Hunger Forced Me to Become the Caregiver of a Paralyzed Billionaire, but When I Opened His Shirt, He Looked at Me and Turned Pale

The moment I opened the billionaire’s shirt, the bowl fell from my hand and shattered on the floor with such a noise, as if my entire past had fallen there too.

That morning my eight-year-old son Brandon was trembling with fever. In the small apartment in Chicago, rain was coming through the roof, while the silver pot placed on the floor caught drops once every few seconds. Brandon had the blanket pulled up to his chin.

“Mom… I’m cold,” he barely whispered.

Sitting beside him, five-year-old Emma combed the hair of a broken doll with a wooden comb.

“Brandon, the doctor will take care of you,” I told him, although I knew I had no money either for a doctor or for medicine.

There was half an apple and a jar of mustard in the refrigerator. And I kept repeating to the children that I had already had lunch.

I had already sold my grandmother’s gold earrings, my father’s old watch, and the shoes saved for church. That day only one thing remained to me—the small copper pendant hanging around my neck, in which a bird’s wing was engraved. I had worn it for more than twenty years. I did not know why I could not part with it.

I left Brandon with a neighbor woman and asked Emma to hold her brother’s hand. Then I went downtown. Pride was a luxury I could no longer afford to buy.

In front of an expensive café, two women were talking. The older woman wore a black glove and held an umbrella with a pearl handle.

“We urgently need a caregiver for Mr. Bennett,” she was saying. “The salary is very high, but no one lasts even a week.”

“Very high” were the words that made me enter the café.

“If you are still looking for someone, I can try,” I said.

The woman looked me over from head to toe.

“Do you have medical training?”

“No.”

“Have you worked with a paralyzed person?”

“No.”

“Then why should I hire you?”

I remembered Brandon’s fever. Emma’s empty plate. The ceiling soaked by rain.

“Because I will not give up,” I answered.

At four o’clock I was standing in front of an enormous iron gate. The mansion had marble fountains, an endless garden, and chandeliers that probably cost more than my entire life.

The housekeeper, a woman named Laura, quietly told me while we were going up the stairs:

“Do not pity him. Mr. Bennett takes pity as hatred.”

When I entered the room, I saw a man of about forty. Dark hair, a sharp face, and an electric wheelchair in which his body sat motionless.

“Another caregiver?” he asked coldly.

“I need work.”

Something flashed in his eyes, but disappeared immediately.

In the evening Laura listed my duties: medicines, feeding, dressing, and bathing. A little later only Mr. Bennett and I remained in the marble bathroom. Warm steam clung to the walls, while my fingers trembled so much that I barely opened the first button.

“Do not tremble,” he said.

“I am just tired.”

I opened the second button.

I saw a dark crescent-shaped mark near his collarbone. Then I noticed a chain hanging around his neck.

No, it was not merely a similar chain.

It was exactly the chain that my hands had fastened around his neck twenty years earlier on a stormy night.

The bowl shattered on the floor. And I fell to my knees.

Mr. Bennett leaned forward.

“Anna, what happened to you?”

How did he know my name? I could not think. I could not take my eyes off the chain. That night a man had promised me that he would wait for me at the station. Then he disappeared. And I was told that he had died.

Bennett gripped the handle of the wheelchair.

“Have you seen this chain?”

I opened my mouth, but could not make a sound. Just then Laura’s quick footsteps sounded behind the room’s door. Someone was holding a dark folder and was coming straight toward us…

The door opened all the way and Laura stopped on the threshold. She really was holding a folder, but her face said more than the papers did.

“Mr. Bennett, you must see this,” she said.

Daniel Bennett first looked at Laura, then at me. The chain at his throat shone like a small metal spark.

“Put the folder on the table,” he ordered.

Laura took a step.

“No. You must know before the others come.”

“Which others?”

The woman looked toward me and lowered her voice.

“Your mother’s lawyer and the company manager.”

Daniel’s fingers stiffened on the wheelchair handle.

“My mother has been dead for ten years.”

“Her lawyer is alive,” Laura replied. “And tomorrow morning there is a board meeting.”

I was still sitting on the floor. A shard of the broken bowl cut my knee, but I felt no pain. Only that night stood before my eyes.

Twenty years ago there had been a storm. The old station clock showed eleven. I was waiting for Daniel, and around my neck hung this small copper pendant. Before that, he had given me his chain and said that until we met again, it would be his sign.

He did not come.

The next day his family told me that Daniel had died in an accident. Several weeks later I received a letter, as if he had rejected me and gone to another country. I was pregnant then. I was left alone, but I could not save the baby. The doctors told me that stress had ended everything.

I thought Daniel was dead.

And now he was sitting in front of me.

“Who are you?” he asked me.

My heart tightened as if the pendant’s chain were strangling me from inside.

“Anna Morel.”

Confusion flashed across his face.

“I have never heard that name.”

“But I know your chain.”

“My father gave me this chain.”

“No,” I said, trying to stand. “I gave it to you.”

Silence fell over the room. Laura opened the folder, but Daniel raised his hand.

“Not yet.”

“If you do not see it today, tomorrow may be too late,” Laura said.

