Krishna Lakshmi-Dell, the daughter of Padma Lakshmi and venture capitalist Adam Dell—brother of Dell computers founder Michael—was conceived during a break in Lakshmi’s relationship with leveraged-buyout billionaire Teddy Forstmann. But when Lakshmi first announced she was expecting, it was unclear who Krishna’s father was; Lakshmi declined to publicly name the father for several months. In the February issue of Vanity Fair, contributing editor Rich Cohen reveals that Forstmann wanted to be a father to the baby, whether he and Padma were together or not, and had only one condition: that she not reveal to Dell or the public that Dell was the true father. (Forstmann is the legal guardian to two boys he considers like sons, but has no biological children of his own.)

But his hopes unraveled when Lakshmi took a paternity test affirming Dell as the father (the results were later revealed in Dell’s early-2012 lawsuit filings for child custody and visitation rights). Forstmann was very bitter about “losing” the baby to Dell—Cohen describes him as “heartbroken” over the whole thing, and he could be sensitive about the topic. At one point in Cohen’s interviews, a fashion-designer acquaintance approached their table at a restaurant, casually asking Forstmann, “Teddy, how’s your baby?” Forstmann, who icily replied “just fine” to her at the time, later flew into a profane rage. “My baby? She knows very well it’s not my baby. The bitch! The fucking bitch! The goddamn bitch!”

The Vanity Fair piece, in which Cohen also describes a lonely Forstmann flipping through the New York Post in search of news about himself, Dell, and Lakshmi, was born of Cohen’s onetime job as the ghostwriter of Forstmann’s memoirs. Forstmann died in November 2011 after a battle with brain cancer.