Page 27 of Legacy of His Revenge
Sophie’s face drained of colour. Her legs felt shaky. Her brain was in meltdown as she thought of what would be revealed inbackground checks. She knew nothing for sure, but she suspected...
‘Surely that wouldn’t be necessary,’ she whispered.
‘Oh, dear.’ Used. He’d been used. She’d slept with him to facilitate a deal with her father whom she knew to be penniless and crooked. She was clearly running scared from background checks that she must know could open up a can of worms. He’d got the information he’d wanted after all, but the fury of finding himself played once again was volcanic in its intensity. ‘You seem apprehensive. Did you think that you coulddistractme into putting money into your bank account without doing my homework thoroughly?’
Sophie’s face drained of colour as she tried to make sense of what he was saying but the dots weren’t joining up. What was he implying?
Some part of her was desperate to give him the benefit of the doubt and to find a reasonable explanation for the cold, veiled expression on his handsome face but a chill was growing inside her and it make her feel sick and giddy.
‘I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she stammered.
‘Don’t you?’ Not even his duplicitous ex-girlfriend from long ago had managed to produce a rage like this. He’d learnednothingbecause he’d been conned again. If he’d smashed his fist against the wall, he would have driven it right through the brickwork, so powerful was the torrent of emotion coursing through his body. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t stop to question your sudden departure from shy and blushing to hot and ready for sex.’
‘That’s an awful thing to say!’
‘If memory serves me right, you had your claws out when we first met...’
‘Because you were horrible to me! Because you threatened to shut down my business to pay off a debt!’
‘But then we came to a satisfactory conclusion, didn’t we? But when did you decide to hop in the sack with me? Was it when you found out that I might decide to have business dealings with your father? Did you think that you were clever in trying to withhold the true state of your father’s coffers and the fact that he’s a crook? Did you think that your sexy body would seal the deal for me regardless of that?’
Sophie stared at him round-eyed. She was looking at a stranger. Gone was the teasing, seductive guy who could turn her off and on like a light switch.
‘No! I would never do something like that! The only reason I mentioned my father and...well...is because I wanted to tell you something that...’
Matias held up one imperious hand. ‘Not interested. The fact is there’s something you should know.’ He killed the tight knot in the pit of his stomach. Sex was sex but business was business and this was the business of retribution and he’d been a fool to have ever been distracted by her gorgeous body and beautiful, duplicitous face.
Sophie was spellbound, filled with creeping dread and apprehension. He was pacing the kitchen, restless and somehow vaguely menacing in the soft prowl of his movements.
‘Regrettably, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. The fact is, the only interest I have in your father won’t be leading to any lucrative deals that might result in more money lining your pockets.’ He looked at her flushed face narrowly and it got on his nerves that he half wanted her to deny that she had any interest in any of her father’s money that might come her way, but she remained silent and he could tell from the expression on her face that money trickling down into her grasping little hands had been exactly what she had hoped for.
She’d turned into his compliant lover because sex was a most persuasive tool. His mouth tightened and cold hostility settled like glacial ice in his veins.
‘You don’t understand,’ Sophie protested weakly, but everything seemed to be moving at bewildering speed and her brain couldn’t keep up.
‘I think I understand very well indeed. But here’s whatyoudon’t understand. Not only will Inotbe putting money into your father’s business, but my intention couldn’t be more different. I won’t be the making of your bankrupt, disreputable scumbag of a father. I will be the ruination of him.’ He clenched his jaw as her mouth fell open and the colour drained away from her face. ‘You may not remember but I mentioned in passing to you that my parents should have had money and all the little luxuries that go with the sort of well-oiled lifestyle your daddy dearest enjoyed, but sadly they didn’t.’
‘I remember... I meant to ask you about that...but...’
‘Distractions...ah, yes, they got in the way.’ Matias smiled coldly. ‘Let me fill in the gaps. Your father stole my father’s invention and used it to prop up the sad sack company he had inherited that was already on its last legs, and in the process made himself rich beyond most people’s wildest dreams. My father was naïve and trusting, a simple emigrant who believed the rubbish your father told him about them going in as partners, jointly reaping the financial rewards of something my father invented. I know, because I’ve seen the proof of those conversations with my own eyes in letters that were kept in a folder. It never occurred to my parents that they could have taken the man through the courts and got what they deserved.’
‘No.’ But she already believed every word that was being said because that was very much the sort of thing her father would have done.
‘My father never recovered from the betrayal of his trust. What your father did infected every area of my family’s life. My father died prematurely from a rare cancer and do you want to hear the worst of it? I recently found more letters, hidden away amongst my mother’s things, begging letters from my mother to your father, pleading for some money to send my father to America where groundbreaking work was being done in that area, clinical trials that were beyond my parents’ meagre means.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sophie whispered brokenly.
‘So,’ Matias rammed home, every syllable filled with icy condemnation made all the more biting because he knew that he had allowed himself to drift into territory he should never have occupied, ‘my intention was always to make your father pay for what he did.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I think you know. I knew about Carney’s penury. I wanted more information and I got it. A stint in jail seems appropriate considering what he did, wouldn’t you agree? So thank you for corroborating what I suspected. Now I know exactly which rocks to turn over when I have your daddy’s company in my hands.’
A wave of sickness swept through her. She had accepted that they were ships passing in the night and had justified her extraordinary response to him on all sorts of grounds about lust and desire, but now that the extent of his deception was unravelling in front of her she knew that she had felt a great deal more for him than lust or desire.
He had managed in drawing out a side of her that she hadn’t known existed. He had made her laugh and forget all the worries that plagued her. When she had been with him, she had stopped being the girl who had been let down by an ex, the girl who had to grovel for handouts, the girl with the disabled brother whom she fiercely protected, the girl whose career could crash and burn at any moment, leaving her nowhere. When she’d been with Matias, unlikely as it was, she had been carefree and sexy andyoung.
But that had been an illusion because he had used her to get information about her father out of her, and the depth of her hurt was suffocating.