Daniel looked toward me.

“Leave the room.”

“I cannot leave.”

“This is my house.”

“And this is my past.”

My voice no longer seemed like my own. Brandon’s fever, Emma’s empty plate, and the chain hanging around this man’s neck were all coming together at one point.

For the first time Daniel lost his hardness.

“Why did you not come to the station that night?”

“I came.”

“That is a lie. You left me.”

“You were alive?”

His face turned pale.

Laura said in a low voice:

“They deceived both of you.”

These words struck the bathroom with a heavy blow.

Laura took an old, folded letter from the folder. The paper had yellowish edges, and water stains could be seen on it.

“Daniel never received this letter,” she said. “His mother hid it.”

“What letter?” Daniel asked.

Laura did not answer. The sound of a car was heard outside. Then the sound of a bell rang through the entire house.

Daniel looked at the door.

“They are already here.”

Laura put the letter back into the folder.

“If we let them in, Mr. Daniel will lose his company tomorrow.”

I turned toward her.

“Why did you hire me?”

Daniel fixed his eyes on me.

“I did not hire you. My mother’s old lawyer gave me your name.”

“Why?”

A heavy knock sounded on the door.

Laura placed the folder on the table, opened the lock, and reached out to take out the first document. Just then the voice of an unfamiliar man sounded from the corridor:

“Mr. Bennett, it is time for you to hand over the management of your property to someone else…”

Daniel looked at Laura, and Laura looked toward me and quietly said:

“Now you must know what happened that night…”

“Now you must know what happened that night,” Laura repeated and took the letter from the folder.

Two men stood in the corridor. One was a gray-bearded lawyer, and the other was Daniel’s company manager, Victor Hale. Victor held a black cane in his hand, but when he entered the room he smiled as if this house had already become his property.

“Mrs. Laura,” he said, “you are an employee, not a member of the family.”

“That is exactly why I can tell the truth,” Laura replied.

Daniel raised his head.

“Someone explain to me what is happening.”

Laura placed the letter in front of him.

“Twenty years ago you were waiting for Anna Morel at the station. She sent you a letter saying that she would come and raise your child together with you.”

Daniel remained motionless. Only his jaw tightened.

“I never received such a letter.”

“Because your mother hid it. She told Anna that you had died in an accident. Then she told you that Anna had abandoned you and gone away with another man.”

My hands grew cold.

“I was pregnant,” I said. “The doctors told me I had lost the baby.”

Daniel tried to turn toward me, but the wheelchair made only a small circle.

“You were pregnant?”

“Yes.”

Victor laughed loudly.

“An old love story. This has nothing to do with managing the company.”

“It does,” Laura said. “Daniel’s mother planned everything. She created a false record at a private clinic in Anna’s name and gave the baby to another family immediately after birth. Anna was told that the baby had been stillborn.”

The room seemed to empty of air.

I leaned against the wall. I remembered Brandon’s face, his dark eyes, the small mark on his shoulder that he had had since birth. No one in my family had that mark.

“No,” I whispered. “Brandon…”

Daniel looked at Laura.

“Are you saying that my son is alive?”

Laura took another document from the folder.

“We received the genetic conclusion yesterday. Anna Morel and Daniel Bennett are Brandon Morel’s biological parents.”

Daniel’s face turned completely white.

“My son… lived in my house all this time?”

I began to cry, but these were not tears of joy. They were twenty years of delayed pain returning all at once.

“I did not know,” I told Daniel. “God knows, I did not know.”

Daniel placed his hands on the armrests of the chair.

“My mother took my son away from me. And left you alone.”

Victor stepped forward.

“This conclusion means nothing until it is officially confirmed. The board will meet tomorrow and Daniel will no longer be able to make decisions.”

“Why?” I asked.

Victor looked at me ironically.

“Because his medical condition has worsened. He needs a guardian.”

Daniel shouted for the first time.

“I still have my own mind!”

“You may have your mind, but you can no longer sign,” Victor replied.

Laura placed a small recorder on the table.

“This is your mother’s voice recording. She confessed everything before she died.”

A tired woman’s voice came from the recorder: she said that she had hidden Anna’s letter, forged the accident story, and taken the child from Daniel. Finally, she admitted that she had promised Victor she would transfer the company share to him if he erased Daniel’s rights.

Victor took one step back.

“This is an illegally obtained recording.”

“But it is real,” Laura said.

At that moment Daniel’s phone rang. An unknown number was shown on the screen. He answered.

He listened for several seconds.

Then his gaze stopped on me.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Daniel slowly lowered the phone.

“The clinic called. Brandon was urgently taken there this morning. The fever is very high.”

My knees gave way.

Daniel looked at Victor, but on Victor’s face there was not fear, but cold calculation.

“If you leave the house now,” he said, “tomorrow you will not be able to change anything.”

I ran toward the door.

Daniel ordered Laura to prepare the wheelchair, but Victor quietly took out his phone and called someone.

“Stop the car,” he said. “The woman must not reach the clinic before leaving the city.”

I heard these words.

And then I realized that my son’s life was no longer fighting only a fever. Victor had already begun a battle whose end he wanted to be the disappearance of me and Brandon…