The Billionaire’s Fight For Redemption (Noah and Sierra) novel Chapter 253

“I don’t think I heard you right,” Mom says, staring at me like I should be booking a psychiatry appointment. “There must be a mistake.”

I get her. I really do. Noah is the last person anyone would ever imagine I’d have a child with, yet here we are and the proof is the very obvious baby bump stretching beneath my T-shirt.

“There’s no mistake, Mom,” I breathe, though the air catches painfully in my chest. “Noah fathered my child.”

Silence fills the room. It’s so quiet it feels like we’re the only two people left in the world. Like everything has frozen, holding its breath.

Mom stares at me as if she doesn’t recognize me. Like she’s struggling to process the words I just said.

The longer she stays silent, the more antsy I become.

I wring my hands as nervous energy takes over. Sweat pools under my arms as I wait for her to say something. Anything. The silence is killing me and at this point, I’ll take anything, just not silence.

“I need to sit down before I fall on my ass,” she finally whispers, collapsing onto the sofa like the weight of the world has just landed on her shoulders.

“Mom...”

She cuts me off. “How did this happen?”

Her voice is low, almost distant, like she’s speaking more to herself than to me.

“We were drunk,” I admit, staring down at my folded arms.

Her head snaps up, eyes sharp as she pins me in place. “That’s not a fucking excuse, Sierra.”

“I know,” I whisper.

“After everything that boy put you through,” she says, jumping to her feet and pacing. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“Mom…”

“Oh, right!” she all but shouts. “You weren’t thinking! Because if you had been, you wouldn’t have slept with him.”

I sit there, frozen, tears threatening to spill. She doesn’t need to say she’s disappointed; I feel it and it’s killing me.

I’ve always been the good girl. The one Mom never had to worry about. The one who was responsible. Careful. Thought things through.

She’s never been disappointed in me because I made sure she wasn’t. I kept my life neatly divided, only ever showing her the polished version of myself. Her perfect little girl. But now she is disappointed and it fucking hurts.

“Why, Sierra?” she asks, stopping her pacing to stare at me. “Why him? Of all the men you could have had a child with?” Her voice cracks with anger and disbelief. “Have you forgotten how he broke you? How many times you cried because of him?”

My heart constricts painfully as she drags up a past I’ve been trying so hard to bury.

“I watched you fall apart,” she continues. “I watched you struggle to put yourself back together. I thought you had moved on. So why would you let yourself get tangled in his web again?”

I close my eyes, forcing the tears back. I understand her anger. I understand her fear but what’s done is done and no amount of yelling can undo it.

“It was a mistake, Mom,” I say finally, my voice trembling. “One stupid, drunken mistake and as much as I regret what happened, I will never regret my baby.”

Her stare slices into me as she plants her hands on her hips, but I don’t back down.

“I know I fucked up when I let things go that far...”

“Language!” she snaps.

I exhale slowly. “I know I messed up badly, but I won’t let you make me feel like shit for it. It already happened, and nothing I do can change that.”

I can practically see her grinding her teeth.

Thinking about it now makes my chest ache.

I always wondered what went wrong. We were so close back then. I genuinely believed we’d be best friends for life. I never imagined Chloe would change so completely, but maybe she never changed at all. Maybe that was just who she was, and she’d been good at hiding it.

Maybe, just maybe, the friendship we thought we had was never real to her. Maybe it was all part of a plan.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Chloe approached Lilly first. Lilly then introduced her to me, and then we all became inseparable.

Maybe that was her plan all along. Maybe she was just looking for access to Noah, so she befriended Lilly.

She never cared about me or Lilly. Noah was always the target.

It’s sick when you really think about the lengths she went to just to have him even as a kid, but then again, this is Chloe we’re talking about. Nothing about her surprises me anymore.

“What are you frowning about?” Mom asks, returning with a glass in one hand and the bottle of vodka in the other. She sits down just as a notification pings on her phone.

“Nothing,” I say, even though the thought refuses to leave.

She takes a sip, then suddenly stiffens, staring at her phone like it just offended her.

“What the hell?” she growls.

I frown. “What’s wrong?”

She turns the phone toward me, eyes flashing. “What is this, Sierra? I thought you said what happened was a one-time thing?”

My breath catches as I look at the screen and read the headlines.

[Billionaire CEO Noah Woods has tongues wagging after a photo of him and a mystery woman in Paris surfaced… Is the unattainable and reclusive heir to the Wood Corporation finally ready to move on and give love a second chance?]