I Forgot I Ever Loved You (Zoe and Hayden) novel Chapter 666

Julie's husband was a low-life gambler with plenty of shady friends.

He and Julie had planned the kidnapping themselves without telling anyone else. He only mentioned that Julie was working as a maid for the Kendalls and left it at that.

He had told people his wife took time off to visit him, which gave him the perfect cover to ask around for information.

Julie covered her face, tears welling up in her eyes out of sheer terror.

"He is! He is a Kendall, I swear." The man muted the phone and glared fiercely at Julie. "You said he's a Kendall, but it's been days with no news. The guy who just answered the phone wasn't even a Kendall. He said the kid is his.

If you're playing me, I'll kill you. Don't think tossing me a million makes everything fine.

When you were starving and freezing, who paid for all the gold and silver jewelry you wear? Now it's time you answered to me.

Let me tell you, if I don't squeeze money out of this kid, I'll sell you off to a remote town and have them sell you for parts."

Julie was terrified. "He is, he is a Kendall! But they brought in a man as a cover-up.

That Lynd woman had an affair with Garrett Kendall and had a bastard. Afraid of the gossip, they bought a man to act as Zoe's husband.

They claim she had the kid with him, but who raises someone else's kid as their own?

The Kendalls registered this brat on their family registry. They paid me thousands to start, and when I complained, they gave me three full years of salary just to take care of him.

How could he not be a Kendall? They're probably just scared of what we might do to the brat and don't want to pay, so they had the fake husband answer the phone.

Rich people are so cheap. They'd rather hoard their money than pay for their own grandson's life.

The Kendalls are filthy rich, yet they're penny-pinching over a few million. They have black hearts. Is money really more important than this little brat's life?" Julie wasn't entirely stupid; she knew how to shift the blame onto the Kendalls. That way, she'd be off the hook.

The man sneered. "Who said anything about a few million? You're out of your mind. With the Kendalls' wealth, asking for anything less than hundreds of millions is an insult to them."

Caught up in his own arrogance, the man hadn't hung up the phone.

Hayden heard those words clearly: 'little bastard'. If a phone screen weren't separating them, he would have ripped the man's head off.

Bastard?

Anyone who dared call his son a bastard was truly tired of living.

The man didn't care that the line was still connected. He had a hostage, so he wasn't afraid. He knew that rich people usually feared he would actually kill the kid.

Unless Julie had lied to him.

"Eight hundred million. I don't care whose little bastard this is. Pay up eight hundred million, and I'll let him go."