Chapter 43

“Those were by far the best years of my life!” Said Yasmin. “That was until Ivan fell sick while we were in Switzerland on a ski trip. He was coughing so much and losing weight drastically. When we went to a specialist hospital to find out what could be wrong, he was diagnosed with stage three throat cancer. It was an extremely difficult time for us knowing that we were about to be separated permanently. At Ivan’s request, we flew to his home country of Russia and lived together in one of his estates quietly and out of view. He died the following year and was buried in the garden outside his home. That was three years ago.”

“I am so sorry to hear that,” said Rachel.

“Well, after several months of therapy, I can talk about it without falling apart to pieces,” said Yasmin with a smile.

“Why did you come back here?” Derek asked her.

“The truth is, I’ve always loved this place. Something about Bermuda just draws me back to it, so I came to live here. Mind you, Ivan is one of the owners of the resort but after his death, I learned that he had willed everything he owned to me, Yasmin James. In case you’re wondering, both names were my parents’ first names. Ivan never had children and his ex-wife remarried shortly after their divorce, so she wasn’t entitled to alimony anymore. All of Ivan’s billions and multiple businesses became mine. It was his parting gift to me and I am forever grateful to him for that.”

“There is something I still don’t understand,” said Derek. “If you wanted the world to believe that you are dead, why would you risk blowing your cover by revealing yourself to us?”

Yasmin sighed. “As I said before, I couldn’t reveal my plan to you because I knew you hated me. After your father died of a heart attack, I wanted to reach out to you to let you know that I was still alive but Ivan thought that wouldn’t be a wise thing to do. He thought that it would be too jarring for you to find out that your philandering mother had somehow survived a plane crash, while your beloved father was now dead. I saw the wisdom in what he said, so I didn’t contact you. I had instead written a letter explaining all of this to you and it was to be delivered to you when I died for real. And then I found out that you were coming to Bermuda and it seemed like fate was finally allowing me to come clean at last.”

“Wait, did you just say that you found out that I was coming to Bermuda?” Derek asked incredulously. “How?”

Yasmin cleared her throat self-consciously. “Well, that brings me to the next part of my confession, Derek. I have been keeping track of you all these years. I’ve had someone watching you.”

************

“What do you mean by you have been watching me?” Derek asked in surprise. “How?”

Yasmin exhaled slowly. “I know you are probably going to hate me more than you already do by the time I am done with this next round of my confession,” she said and sounded tired even though her face still looked flawlessly beautiful and her youthful skin still glowed as before.

“I don’t hate you,” said Derek. “I simply don’t know you.”

“I understand,” she said indulgently. “Now, back to my confession. I have a friend named Ariana Connolly. We’ve been friends since high school and all through college. She was my maid-of-honor when I married your father. She was with me all through those years when I suffered emotional abuse from your father and when I seemingly spiraled out of control and started getting involved with different men. You see, Ariana has a daughter. This brilliant girl finished top of her class in Princeton and her dream was to work in the Fraser empire with you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, and when Ariana called me to ask that I get her daughter hired in the company, I knew I couldn’t say no to her. As fate would have it, you were shopping for new staff around that time, so I cleverly slipped her resume in with the others at HR. Fortunately, she got the job and it was my turn to ask Ariana for a favor. I begged her to instruct her daughter to always report back to her about anything and everything that you were up to both professionally and personally.”

“Wait. Are you saying that you’ve had someone spying on me all these years?”

Yasmin bowed her head. “Yes. It was the only way that I could know anything about you. As I said before, your father had already poisoned your heart against me so there was no room for me to establish any kind of relationship with you anymore. You never tried to talk to me and whenever I wanted to have a conversation with you, you’d blow me off and tell me to leave you alone. I let your father succeed in manipulating you against me and I also didn’t help matters with the way I went off the rails, living a wild life. Having that person watching you and reporting back to me was the closest I could get to you.”

“Oh my goodness…” Derek groaned as if he was physically sick.

“Are you all right?” Rachel asked him softly.

“No, Rachel,” he replied. “I knew coming here was a bad idea. I wish I didn’t know any of these things.”

“I am so sorry that you feel this way, Derek,” said Yasmin. “I wish I could go back in time and undo so many things. I wish I would have held my ground with your father and refused his offer of marriage. My father would have lost his business then, but didn’t he eventually lose it even after I married Jeremy? I wish I would have found a better outlet for my frustration instead of seeking redemption from the arms of different men. I made a lot of terrible mistakes in the past and I am sorry that I allowed you to despise me all these years without even making more efforts to tell you my side of the story.”

Derek sighed. “This is seriously messed up,” he said. “So, does this spy still report to you or did they stop after your… death?”

She smiled. “Well, besides the two of you, Ariana is the only person who knows that I am alive.”

“So, your friend is the spy? I’m confused.”

“She’s not the spy. Her daughter is. The girl reports to her mother, it has been so for years. Everything she tells Ariana, Ariana tells me.”

“Who then is the spy?” Derek wanted to know. The suspense was killing him.

“It’s your executive assistant/secretary, Diane Henson.”

“No!” Derek was shocked. “That cannot be possible.”

“It is. Ariana had Diane before she married Russ Connolly. She has worked with you for nearly a decade and she knows everything there is to know about you. Please, don’t be mad at her. Spying on you was her mother’s request as her payback for speaking to me about Diane’s intention to work with you. She was happy to do it because it seemed harmless enough, which it was, and still is. I just wanted to keep track of you and know for certain that you are ok.”

Rachel was touched by this woman’s love and concern for her only son even though he hadn’t given her a chance to get close to him.

“I feel as if my world keeps collapsing the more with every word that comes out of your mouth,” said Derek. “Why did you decide to reveal yourself to me now? What do you want from me?”

There was no mistaking the sadness that was written all over his mother’s face. “As I said earlier, I felt that the fates have given me a second chance to correct my past mistakes by making our paths cross here.”

“Our paths didn’t cross though,” said Derek, bitterly. “You stalked us.”

“What I meant was that your decision to come to Bermuda seemed divinely orchestrated,” explained Yasmin.

“There was nothing divine about our decision to come here,” Derek snapped. He was struggling to keep his temper in check. Everything this woman was saying was driving him insane and he hated how she was trying to rationalize it all. “Rachel wanted to visit Bermuda and that’s why we’re here. It was simply a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Yasmin, stubbornly. “Besides, you could have made up an excuse to not come here, knowing this was where your mother died. I guess you were curious to see where it all happened, weren’t you?”

Derek rose to his feet suddenly. “I have heard enough of your tales. I’m leaving!”

“But the lunch – “

“Screw your lunch!” He fired back at his mother.

“Derek!” Rachel was mortified by his manners, or the lack thereof. “Don’t be rude to your mother,” she said.

“She’s not my mother,” he snapped at her. “Are you coming or what?”
The Billionaire's Unexpected Fatherly Fate: Derek and Rachel's Stormy Saga
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