Broken Truth

by Beth Ashworth

  “No,” she answered quietly.

  “Where would you like to start?”

  Charlie noticed that Callum was now softly caressing her fingers with his thumb. The gesture was simple yet extremely distracting to her.

  “Why?” She asked the question with a sudden harshness that caused Callum to flinch. “Why did you do it, Callum? Why did you lie to me?”

  She saw him visibly swallow a few times before he cleared his throat to reply.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did,” Callum confessed. “God,” he sighed. “You weren’t supposed to get hurt this way, Charlie. I didn’t tell you so that I could protect you or so I thought.”

  “You were sleeping with me while you were a married man, Callum,” Charlie replied, shaking her head. “It is fair enough that you married her for the reasons you did and that you didn’t love her, but you have a daughter for God’s sake. How could you think that keeping that from me wasn’t a big deal?” She could hear her own voice starting to shake as the floodgate to her emotions crumbled.

  Callum tightened his grip on Charlie’s hand to the point where she could feel significant pain. Rather than pull away, she watched on with unnerving fascination as the darkness within his eyes turned practically black with regret.

  She had never seen him like this before.

  She felt as though he was truly opening up his now damaged soul to her.

  They remained silent, staring into each other’s eyes until the waiter arrived to disrupt the quietness. As he placed the cups and bowls in front of them, they both took turns to mumble their thanks, their eyes never breaking contact once.

  Eventually, Callum broke the silence between them. “She isn’t mine...”

  Charlie’s eyes widened. “What do you mean she isn’t yours?”

  He shook his head as a sad expression crossed over his features.

  “Tell me,” she pressed, squeezing their already tightly grasped hands. She could see the pain reflected across his face and how hard this was for him, but she needed to know. She needed him to explain this further to her.

  “She isn’t my daughter.”

  “That’s ludicrous,” Charlie replied, “If you aren’t the father then who is?”

  Upon asking the question, she saw Callum’s jaw abruptly clench as the darkness within his eyes instantly lit into fury and aggression.

  “Jared is Paige’s father...”

  Her heartbeat sped up as she shook her head in denial. “No,” she answered. “That is impossible.”

  Callum scoffed. “It really isn’t,” he replied. “It turns out Jared was fucking Claire a few weeks after we originally got together.”

  “But... You were working with Jared before you met Claire right?”

  “Yes. The bastard didn’t say anything to me while I was dating Claire. He was fucking my girlfriend behind my back and then got her pregnant,” Callum explained.

  “How did you find out?”

  “I went to pick up Paige one night after work a few weeks before you left me. I think Claire had forgotten that I was picking her up that evening because I ended up walking into the living room to find Jared nailing her on the sofa.”

  “Oh my God,” she breathed, unable to hide the surprise in her voice. “Paige wasn’t home right?”

  “God no,” Callum said, shaking his head. “She wouldn’t do that in the living room with Paige around the house. She knows better than that.”

  “So how did you find out that she wasn’t yours?”

  “Obviously I wasn’t upset that she was sleeping with someone else. Christ, we were married nearly four years and I barely slept with her,” – Charlie winced awkwardly – “Sorry, I just meant that I was surprised rather than angry. I couldn’t believe out of all the people she could have picked, she picked Jared?” He pulled his face in confusion before continuing. “But anyway, I casually questioned how long it had been going on for just thinking a couple of weeks or something. Well... Claire started reeling off some defensive shit about never being loved and what was she supposed to do etc... Whereas Jared just shrugged and told me straight that it had been going on for years.”

  “What happened next?”

  Callum grinned. “I told her I was getting a paternity test and then I knocked that fucker out cold. I think the count is at three knockouts now.”

  “So Claire didn’t know who the father was?”

  “Not a fucking clue. She was fucking both of us and didn’t know who had fathered the child. She made out to Jared that it was mine and he believed her. I mean, I fucking believed her. Then I married her for the sake of the baby.” Callum banged his free hand hard against the table making Charlie jump. “I married her thinking that baby was mine. I wanted my child to grow up with a family and not a nanny. It is so hard, Charlie. I’ve watched that little girl grow up for almost three years thinking she was my baby, when all along I wasn’t even her biological father.”

  Charlie noticed the sadness starting to creep back into Callum’s eyes. Their discussions of Paige clearly triggered a deep vault of emotions somewhere within him.

  “When did you find out?” Charlie asked the question although she knew the subject was distressing him. She needed to make sure she had all of the answers to her questions.

  “I got the call the night you showed up in London,” he admitted as a small tear leaked from the corner of his eye. “I was out with Paige when the call came through. As soon as I heard those results my heart just broke. I had this little girl with me that thought I was her Daddy when in reality I was nothing to her.”

  “Don’t even say that you are nothing to her,” Charlie choked as her own tears started to fall. “You were that little girl’s Daddy for the first three years of her life. She looked up to you and she loves you.”

