Saving Her Billionaire

Chapter 9

Nate felt like every single thing in his life was going sideways. His mental state was such that he did not quite know how to feel at any given time. He perpetually felt like he was either overreacting or under reacting, he felt like nothing he did was good enough, and the only thing that really helped during these times was Phoebe and their counseling sessions.

She was actually very good at her job. She helped Nate discover the root of his problems, she helped him ascertain what exactly he was feeling and why he was feeling it, and through it all Nate continued to feel undoubtedly attracted to this incredible person.

She wanted him to feel better, she genuinely felt that way, and all of that in spite of the fact that he had basically left her to fend for herself, he had basically left her and the child that he had put inside her alone in the world. That was a despicable thing to do, truly it was, and Nate deserved no sympathy whatsoever after he had done such a horrible thing. And yet, in spite of all of the wrong he was doing her, Phoebe continued to not just be professional but to take an active interest in how he was doing.

He couldn’t believe that he had got her pregnant. The month of recovery he had spent in the hospital had been tense to say the least. The board members had visited him one by one, they had given him flowers and kind words but Nate had always felt like they weren’t being as genuine as he thought they were being. They looked a lot like sharks that were circling a bleeding seal, circling ever close, smiling with their mouth full of sharp teeth, eager to sink their teeth into their prey and feast on its flesh.

Nate knew what their end game was. They wanted his father’s company. It was one of the most profitable enterprises in the world, after all. It was the company that everybody wanted. It was the company that made everyone feel like there was a future in a market that pretty much everybody else had given up on a long time ago. Yes, everybody else had always wanted a piece of his father’s company. The board members probably thought that now that his father was gone they would be able to circle in and get the whole pie instead of the slices they had been getting previously. They probably thought that they were being very smart.

However, what they did not know was that they were being a little immature about the whole thing. The problem was that they were underestimating Nate. They thought that he was weak. They thought that he did not know what he was up against when he did know. He was well acquainted with these kinds of sharks, and he knew that if he hit them hard on the nose just once they would run away fast.

He struggled to get better as quickly as possible and get into therapy. However, when he found out that Phoebe was pregnant it threw him off for a moment. He had not been expecting anything like this at all. He had not been expecting to have to deal with the possibility of a child coming into this world, a child he was the father of. He did not want to have to deal with that at this point in his life where everything his father had ever built seemed to be resting on his rather inadequate shoulders.

He needed to be single minded right now. He needed to focus on the company. He needed to focus on keeping the board members at bay, and showing them that he was up to the task of running the company. This was why he had told Phoebe that he could not be a father to this child. This was why he had basically told her that she was going to have to handle this alone, even though this was as much his fault as it was hers, because he should have been responsible that night as well.

There were several reasons within this reason. The first, of course, was that if he started to take responsibility for the child he would not be able to devote as much time to the company that was now his as was needed. He would have to compromise the company because once you start taking care of a child you have to go all in and focus all of your energies on making sure that the child is getting absolutely everything that it could possibly want. This would mean that in taking care of his child he would be leaving his company with half a CEO instead of a full CEO.

Additionally, the board members were looking for a reason to vote him out of the company. They could not vote him out if he did not do something that proved that he was not worthy of running the company, but if they found out that he had gotten a girl pregnant this would be reason enough. It would prove that he was irresponsible, that he did not have the mental stability or maturity to run one of the most profitable enterprises in the world. It would prove to the world that Nate Friedman was a mere shadow of his father, and that the company would be in better hands if it was run by the board members that had built this company from the ground up with Nate’s father. If they voted him out for no reason, Nate could simply cry foul play and claim that they were trying to steal from him his birth right because they were being greedy. However, if he gave them a reason then he would have no recourse, he would have to capitulate and hand over control of the company to its board members who would select a new CEO to run things.

These were all of the things that were weighing on Nate when he went to Phoebe for his counseling session. He knew that he would have to be very careful because he did not have the right to give her all of his troubles and ask her to help him handle them, but at the same time she was his counselor and he needed to use her properly in order to get into the right kind of headspace that would allow him to run his company in a satisfactory manner.

“Tell me something, Nate,” said Phoebe during their latest counseling session. “Whenever you talk about the company you talk about it as if it is such a burden. Why is that?”

“Well,” said Nate, “probably because it is a burden. It is something that I have always been expected to do, you know, and I don’t really like that I am expected to run a company that really has nothing to do with me.”

“You sound like you resent the fact that you have to run the company,” said Phoebe. “Would that be an accurate assessment?”

“It would be,” said Nate. “I mean, I don’t know. I do want to run the company. It’s all I’ve been trained for my entire life. I’m not ready for it right now, it’s true, but…”