The Undisclosed Union

Part 2

First Published: Nov.16, 2018----Edited: Sept. 30, 2020

Tonight was supposed to be his wedding night. With a glass of wine, he spent it on his balcony looking down from his fifty-fifth-floor penthouse at the buildings below him while his bride slept calmly on her virginal bed.

He, Jared Frederick Steele, whom everyone in the business world called "the Midas of the 21st century," as every company he acquired the revenues increased in just six months. At only twenty-eight, already a billionaire and the CEO of Steele Group, he admits he was born from a wealthy family, but he doubled whatever they had.

After all those successes he has in the business world when it comes to Katelyn, he began to doubt himself, which was not good for him. He likes everything that happens in his life will be under his control.

He remembered the first time his Meme, as he called his grandmother, approached him about the topic of his marriage. He was in his office at home and had just finished having his video conference. When he closed his laptop, she was already sitting down in front of him and smiling.

"Meme, I did not notice that you entered the room."

"Darling, of course, you will not. You are too preoccupied with your meeting. Besides, I entered the door slowly so as not to disturb you." She reached out and held his hand at the top of the table.

He knows when his grandmother is acting in this way. She needs something from him outside of the business matters.

Being a chairwoman of the board of directors in their company, she doesn't need his approval on anything, especially when it comes to finances. She has her fortune inherited from her parents. Besides, when he was still in his undergraduate program at Harvard, she was the CEO as well as the chairwoman of the board at Steele Group.

He glanced at her hands atop of his and then looked at her, "Meme, out with what you wanted to tell me," his grandmother then removed her hands and sat down on her chair correctly.

He smiled at her gesture. And then he interlaced his hands on top of his table without removing his gaze from her.

She looked at him and smiled, "darling, remember I told you about my best friend, Amelia, before?"

Who would not remember her? Ever since her grandmother was not a part of managing their business, she started talking about her life in a boarding school with the daughter of an earl who later becomes a Viscount's wife.

"I remember she died already when I was still studying. You even attended the funeral."

"Yes, well..." she hesitated at first and then continued in a determined tone, "She has a granddaughter that I want you to marry."

"What?"

"You heard it, don't pretend you don't," in a direct tone, she told him.

"Come on, Meme, are you kidding me? Marry a woman I don't even know about let alone love," surprised with what she just said he gets up on his chair and stand up, and then took a book in the cabinet at his back.

He doesn't need to read a book, but just an excuse so he can breathe as what he had heard had caught him off guard.

"Well...your grandfather and I were not in love when we first married. It was arranged by our families too, but we have a happy union until he died," she explained to him. It made him turned around and looked at his grandmother with eyebrows squeezed together in a wrinkle.

"Don't be annoyed, darling. I am sure Tori is a sweet and fun-loving child, just like her grandmother. I remember when we were young..."

"I know grandma, she makes you laugh, and a lot of your escapade was because of her ideas," he interrupted her. He heard the story so many times, and reminiscing about her best friend will make her cry.