Hired a Gigolo Got a Billionaire (Zoey and Christian) novel Chapter 664

Chapter 664

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Chapter 664

Nicholas’ POV

Renee was already gone by the time I could actually breathe, but the damage stayed behind like crushed glass on the floor. Invisible. Impossible to step on without getting cut.

Bella wouldn’t stop crying.

This wasn’t a dramatic tantrum. This was fear wrapped in anger, like someone had yanked the ground out from under her and she was fighting with her whole body not to fall.

“Princess…” I tried again, kneeling to her level. “Look at me.”

She jerked her face away and wiped her tears on her sleeve, like she was embarrassed to be crying.

“You lied to me!” she shouted.

The word hit me square in the chest.

“I didn’t lie. I just…” I stopped. Because in her language, “I just didn’t tell you” meant exactly the same thing. “I messed up. I should have told you.”

Her lip trembled. Her chin followed. Her eyes were huge.

“You’re going to leave me,” she repeated, her voice smaller now, barely steady. “You’re going to leave me and stay with the baby.”

My instinct was to deny it instantly.

But I remembered what my mother always said: when a child is afraid, you don’t argue with the fear. You hold it.

“You’re scared,” I said slowly, keeping my hands on my knees so I wouldn’t try to touch her again and make it worse. “I get that.”

“I don’t want it!” she cried louder. “I don’t want things to change!”

“I know,” I said. “I know, sweetheart.”

She made a strangled sound and ran upstairs.

I stood there for a second, debating whether to give her space or follow immediately.

But there is no “wait it out” with Bella. When she runs like that, she’s not asking for distance.

She was asking to be chased.

I went up.

Her door was mostly closed. I knocked lightly.

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“Bella… it’s me.”

“No!” came from inside, raw and broken. “Go away!”

I rested my forehead against the wood.

“I’m not going away,” I said quietly. “I’m just coming in to talk. Can I?”

Silence. A hiccupped sob. Another.

I pushed the door open slowly.

She was sitting on her bed, clutching her backpack to her chest like it was a life raft. Her eyes were swollen and shiny, and something inside me broke in a way that felt physical.

“You promised,” she said, her voice thin. “You promised it was me.”

I stepped into the room but stopped halfway. Didn’t crowd her. Didn’t force it.

“I promised I would love you forever,” I said. “And that I will never break.”

She shook her head hard.

“No. You promised that… that I was…” She searched for the words through tears. “The most important.”

My stomach twisted.

“You are important,” I said firmly. “You are… you’re a part of me that no one can take.”

She squeezed the backpack tighter.

“But the baby is going to be tiny,” she whispered. “And tiny gets held. And I’m already big. Everybody says that. ‘You’re a big girl.’ And then I feel…” She frowned, confused by the size of the feeling. “I feel extra.”

I slowly lowered myself to my knees on the floor, keeping my movements calm and steady.

“You are not extra,” I said gently. “You are my first. You made me a dad. Do you know what that means?”

She sniffed, still defensive.

“It means before you, I didn’t know how to be someone’s father. You taught me. Every hug. Every bedtime story. Every time you laughed at my bad jokes. You built that.”

Her crying softened, just a little.

“The baby isn’t replacing you,” I continued. “The baby is joining us. There’s a difference.”

She looked at me carefully, like she was testing the truth.

“But you’re going to hold it,” she insisted.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to hold the baby. And I’m still going to hold you. You don’t stop being my little girl

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just because you get taller.”

She hesitated.

“And Gwen?” she asked, small but sharp. “She’s going to love it more.”

That one hurt differently.

“Gwen loves you,” I said quietly. “Not because she has to. Because she chooses to. And loving a baby doesn’t erase that.”

Bella stared at the floor.

I exhaled slowly.

“I should have told you first,” I admitted. “Before anyone else. Before the internet. That’s on me. You deserved that.”

Her eyes flickered up.

“You were going to tell me?” she asked, fragile hope buried under accusation.

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I was just trying to figure out how to make it special. Because it is special. And you are part of it.”

She swallowed.

“Part of it how?”

I let out a slow breath.

“How would you feel about being the big sister?” I asked softly. “Not the ‘extra.’ The leader. The teacher. The one the baby looks up to.”

She blinked.

“Like… in charge?”

I smiled faintly.

“Like important in a different way. The kind of important only you can be.”

Her grip on the backpack loosened.

The fear wasn’t gone.

But it wasn’t swallowing her whole anymore either.

“You are not extra,” I said. “And if someone made you feel that way today… that person was wrong. Very wrong.”

She sniffed, and something in her expression nearly destroyed me. For a split second, she looked

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relieved that I had called it wrong.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, her voice cracking in the middle. “I’m not dumb…”

I shut my eyes briefly, like she had slapped me.

“No,” I said. “You’re not dumb. I was trying to do it the right way… and I did it the wrong way. That’s on me.

And deep down, I had underestimated the world we were living in.

Before Gwen, things in my life unfolded slowly. Conversations at the kitchen table. Decisions made face- to-face. News shared with time and care. I thought I would have a quiet evening. A beautiful moment. A chance to sit with Bella and explain everything gently.

I wasn’t used to this exposed life. To strangers turning every breath into a headline. To gossip accounts finding out” before family did. To news leaking.

And even so, I should have been faster than the internet.

Bella watched me like she was deciding whether I deserved her trust.

“Are you going to love me the same?” she asked.

My throat tightened, and I hated Renee more than I thought I was capable of.

“I am going to love you always,” I said.

Bella took a shaky breath.

I opened my arms slowly, offering them the way you offer water.

“Do you want a hug?” I asked quietly. “Or do you just want me to sit here?”

She looked at me with anger… and then with a sadness so big it seemed too heavy for her body.

“I want Mommy,” she said.

The words went straight through me.

“I want my real mommy,” she added, her eyes filling again. “I want my mom.”

I froze.

And that was the exact moment Gwen appeared in the doorway, her face tense but her eyes full of care.

“Bella…” she began softly. “Sweetheart, I-”

Bella turned toward her like she’d been attacked.

“No!” she screamed, raw and unfiltered. “You’re not my mom!”

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Gwen stopped like the air had been pulled from the room.

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“I know I’m not…” Gwen tried carefully, like she was walking barefoot over glass. “I just wanted to say-”

“I don’t want you!” Bella cried, full panic now. “I want my mom!”

I saw the color drain from Gwen’s face.

I saw her hand grip the edge of the doorframe, like she needed something solid to keep from falling.

“Okay,” she said softly. The word was too small for a woman like her. “Okay, sweetheart.”

She didn’t argue. Didn’t insist. Didn’t try to win.

She just stepped back.

And before she turned away, her eyes met mine for a second.

It was quick, but I saw everything in that look. The hurt. The restraint. And something worse than hurt.

Guilt.

Gwen turned and walked away.

Her footsteps down the hallway were quiet, but they sounded loud to me. Like doors closing.

Bella kept crying on the bed.

And I stayed there on my knees in the middle of the room, staring at the doorway Gwen had just disappeared through, with the crushing certainty that Renee hadn’t just planted fear in my daughter.

She had torn something out of all three of us.