“Did she try to pretend it was your baby?”

“No, the timing wouldn’t have been right. I wouldn’t have thought the timing was right for it to belong to my father either, but apparently, they continued their affair long after I came back from Finland the first time, after I found out about them. All the business trips my father took, he was going there, checking in on the factory, and seeing her.”

“Gross,” I managed to get out. Tucker nodded his head in agreement. “She tried to win you back the last time you were there, knowing that she was pregnant with your father’s baby?” Something didn’t seem right about that, since Tucker said the timing wasn’t right for him to even think he had been the father.

“I don’t think it was my father who paid her to try to seduce me then. I think it was my grandfather, and he hoped to kill two birds with one stone. Get rid of you and get rid of the problem that my father caused before my mom found out about it. Maybe he thought that Venla would abort it if she had a chance with me again? I don’t know.”

We both sat quietly for a moment before he continued telling me what happened. “Her family put all their money into some bad investment or another. They lost almost everything, and their hotel is on the line now. That was why she was with me initially. I was their plan to get out of debt. She begged for that job over the summer, but I wouldn’t hire her because I thought it would create too much friction and not enough separation between us, you know? Plus, she wasn’t qualified. I told her that none of it belonged to me yet, that it had to pass through succession, through inheritance. That must have been where she got the idea that my father was the one with the true power and money.” He winced as he sat up in bed. I didn’t know if it was the movement that caused him pain or knowing that his ex-girlfriend was only after him – and then his father – for the money she thought they were worth.

“I don’t understand,” I spoke out loud while trying to puzzle through everything. “Obtaining a job as your assistant certainly couldn’t have paid enough to bail a hotel or an entire family out of financial ruin.”

He sighed and looked away as he thought about it. “I don’t know what her motive was with that. Maybe, it was just a way to keep an eye on things, or to get a better look at the financials for the local offices and factory?” What he said and questioned was speculation at best, and probably as close as anyone would ever be able to get to the truth.

“Anyway, that night, in front of the hotel, she was trying to tell me that her baby needed to be taken care of too, that it was my brother or sister, and therefore my responsibility to get my father to do the right thing. I told her that she chose him, she needed to go through him to get whatever she thought she was entitled to.”