I suddenly found out I was heir to a throne. Well, maybe not a throne, but definitely an empire. A business empire. At the age of seventeen I finally found out who my real father is. And needless to say it was a shocking reveal. My mother was not happy about it. Not one bit. If she could have kept this secret till her dying day, she would have, but the truth does have a habit of coming out eventually.

I found the photograph in a box whilst looking for something in the attic. A photograph of her and him. I asked her about it. She brushed it off and tried to ignore my inquiries. I pressed on. And pushed and pushed until she buckled under the pressure and spilled the beans. I was angry. All my life we had led a hand to mouth existence. I was viewed and labelled as a poor kid, in our school and even among those I call my friends. And to find out that I was entitled by birth to so much more than I had received all my life, it drove me crazy. I didn’t speak to her for a full two weeks. One day, she knocked on my bedroom door, apologised yet again, explaining that she had been young, just a teenager and had made many mistakes. Then she asked me if I would like to meet him. She would make the arrangement or if I didn’t want that, she would give me his details, let me contact him directly. She confirmed that he did know about me, which made me more angry, but also relieved in a way to know that he wouldn’t deny my paternity. I agreed to make the call myself.

I managed to schedule a meeting with his personal assistant, pretending to be a journalist doing an interview for a business magazine. It appeared that he was quite a well-known, influential businessman. Marcus Caine Jr, the CEO of a massive business conglomerate, founded by his father. His business being pharmaceuticals. I hadn’t heard of him before but I decided that there was really no reason for our paths to have crossed in the past. Different circles, plain and simple as that. I arrived at his office a few minutes early. I had it all planned out, I would enter his office, shake his hand, and then come clean and introduce myself as his son. I didn’t even search for him on the internet. I wanted my opinion of him to be mine alone and not influenced by someone else’s point of view. Obviously, I don’t need to mention that I was nervous. Yes he was my biological father, but also an extremely successful man. I wanted to make a great first impression. I was disappointed that he hadn’t made more of an effort to have a relationship with me, but I had come to believe that that was completely my mother’s fault. She allowed the issues she had with him affect my upbringing and deprived me of the childhood I deserved. I was lost in thought when his PA gave me the go ahead to enter his office, with a small smile and gesture of her hand. And that was the moment my life changed in a way I would never have imagined.

Three months later and my relationship with my father was as solid as ever. We learnt that we had quite a few things in common and shared certain likes and dislikes. We liked the same sports. We shared the same eye colour, emerald green.We even realised that we had the same taste in women. He had been married twice, although he had had no other children for reasons he did not mention, and because I was his only child he changed his will to include me as the majority beneficiary. He even asked me to take his name so I was now Andrew Caine. For those three months, I had kept our...