Page 44 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

I sigh. “No. But you can’t spend it without telling me or your father first.”

Callum opens his mouth and makes a hissing sound that has him blinking. Finally he says, “We’ll do what your mother says.”

We’re at the car before I ask, “How much are you giving him?”

He opens the door for his son. “I’ve invested in shares under his name. He’s getting monthly dividends from that. Around a couple hundred thousand a month.”

My bad leg buckles half an inch, so I put a hand on the roof of the car.

“Mom, are you okay?”

“No.” I get in. “I feel like I’ve stepped into some alternate reality.”

Luca leans across the seat. “What’s that? Is that a food?”

“Bless you, Luca.” I put my arm around him. “Food is all you think about, isn’t it?”

“I also think about wolves.” He grins at me. “Can we get wolves? I didn’t bring mine from home.”

“We can just pick up the ones we have.”

“We can get new ones,” Callum counters.

“He collected those over years.” I turn around in the seat. “Every birthday, every prize, every dollar he earned helping me haul laundry down four flights. That collection is irreplaceable. Not everything can be valued with money, Callum.”

He looks at me without saying anything and then gives Petrov the address on Garrick Street without asking me for it.

It takes us twenty minutes to get there, and Callum follows us inside. Luca goes straight up to his room while I stand in the middle of the front room with my keys still in my hand. The table leg is still shimmed with a takeout menu. Tape holds the window frame together, and the throw is over the back of the sofa where I left it on Tuesday.

“I’m going to have to give this place up now.”

“If you want to move all this stuff to storage, you can. Or you can sell it.” Callum has stopped in the doorway because there’s nowhere in here he fits. “I’m sure you can afford better things now.”

“Not everything can be sold here. Some of them hold a lot of sentimental value to me.”

I pick the throw off the sofa. It’s green, and one edge runs crooked, because it was made by hand in a shelter with a borrowed needle.

“This one my sister hand-stitched for me. It was the last thing she ever gave me, aside from Luca. I can’t sell it.”

He says nothing for long enough that I hear my own sentence back. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I’ve been looking into your sister.” He takes one step into the room. “I have a lot of questions and very few answers.”

“I mean it. She never took your money.”

“I believe you.”

I swallow. “My sister just got into a bad crowd once, but she was leaving it.” I fold the throw over my arm. “I don’t know why she took the baby and ran. I don’t understand why she was scared of you. Or if it was you that she was scared of, but she was scared of somebody.”

“I’m investigating it.”

“Why didn’t you investigate it all these years ago?”

“I was given a false identity.”

“To be fair, Maya was very good at fake IDs.” I sit down on the arm of the sofa. “She got into it when she first had to adopt me because she was too young, so she made one that let her pretend to be older and take me in.”

He focuses his attention on me, and I keep talking. “But you must have had something to go on, a picture or something. Don’t tell me you just had somebody walk in and let them be a surrogate. You must have done some research.”