  “I know she loves me just like I love her with all of my heart. That little girl has been my life, Charlie. It was when I got that phone call about the test results that I decided I needed to do something. I knew I needed to get that divorce in place and quick. I had already made the call to my solicitor to set the ball in motion when I was on my way back to drop Paige off with Claire. Although I was sad at what I had discovered, I was also feeling happy for the prospects of our future.”

  Charlie clamped her mouth closed as she let Callum continue.

  “You see, Charlie. I had everything in place all along. I knew eventually I was going to divorce Claire so that I could propose to you, but I needed to make sure plans were in place for Paige first and that she was old enough to understand. Before I even found out about Jared, I was already having the Saturday conference calls with my solicitor so that we could setup a trust fund for Paige for when she turns eighteen. Whilst I have ensured that will remain in place as decided, my solicitor has managed to get the annulment with not too much damage on my part and without a court trial. Claire has walked away with nothing but the money she was siphoning off from my accounts and the knowledge that Paige’s trust fund is safe for when she is older.”

  “She was taking money from you?” Charlie gasped.

  Callum smirked. “Of course she has. I’ve known it for a long time Charlie, but I let it continue because I knew why she was doing it. She was trying to set herself up with financial security for when Daddy found out what a little whore she had been and cut her off.” He tapped his fingers on the table as he continued to explain. “She knew that I would divorce her someday, so she was building herself a healthy little nest egg for when that time came. You see, I made sure to get a pre-nuptial agreement before we married, so she wasn’t entitled to anything.”

  “But what about your business? Claire told me that you had lost everything because of her Father and the divorce,” Charlie asked, unable to hold her tongue.

  Callum smiled knowingly. “She thinks that she put my business under, but she didn’t. I had already arranged a buyout with her Father before the divorce proceeded. His number was the first one I dialled after I got the call ab
out the results. It turns out Daddy wasn’t too impressed that his princess had a child with someone else, so he agreed to the buyout with no conditions.”

  “I take it that didn’t go down very well?”

  Callum gave her a wry smile. “That is correct. Although Claire was less than pleased that I managed to walk away from everything virtually unscathed, it wasn’t her behind the events that subsequently followed despite what you might think. It wasn’t until later on that I found out the mastermind behind everything... Jared had been planning this attack for years.”

  “Planning for what?”

  “A plan to get back at me,” he explained with a sigh. “You see, Baby. Jared has always wanted what I’ve had. He wanted the financial security, the power of owning his own company along with the ensuing family package. When he saw me with Claire in the early stages of our relationship, he decided he wanted what I had. He wanted Claire, so he made a beeline for her and the stupid cow went along with it behind my back. Then she fell pregnant and I married her for the sake of the company and my unborn child. I couldn’t risk losing her Father from the business because his influence was far too great on the lower investors in my company.”

  He took a deep breath and Charlie placed her other hand on top of his. “Go on,” she pressed.

  “I fell in love with Paige the moment I held her in my arms. I wanted to love and protect that little girl no matter what my relationship with Claire was like. I knew that if we divorced she would fight me for full custody and I didn’t want Paige to have to go through that. She knew why I was holding on. She knew that I was waiting for the right moment to leave. So that was when she got clever and the threats started happening,” he explained.

  “What threats?” Charlie wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “At first I didn’t know what she was doing because a close friend of hers helped her keep it all hushed over. I’m not sure how long it was going on, but I knew I needed to get myself and Paige out of there.” Callum cringed visibly. “She was taking concoctions of pills, which thankfully weren’t life threatening. Then she started to become depressed and talking about not wanting to be around anymore. That was when the weekend phone calls started. She called me over the weekends you and I were together, telling me that she was going to go through with it and I needed to stop her because it wasn’t fair on Paige to lose her Mother.”

  Charlie couldn’t believe what she was actually hearing. She had known from first impressions that something was different about Claire, but she hadn’t thought her mentally unstable.

  “My solicitor started looking into different angles for me and how I could work the divorce without losing Paige. I decided that I wanted to go for full custody of Paige in the hopes that we could bring her up together. My solicitor agreed and things started to look good, until the day I walked in to find Claire with Jared. You see, it all started to slot into place the moment he told me that he loved Claire. I knew that he was planning something, so I confronted him. He denied everything of course up until it came out that I wasn’t Paige’s biological father. That was the moment he had been waiting for all along. He asked Claire to be with him in the hopes of taking over the company from me after the divorce. When Claire denied his request, he set his sights much higher.”

  “He wanted to come after you?”

  “Jared believes that I ruined everything for him. He had planned to take over the company once my divorce with Claire had finalised. He hoped that Claire’s Father would watch me suffer following the divorce and give Jared sole reign over everything. What he didn’t bargain for was that I would tell her Father exactly who Jared was, effectively ruining any chance he had at taking over that company. I walked away with a nice settlement, Claire managed to persuade her Father to forgive her and Jared was left with nothing.”

  “Is that why he targeted me at Vision?” Charlie asked.

  Callum nodded. “He went for you knowing that you would be the final piece that could bring everything down. He knew that if he couldn’t have Claire or the company then you were the next thing on his list.”

  Charlie closed her eyes as guilt consumed her. “I almost allowed his plan to succeed,” she whispered.

