Darius didn’t like to be reminded of what he’d said six months ago. He’d rationalized his cruelty on the grounds of justice. But now...strictly speaking, he might have sounded a little less than civil, if not outright crazy. Irritated, he glared at her. “Drink your water.”
“Why? What did you put into it?” She sniffed the glass. “Some drug to make me pass out so you can kidnap me to a Park Avenue dungeon?”
He snorted a laugh in spite of himself. “The water came from your tap. Drink it or not. I just thought you looked pale.”
She stared at him for a moment, then took a tentative sip.
He looked around the tiny apartment. “Why are you living here?”
“Sadly, the presidential suite at the St. Regis was already booked.”
“I mean it, Letty. Why did you stay in New York all these years? You could have just left. Moved west where no one would know you or care about what your father did.”
She blinked fast. “I couldn’t abandon him. I love him.”
The man was a liar and a cheat, so of course Letty loved him. And she’d intended to raise their baby with him in the house, the man Darius blamed for his own father’s death. He ground his teeth. “Are you even taking care of yourself? Do you have a doctor?”
“Of course,” she said, stung. “How can you ask me that?”
“Because you’ve been working on your feet all day, until recently. And living in a place like this.” He gestured angrily around the threadbare, cluttered apartment. “It never occurred to you I’d want better for our child?”
She glared at him. “I wanted better! I wanted my baby’s father to be a good man I could trust and love. Instead, I got you, Darius, the worst man on earth!”
“You didn’t think so ten years ago.”
He immediately wished he could take the words back, because they insinuated that he still cared. Which he didn’t.
“Oh, you’re actually willing to talk about ten years ago? Fine. Let’s talk about it.” She briefly closed her eyes. “The reason I never showed up the night we were supposed to elope was because I was protecting you.”
His lip curled scornfully. “Protecting me.”
“Yes.” Her expression was cool. “The day we were going to elope, my father told me his investment fund was a fraud. It had stopped making money years before, but he’d continued making payouts to old investors by taking money from new ones. The Feds were already on his tail. I knew what was going to happen.” She lifted her luminous gaze. “I couldn’t let you get dragged into it. Not with all your big dreams. You’d just started your tech company...” She took a deep breath and whispered, “I couldn’t let my father’s crime ruin your life, too.”
For a moment, Darius’s heart twisted as he looked at her beautiful face, her heartbreaking hazel eyes. Then he remembered that he no longer had any heart vulnerable enough to break.
“You’re lying. You left me for another man. A rich man who could—how did you express it?—give you the life of luxury you deserved.” He snorted. “Though obviously he wasn’t much good. He must have dumped you the moment your father was arrested.”
“He couldn’t dump me.” She gave a low laugh. “He never existed.”
“What?”
“It was the only way I knew you’d let me go.” She lifted her chin and added with deliberate lightness, “I knew your weakness, even then.”
“Weakness?” he growled.
“You always said a man could be measured by his money. I knew you wouldn’t accept my just breaking up with you without explanation. So I gave you one. I told you I wanted someone richer. I knew you’d believe that.”
He stared at her. “It’s not true.”
“I’ve always been a terrible liar.” She looked sad. “But you still believed it. And immediately stopped calling me.”
Darius’s cheeks burned as he remembered how he’d felt that day. She was right.
He had loved her beyond reason, had been determined to fight for her at any cost. Until she’d told him she didn’t want him because he was poor. He’d believed it instantly. Because money made the man. No money, no man.
His throat felt tight as he looked at her, struggling not to believe she was telling the truth when every fiber of him believed her.
“And my father?” he said hoarsely. “Were you protecting him, too—getting him fired?”
“It’s true. I did have him fired. I told Dad I couldn’t bear to look at Eugenios because he reminded me of you. I did it because I was afraid my dad might ask him to invest his life savings in the bankrupt investment fund. My dad still believed he could fix everything then. I knew your father would give him his savings. He was loyal to the core.”
“Yes, he was,” he bit out. His father had always made his employer his top priority, even over his own son.
Darius couldn’t remember when his father had ever put his son first, over his job. He hadn’t attended Darius’s school events, not even his high school graduation. Being eternally at Howard Spencer’s beck and call, keeping the ten luxury cars all gleaming and ready, had been Eugenios’s total focus in life.
Oh, his father had fed and clothed him and given him a place to live in the two-bedroom apartment over the Fairholme garage that went with his job. But emotionally, they were oceans apart. The two men never talked.
Until that one awful day Darius told his father what he really thought of him...
But that memory was so white-hot with pain, he pushed it from his mind with all the force of a ball thrown from the earth to the moon.
Letty sighed beside him on the sofa. “I was trying to get your father away from Fairholme before he lost everything. But it was too late. He’d already invested his life savings years before. My dad had accepted it for his fund, even though it was such a small amount,” she said in a small voice. “As a favor.”
A small amount? His father’s life savings! The arrogance of them! Darius’s dark eyebrows lowered in fury.
“Howard Spencer is a liar and cheat,” he said harshly. “He destroyed people’s lives.”
“I know,” she whispered, looking down. She bit her full, rosy lower lip. “He never meant to.”
“He deserves to suffer.”
She looked up. “He has suffered. During his arrest and trial, I tried so hard to be strong for him. When he was in prison, I was there every visiting day. I cheered him up. Encouraged him. And all the time, I felt so scared. So alone.” She gave him a watery smile. “Sometimes the only thing I had to cling to was you.”
“Me?”
“At least I hadn’t dragged you down with me,” she whispered. “At least you were able to follow your dreams.”
Darius stared at her in shock.
Then he narrowed his eyes. She was trying to take credit for his accomplishments. To claim that if not for her sacrifice, he never would have made his fortune. She thought so little of him. Ice chilled his heart.
“And you expect me to be grateful?”
She looked startled. “I—”
“When you found out about your father’s crime,” he said tightly, “you should have come to me. I was your future husband. Instead, you lied to me. You cut me out of your life. Rather than asking for my help, you apparently believed I was so incompetent and useless, you felt you