Page 29 of Legacy of His Revenge
CHAPTER SEVEN
SOPHIELOOKEDATthe innocuous white stick with the two bright blue lines and felt a wave of nausea surge through her all over again.
This was the third pregnancy test she had done and still her mind refused to compute the enormity of what was staring her in the face. She was sorely tempted to use the last one in the box but she knew that she had to accept the horrible, terrifying truth that she was pregnant. One reckless mistake had resulted in the baby growing inside her. She could do a hundred more tests and nothing was going to change that inalterable fact.
She was having Matias’s baby.
A guy who had played her, used her and then discarded her without a backward glance. It had been a little over five weeks since she had last seen him, disappearing through the kitchen door of his over-the-top hillside mansion. Since then she had received a formal email from his secretary informing her that all monies owing to him had been cancelled. Since then, her father’s company had gone into liquidation and was now in the process of being eaten up by Matias’s sprawling empire. Sophie knew that because it had been on the news. Her father, needless to say, wanted no more to do with her because of the situation he was in. He had no more money to give her and the last time she had seen him, he had angrily accused her of helping to send him to the poorhouse. He’d conveniently overlooked the fact that the failure of his company had been down to his own incompetence and she had not reminded him, choosing instead to walk away and deal with the problems the bankruptcy presented to her brother’s future.
Had Matias put the final nail in the coffin and sent the police after her father as well? She didn’t know. If so, that was a further public humiliation to come.
Released from having to maintain appearances for the sake of his peers, she and Eric had been cut loose and Sophie had spent every night for the past fortnight trying to find a solution to the problem of how to keep her brother in the safe home he had grown accustomed to.
She was stressed beyond belief and now this had happened.
‘You’ll have to tell him,’ was the first thing Julie said to her later that morning when she showed up at the house.
Sophie looked at her friend, utterly defeated and without a silver lining in sight. ‘How can I?’ she asked, remembering how they had parted company and feeling the stamp of pride settle in her like a stone. ‘You know what happened, you know...’ her voice cracked and she took a deep breath and continued in a rush ‘...what his motives were for getting involved with me.’
‘But this is no longer about your father, Soph, or whatever revenge Matias Rivero was after. This is about a new life growing inside you that can’t be made to take the blame for a situation he or she had nothing to do with.’
Sophie knew that in her heart of hearts. How could she withhold the baby’s existence from his own flesh and blood? Matias would have to know but only because she could see no other way around it. She would have to make sure he knew that shewanted nothing from him. She didn’t care how much money he had. As far as she was concerned, she would do the right thing and tell him about the baby, but after that she would walk away.
And he would be able to breathe a sigh of relief because she knew that the last person he would want to see show up at his office, again, would be her.
First time, she had shown up having crashed into his car. Now, she would be showing up with a baby-shaped wrecking ball solidly aimed at his life.
She could remember just how she had felt that first time she had shown up at his impressively scary office headquarters and spoken to the receptionist. Sick with nerves at an uncertain outcome, and yet with just enough hope that everything would be okay because although she wasn’t going to be seeing the very empathetic Art Delgado, deep down she had clung to the belief that the guy shewouldbe seeing might be cut from the same cloth.
One day later, as Sophie yet again stood outside the impressive building that housed Matias’s legendary empire headquarters, hope was nowhere in existence.
She had had several hours to get her head round her situation and yet she was no nearer to locating any silver linings.
She strode into the glass building with a great deal more confidence than she was feeling and asked for Matias with the sort of assurance that implied an audience would be granted without argument.
‘It’s a personal matter,’ she added to a frowning young blonde girl, just in case. ‘I think Matias...Mr Rivero...would be quite upset if you don’t inform him that I’m here. Sophie Watts. He’ll know who I am and it’s urgent.’
Would he see her? Why should he? His parting shot had been that he never wanted to set eyes on her again, even if that involved kissing sweet goodbye to the thousands of pounds she still owed him.
* * *
About to go to the boardroom to close a multimillion-pound deal, Matias was interrupted by his secretary and told that Sophie was in the foyer several stories below.
For approximately two seconds, he debated delivering a message back that he was unavailable.
He didn’t. He’d walked away from her weeks ago but hadn’t managed to escape whatever malign influence she had over him. She’d lodged under his skin like a burr, appearing like a guilty conscience just when he least needed it and haunting his dreams with infuriating regularity.
Everything was going nicely when it came to dismantling her father’s company, ensuring that the man was left standing out in the cold with no shelter in sight. Behind the scenes, further revelations would come when he moved to phase two, which would involve the long arm of the law. An eye for an eye.
It should have given him an additional sense of satisfaction that his daughter, whose greed had matched her father’s, would also be standing in the same cold spot, without any shelter on the horizon. Unfortunately, every time he tried to muster the appropriate levels of satisfaction at a job well done, the image of her soft heart-shaped face popped into his head, giving him pause for thought.
Revenge had been served cold, but it was not as sweet as it should have been.
It didn’t help that his mother had read all about the takeover in the newspapers and had summoned him to the hospital where she was recovering nicely. She’d never agreed with his thirst for retribution and nothing had changed on that front.
All in all, he was pleased that he had done what he had done, because as far as he was concerned those wheels of justice had to turn full circle, but he was surprised at how dissatisfied he remained at what should have been a stunning victory of the present over the past. And he knew it was all down to Sophie.
‘Show her up,’ he told his secretary in a clipped voice, instantly deciding to put his meeting on hold, regardless of the value of the deal. ‘And tell Jefferies and his team that Bill Hodgson will be handling the initial closing stages.’ He ignored the startled look on her face because such an about-face was unheard of.