  “I can live with almost.” Callum lifted his free hand to rub his wrinkled brow. “I am so thankful that I decided to keep tabs on you that night,” he confessed. “I know it was wrong to have followed you, but if I hadn’t, God knows what would have happened after. I mean, who knows if we would even be sitting here right now?”

  “You were angry.” She turned her head away in shame as she remembered the images of the destruction left at the penthouse.

  “I was,” he conceded. “I was extremely angry when I saw that bastard’s hands on your body. I just needed to do something, so I took it out on Jared and then the living room when I got home.”

  She angled her head to focus on him. “But you left the penthouse in that mess for weeks though? Why Callum?” she asked, already knowing the answer to the question. She had known all along that Amelia was right with her theory and that he had done it to show her his true feelings.

  “You hurt me, Baby. Seeing you with him and what you were about to do hurt me more than anything Claire or Jared could have done.” At that moment, Charlie felt her heart break into two pieces as she witnessed the outpour of hurt and pain in his cracked voice. “I needed to show you that it wasn’t just you that was feeling lost and broken. I was feeling it all too, Charlie. I just wanted you to see that I was taking everything just as hard as you,” he croaked.

  “Why didn’t Claire tell me what was going on? She could have stopped all of this,” Charlie asked, feeling slightly annoyed that she had been tricked into a part of Jared’s scheming plan.

  Callum gently shook his head. “Of course she couldn’t say anything to you. As far as Claire was concerned, she didn’t know anything about the plan Jared was devising. Her mission that day was to purposely fill your head with more lies and try to convince you not to come back to me. She lied to you about me losing the money and the company. She lied to you about me being Paige’s father. Charlie, she fed you a little bit of the truth mixed with a whole load of bullshit. She believed that if she couldn’t have me then you couldn’t either.”

  “I’m sorry for believing her and I am sorry for what happened with Jared.”

  “I know you are, Baby. I get that it was a mistake. You were angry and hurt at that moment, and I can’t blame you for the thoughts running through your head. I would have deserved everything I got if you had actually gone through with it,” he said quietly.

  Charlie nodded.

  “So how did Jared buy into The I&L Group?” she asked.

  “He had money saved. The company were desperate for his experience along with the cheque he could provide, so they snapped him up immediately. After everything that had happened at Vision, he still clearly wasn’t done with you Charlie. That’s why he arranged for you to be transferred to Milan. It was an easier place for him to work on you. He wanted you,” Callum spat.

  “How do you know all of this?” Charlie asked curiously.

  “Baby,” he grinned. “Nothing is ever secret from me. I’ve had Jared and Claire followed for the past two months so that I could see what was happening. I knew you were at the club already, so when he showed up I knew something was up. I also knew he was meeting with the director’s of The I&L Group. It wasn’t hard for me to put everything in place.”

  “So... You bought out the company from underneath him?”

  “Yes,” Callum smirked. “I had great pleasure in writing that cheque and getting on that plane. I received the call yesterday morning that the deal with Jared had gone through and that he was making his way out to you. Luckily, all I had to do was throw a large sum of money at them and they caved. They were going to tell Jared tomorrow that it had all blown up, but I guess I got here first and broke the happy news.”

  “So you did that for me?” she ask
ed.

  He nodded. “I’d do anything for you, Baby.”

  “Then why did it take you a month to approach me after you divorced Claire?” she challenged.

  “I am sorry for that, but I have had to lay low over the past few weeks because I have been busy making arrangements,” he admitted with a small smile.

  “Arrangements for what?” Charlie cocked her head to the side and studied him inquisitively.

  “For Paige,” Callum replied. “After Claire rejected Jared, he told her that he didn’t want anything to do with her or Paige. When Claire told me this my heart broke for that little girl because she doesn’t deserve to not have a father in her life. I asked Claire on her thoughts if I were to go for joint custody with her and effectively adopt her as my own. I was going to try for full, but Claire promised to get help for her depression.”

  Moisture pricked at the corners of Charlie’s eyes. “Did you get it?” she whispered.

  Callum beamed and squeezed their entwined fingers. “She is legally my daughter now.”

  “Oh Callum!” Charlie couldn’t stop the smile on her face. “I am so pleased for you.”

  “I got half of my life back together,” he said, watching her closely. “Now I need to get the other half fixed.” He stroked her hand affectionately. “I wanted you to hear all of this from me. I wanted to tell you everything, so you knew what the truth was. I know that I messed up by not telling you everything and I’m sorry, but I just want you to give this another chance. Please,” he started to beg. “Please just give us both another chance. It will be different this time - I promise. I can’t even tell you how much my heart has ached for you since you’ve been gone. I knew from the moment that we met that I didn’t just want you in my life, I wanted you as my wife and the mother to help me raise our daughter.”

  Charlie felt her chest beginning to cave from the overwhelming amount of emotions she was feeling. There was so much information for her brain to take in and process, so much so that she could hardly think straight.

  Looking down at Callum’s hand covering hers, she knew at that moment that she had a choice to make.