CEO Of My Heart 272 272

"Now?  What a surprise!  I always wondered what you were angry with Sheng Mei when she brought up your mother.  We refrained due to your discomfort up and until now." Nadius looked pensive as he leaned back.  What he had been gearing up for was not what was needed. "I'm very curious as to what triggered your question?  Not that it is an unwelcome question, but I may not be the best person to answer the query. Your father would have been, but of course G.o.d rest his poor soul, he's no longer with us."

"I need to know if I'm going to move forwards in my life.  What if I have a child like her?" Henry stood up quickly as he words came more quickly and with increasing volume.  "Why did she do the things that she did? I could never understand her nature and why she made certain choices. What was the nature of her relationship with my father after she refused to be his breeding machine because medically she couldn't have any more children.  Why was everyone in the community refusing to speak to us when she left my father? What was the truth behind everyone saying that she was a 'bad wife' if she did exactly as he wanted her to do for ten years."

"My G.o.d, where did you hear such horrid things.  Those aren't things a child should know. You were ten-eleven when all that was coming out.  Michael hid you away so you wouldn't see it. That's why you went to boarding school in Canada for two years while it was all sorted out.  We paid the whole town off so the news wouldn't reach you. No one knew anything even about who you were." His uncle looked at him with a strange mixture of revulsion and compa.s.sion.

"You forgot to pay off the radio." Henry said darkly. "You have Canadian Public Broadcasting to blame when they would read the headlines.  But that wasn't how I found out. Do you remember when I was home for the holidays that Michael made me spend it with you rather than at home?"

"Sheng Mei knew not to tell you anything.  She swore to me. I'll call her here now if you don't believe me.  I did everything I could to keep you safe and out of harms way. We were doing our best."

"Your best wasn't enough.  Do you remember you left me alone in Chou's office while you two went out to have a private conversation in the hall?  All the divorce proceedings and newspaper clippings were tacked onto a bulletin board in his office. I saw it, all of it.  No one cared about my innocence."

Nadius gasped as he squeezed his face between his cheeks in an exasperating realization.  He sighed. "I have no excuse. But, there were so many big lawyerly words. How would a child of average intelligence know what was being said in just doc.u.ments?  My rationale at that time was I didn't want to see it so I moved away from it, but I did need to ask Chou about custody arrangements. I apologize. It's a wonder that you could too know what was going on even though we had told you nothing."

Thinking back, Henry mused, that his uncle couldn't have been a year or so out of business school around the time that his brother-in-law had given him such a monumental task.  Nadius had been quite out of his depth at that time so he was definitely not as skilled as he was now. Henry also was touched that Nadius was as enraged as he. But it was probably more so due to being the brother-in-law of the one who was being smeared on the papers.  Nadius had just started at a subsidiary then and would have to obviously fend off insults while trying to fight for deals and contracts arm in arm with compet.i.tors all over the world. It was no wonder then that he had gone off to Paris with Sheng Mei to support her art directing with a couture house.  Even though the man despised artists as much as Henry did, it would be nice to have some quiet away from all of it.

"You know that isn't the one occa.s.sion I'm referring you." Henry looked away as his eyes were reddening now without the added alcohol.  "You know the girls I would try to date would say they only wanted a settlement as big as my mom got after they divorced me when I would pretend to go to the restroom.  I couldn't confront them because you know I was paying for whatever they wanted to order. Over and over again it was just the same. Do you remember that prep school my father sent me to after I finished my time in Canada and decided I wanted to be a coal miner, much to his delight?"

"Braniston?  Something with a B.  You ran away from there.  I remember your father relaying it to me over the phone.  He wasn't happy that you wouldn't tell him why. On another note, why didn't you tell me which girls?  That would have been very helpful when we were trying to arrange a marriage for you six months earlier?  I'll make sure those ladies never get married to anyone with a spare coin. Disgraceful! I'll ban them from all the family gatherings.  What idiots!"

"It's alright uncle, it's a fact of life.  They'll marry into anywhere they think is a payout.  That's settling yourself into a coffin. It's water under the bridge.  I don't harbor any ill feeling. But when I was at the school the priest who ran the place tried to have me give him a b.l.o.w.j.o.b at the homecoming dance because he thought that since my parents had so much s.e.x, I probably did too.  He threw a tabloid in my face questioning my father's s.e.xuality before pulling down my pants."

"Henry!  That's textbook s.e.xual a.s.sault of a minor.  That's a person who should be behind bars and on a s.e.x offender's registry."

"I don't care."

"I care about the other people whom he'd targeted. You obviously shook if off but what about children who think differently.  People can get incredibly disturbed if that's not treated properly. And all this time you thought I shouldn't know? I would have taken action to get you out of that situation. ". Nadius's eyes looked sad. "I always thought it was something that didn't bother you. You never said any concerns when we asked you if you wanted to see your mother. You were never really like her at all. You avoided all the things a.s.sociated with her so we thought you were making progress in your own way. We a.s.sumed you wanted a mother, not the one you had as that's what the child psychologist told us. You acted as if your family was now just your father. We didn't think you wanted her around. If you did say something, I honestly would have made some efforts for it if I had known."