Page 70 of My Big, Fat, Secret Billionaire Baby

There’s a pause. I can almost hear the internal debate raging. Finally, she sighs. “All right, Sabrina. Iwon’t say anything. For now. But this...” Her voice trails off, leaving the unspoken ‘is a terrible idea’ hanging in the air. Instead, she adds: “Okay. But Sabrina… I want to talk to him directly.”

My stomach plummets. “What? Now?”

“Yes.”

“Mom, no. That’s not a good idea.”

“I need to,” she insists, her voice gaining that stubborn edge I know all too well. “I need to hear it from him. I need to know what his intentions are towards my granddaughter. Put him on the phone, Sabrina.”

“Mom…”

“Now, Sabrina.” It’s not a request.

I look helplessly at Leo. I mute the line, and say, “She wants to talk to you.”

He raises an eyebrow, then gives a curt nod, his expression hardening slightly.

Preparing for battle perhaps?

Oh god. This is going to be a train wreck.

With a deep breath, feeling like I’m about to referee a cage match between my fiercely protective, wounded mother and the emotionally complicated billionaire father of my child, I unmute the phone and tap the speakerphone icon.

“Okay, Mom. You’re on speaker. Leo’s right here.”

The silence crackles for a second. Then Diane’s voice fills the opulent living room.

“Mr. Maxwell,” Diane begins, her tone glacial enough to freeze the expensive coffee sitting untouched on Leo’s side table. “This is Diane Taylor, Sabrina’s mother. And Mia’sgrandmother.” The emphasis on the last word is deliberate, possessive. A verbal line drawnin the sand.

Leo shifts Mia slightly in his arms, his gaze fixed on my phone. His expression is carefully neutral, the billionaire businessman mask sliding back into place.

“Ms. Taylor,” he replies smoothly. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, under the circumstances.”

“There’s very little pleasure involved, Mr. Maxwell,” Diane retorts sharply. “Let’s cut the bullshit.” I always cringe when my mom swears. I don’t know why. It just feels so... unmotherly. “My daughter tells me you only just found out about Mia. Is that correct?”

“That is correct,” Leo confirms.

“And your reaction, I understand, was less than ideal.”

Oh god, Mom, please don’t.

“My reaction,” Leo says, a dangerous edge creeping into his voice, “was one of shock and, frankly, anger at having been deliberately kept in the dark about my own child for almost two years. I believe that’s understandable.”

“What’s understandable, Mr. Maxwell,” Diane shoots back, “is Sabrina’s fear. Her reluctance. I know your type.”Ouch.“I’ve lived through the aftermath of a man like you... charming, successful, exciting, and ultimately, devastatingly unreliable. Men who make promises they don’t keep. Men who disappear when things get tough, leaving broken hearts and lives behind them. My daughter deserved better than repeating my mistakes. And my granddaughter,” her voice trembles slightly now, raw emotion breaking through the anger, “deserves better than a father who might decide she’s an inconvenience to his jet-setting lifestyle or his dangerous hobbies.”

I wince, closing my eyes. This is exactly what Iwas worried about. My mother, projecting her own pain onto Leo.

It’s not fair.

But is she entirely wrong?

She’s only echoing my own misgivings. Maybe Leo needs to hear this again. I already told him as much on that first day, when he asked why I kept the baby from him. Now it’s my mother’s turn to hammer the message home. Maybe if he hears it enough times, it’ll stick.

Don’t break our hearts.

Leo is silent for a long moment. I watch his jaw work, his grip tightening almost imperceptibly on Mia, who thankfully remains asleep, oblivious to the intergenerational trauma playing out around her.

When he finally speaks, his voice is measured, but laced with something that sounds remarkably like… pain?

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