking him, something that's not like me so instead the words that come out of my mouth are these:

"I trust you'll do your job well, Neville."

He looks at me, surprised, still trying to trace some contacts on the web and with people he trusts.

"I shall."

And then I go over to Elijah, interrupting his giggling session with my employees. Juliet is the one who seems most caught up in that idiot's charms.

"You. Come."

The three look at me, frozen.

But my eyes are on Juliet.

"What? Me?"

"Yes. Come with me now to my room."

I can almost hear the way the others swallow when they hear me.

Juliet stands up with the child in her arms, although I stop her:

"Leave Ali with Thammy so she can get on with her work with my son."

"He's on his nap schedule, why wake him up?"

"To be disciplined in healthy habits."

"He's ten months old!" she complains. "What kinds of habits do you envision for a child who is barely close to one year old?!"

"So that it doesn't fall on a person like you. Now come to my room right away and stop talking back to me, Juliet."

My eyes throw sparks.

Can't she just keep quiet and obey?

She also narrows her eyes and they are on me.

Combustion and flames can be sensed in the space between us, but she finally breaks the process, leaving Ali with me and she leads the way to the elevator while I follow behind to lock her in my room and teach her a lesson.