Tied To You

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To my readers: Here's the second and final update this week that I promised. Enjoy!

A Burden Lifted

"Are you sure you want to do this Michael?" A curious masculine voice asked from the screen displayed on the wall of Michael's new office at Montenegro Enterprises.

"Yes, I do. When I sent you the contract you said that I had nothing to lose, I was getting a good end of the deal and more." Michael said as he stared at his laptop where his lawyer was video messaging him.

"If you know that you're getting a good deal, why are you going to break the contract? Is the family offering a pre-nup?" Michael's lawyer asked still confused about why he made such a rational decision.

"It's not the pre-nup I care about. I would sign that anytime. The Montenegro's work hard for their money and for me to enter the picture out of arrangement would just be so wrong. Plus, the main reason I agreed to the monetary contract was because I thought Cora's baby was mine, but we both know that's not true."

"We both know its not true, but the media doesn't seem to believe that and your brother is running away from his responsibilities again, for someone in politics you would think he would be on top of his personal responsibilities." Michael chuckled. Brandon was one to run away from personal responsibilities, he would always have someone take care of those responsibilities for him ever since they were young.

"In all seriousness though Michael, are you sure you want to break the contract with Alvin Montenegro?" He asked one last time.

"Yes, the only thing I have to lose is the money. Though it would be nice to have that money he's offering, money isn't not going to make me happy, feeling wanted and feeling like I mean something to someone means the world to me and I would trade in everything for that."

"Looks like someone's turning a new leaf. What changed?" His lawyer asked.

"My family." He simply said. His lawyer knew what Michael meant by that.

"What about your sister's death? Wasn't that your whole purpose to marry into the Montenegro family? To expose them?" He had to ask even though it was a touchy subject for Michael.

"Karma can deal with it. Right now I am going to focus on myself and my needs." Michael said with confidence. He didn't want anyone else to know the revelations he had with Alvin.

"Okay. I'll contact Alvin's lawyers." Michael nodded and ended the chat.

When the chat ended, Michael's newly hired assistant enters his office explaining his schedule. " Sir, you have meeting at 11am with the Montenegro's to go over the wedding preparations. Then lunch is right after at 12 noon. At 1:30pm you have a meeting with the board to discuss future business acquisitions until 2:30pm, but we don't know for sure how long these meetings go that's why I gave it a one hour window, should it finish early you have the rest of the time free. Also your 10:30am is here, would you like me to bring her in?" Michael's assistant handed him a copy of his itinerary for the day. It had been a few days since the breakfast at the Montenegro's, and now he was getting everything settled into his new high rise office on the executive floor of Montenegro Enterprises. He liked the work environment he was in. All the employees were enthusiastic and engaged. It was the kind of work environment that makes want to come to work everyday. He glanced at his watch it was 10:15am, as usual his 10:30am appointment was early, she was always punctual.

"Thanks Maria for the schedule and please let her in." Michael didn't know why he was nervous. He was so use to seeing her face, but this time it was different, the circumstances are different, he wanted to bury the hatchet before he gets married. Cora walked in still beautiful as ever, her bump was noticeable now than it was a few weeks back, but that pregnancy glow gave her a more radiant look. She sat down and began to speak as Michael prepared himself for what he was going to hear, "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me Michael. I'll make this quick cause I know you are busy." Cora said with sincerity. "First off, I want to apologize for all the pain I have given you and for leading you to believe that this baby I am carrying is yours. I want you to know that I genuinely love you, nothing has changed, my love for you runs deep, but I understand if you don't feel the same way anymore, I lied to you so I could get your brother to own up to his responsibilities and that was wrong of me. I was going to meet you sooner before the media found out about it, but I was too late to extend the release date of the article. I went to go find you at Mendoza Enterprises but they said you work here now, so I asked for a favor and had a meeting set up with you and I was surprised to hear back from your assistant saying you would meet with me."

Michael looked intently at Cora, for the first time he actually heard someone apologize to him, he really wasn't expecting that at all from her, but a lot of questions were running through his head. "So when you found out you were pregnant did you know I was the father?" He asked.

"I was hoping you'd be the father since we've had unprotected sex before, but I knew you weren't the father." Cora said with guilt. "Also when I went to the OBGYN and she told me how far along I was it didn't match up to the last time we had intercourse. So I knew right away it was your brother's baby."

"Why did you tell me I was the father, when I actually am not?" Michael calmly said trying his best to not raise his voice in anger for the sake of the baby.

"My relationship with Brandon was difficult, he was convincing me that you were the father, but Brandon and I both knew that it wasn't true, your brother was running away yet again from responsibility. This isn't the first time." Cora said almost crying as she struggled to look at Michael in the eye because if she stared into his beautiful brown eyes she would not have the words to tell him everything. "I also wanted to give you an inspiration to work hard. You weren't yourself before I was pregnant. You lost your drive to work and it was impacting our relationship and your start-up, I wanted to give you a reason to work hard again." She said to him with sadness in her voice.

"How did the media find out about all this?" He asked because not everyone knew about her pregnancy, just close family and he really wanted to know who was the one to release all that to the media.

"I released it. I own a media company on top of Vales Communications, that has many subscribers and viewers. I thought by releasing a story about my pregnancy from a third person point-of-view it would get Brandon to own up to his responsibilities but it ended up backfiring, greatly affecting you. I am sorry for that. I am trying to fix everything, controlling what I can control. I really hope we can find common ground and remain friends." Deep down he didn't want to be friends with her, but he still had so much love for her even after finding out the baby wasn't his. Michael had to sort out his priorities and as much as he wanted to help Cora, he had to help himself first.

"I forgive you and thank you for apologizing to me, but right now being friends isn't a good idea. I just don't know how to accept everything because its all moving too fast for me. We can be friends in the future, just not now. I hope you really do try to fix everything not just for everyone involved, but for your child. You don't want him or her to grow up the way you did or I even. So please think about your kid that's what's important. Now if you'll excuse me I have a meeting to get to. It was nice chatting with you Ms. Vales, Maria here will show you out." Michael led her to the door and Maria assisted her out. As soon as she left Michael bursted into tears, everything was so overwhelming. He didn't know how to handle everything, but he felt that his meeting with Cora was another burden off his chest.