The Consequence of His Vengeance

by Jennie Lucas

“You already explained to me, long ago, that you wouldn’t love me. That love was for children. You told me. I just didn’t listen,” she said softly. “Now I really, truly get it. And I want you out of my life for good.”

  “No—”

  “I’ve brought my father to Fairholme.”

  Gripping the phone, he nearly staggered back. “Howard Spencer—in my house?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was ice-cold. “I’m not leaving him in the hospital, surrounded by strangers. He’s going to spend his last days surrounded by love, in the home where he was married to my mother.”

  “It’s not just your decision. I bought that house and...” He stopped himself, realizing how pompous he sounded. But it was too late.

  “Right.” Her voice was a sneer. “Because money makes the man. You think you can buy your way through life. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Buy things. You bought my virginity, and ever since, you’ve kept buying me. With marriage. With money. You didn’t realize it was never your money I wanted.” Her voice suddenly broke to a whisper. “It was you, Darius. My dream of you. The amazing boy you were.” She took a breath. “The man I actually thought you still were, deep down inside.”

  “I’m still that man,” he said tightly. “I was going to tell you. I just didn’t want you upset...”

  “Upset by my father dying!”

  Darius flinched at the derision in her voice. “Perhaps I made a bad decision, but I was trying to look after you.”

  “And you assumed I would forgive you.”

  He felt shaken. “Forgiveness is what you do.”

  She gave a hard laugh. “How convenient for you. Only the idiots who love you have to forgive. But since you never love anyone, you never have to worry about that. You’re free to hurt whomever you please.”

  She didn’t sound like his wife at all, the kindhearted woman who greeted him every day with kisses, who gave so much of herself and asked for very little in return.

  Except for him to forgive her father, Darius realized. That was the one thing she’d actually asked for. And the one thing he’d refused, again and again.

  He, who was never afraid of anything, felt the first stirrings of real fear. “If you’ll just listen to me—”

  “I’ve had suitcases boxed up for you. Collins is taking them to your penthouse in Midtown. Don’t worry. I won’t stay here forever. You can have Fairholme back after...” Her voice was suddenly unsteady. “After. I don’t want anything from you in our divorce. The baby and I will be leaving New York.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Poppy Alexander lives in Los Angeles now. She offered me a job a while back. I told her no. Now I’m going to say yes.”

  “No.”

  “Try and stop me. Just try.” He could hear the ragged gasp of her breath. “You called my dad a monster. You’re the real monster, Darius. Because you know what it was like to have your father die alone. That was the reason for all your vengeance and rage, wasn’t it? That was the big reason you wouldn’t let me see my dad. Well, you know what? My dad nearly died alone, too. Because of you.”

  The pang of fear became sharper, piercing down his spine. He licked his lips. “Letty—”

  “Stay away from us,” she said in a low voice. “I never want to see you again. Better that our son has no father at all than a heartless one like you.”

  The line went dead. He stared down at the phone in his hand.

  Numb with shock, Darius raised his head. He looked blankly around his office, still decorated with his wife’s sweet touches. A photo of them on their Greek honeymoon. A sonogram picture of their baby. He stared in bewilderment at the bright blue jeweler’s bag on his desk. The push present for his wife, the emerald earrings once owned by a queen that he’d bought to express his appreciation and joy.

  Above him, he could hear the rain falling heavily against the roof. Loud. Like a child’s rattle.

  And felt totally alone.

  He’d known this would happen. Known if he ever lowered his guard and let himself care, he would get kicked in the teeth. Teeth? He felt like his guts had just been ripped out. For a second, he felt only that physical pain, like the flash of lightning before thunder.

  Then the emotional impact reached his heart, and he had to lean one hand on his desk to keep his balance. The pain he felt then was almost more than he could bear.

  Standing in his office, in the place he’d been happily whistling a lullaby just moments before, anguish and rage rushed through him. Throwing out his arm, he savagely knocked the jewelry bag to the ground.

  Suddenly, he could almost understand why Howard Spencer had turned criminal when he’d lost his wife. Because Darius suddenly wanted to set fire to everything in his life, to burn it all down.

  Slowly, as if he’d gained fifty years, he walked out of his office.

  “Everything all right, sir?” Mildred Harrison said serenely from her desk. “Are you headed to the hospital for Mrs. Kyrillos?”

  Mrs. Kyrillos. He almost laughed at the name. She’d never been his wife, not really. How could she, when she’d seen through him from the start?

  You always said a man could be measured by his money.

  He looked slowly around the bustling office loft, with its exposed brick walls, its high ceilings, the open spaces full of employees busily working on computers or taking their breaks at the foosball table. He said softly, “No.”

  His executive assistant frowned. “Sir?”

  “I don’t want it anymore.” Darius looked at her. “Take the company. You can have it. I’m done.”

  And he left without looking back.

  He spent the afternoon in one of Manhattan’s old dive bars, trying to get drunk. He could have called Santiago Velazquez or Kassius Black, but they weren’t exactly the kind of friends who shared confidences and feelings. Darius had only really done that with Letty. He told himself Scotch would keep him company now.

  It didn’t.

  Finally he gave up. He was alone. He would always be alone. Time to accept it.

  Dropped off by the taxi, Darius came home late that night to his dark penthouse. All the bright lights of Manhattan sparkled through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He saw nothing but darkness and shadows.

  And three expensive suitcases left in his foyer. Suitcases Letty had packed for him when she’d taken his measure, found him completely lacking and tossed him out of their family home.

  You think you can buy your way through life. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Buy things.

  Slowly, Darius looked around the stark, impersonal penthouse at the sparse, expensive furniture. Everything was black and white. He’d bought this place two years ago, as a trophy to show how far he’d come from the poverty-stricken village boy he’d once been. A trophy to prove to himself that Letitia Spencer had made a fatal error the day she’d decided he wasn’t good enough to marry.

  This penthouse was not his home.

  His home was Fairholme.

  Darius closed his eyes, thinking of the windswept oceanfront manor with its wide windows over the Great South Bay and the Atlantic beyond. The roses, fields and beach. The sun-drenched meadow where he’d taught Letty to dance. Where he’d first learned to love.

  Letty.

  He opened his eyes with a slow intake of breath.

  Letty was his home.

  Even during their brief marriage, he’d experienced happiness he’d never known before. The comfort and love of having a wife who put him first, who waited for him every night, who kissed him with such passion. Who slept warm and willing beside him every night in bed.

  More than that. She’d reminded him who he’d once been.

  You didn’t realize it was never your money I wanted. It was you, Darius. My dream of you. The amazing boy you were. The man I actually thought you still were, deep down inside.

  Numbly, he looked out the two-story-high windows that overlooked the twinkling lights of the city.

  Letty was always determine
d to protect those she loved. Now she was trying to protect their child from him. Just as he’d once tried to protect Letty from her father.

  You called my dad a monster. You’re the real monster.

  He leaned his forehead against the cold window glass.

  Howard Spencer had been a good man once. He’d been a good employer to Darius’s father and kind to everyone, including the scared eleven-year-old boy newly arrived from Greece. Then he’d changed after he’d lost his beloved wife.

  What was Darius’s excuse?

  He took a deep breath, looking out bleakly into the night. Why had he been so determined to wreak vengeance on her father? So determined that he hadn’t even cared how badly it might hurt Letty as collateral damage?

  He should have told her the truth from the start.

  He should have taken her in his arms. He should have fallen to his knees. He should have told her he was sorry, and that he’d do whatever it took to make it right.

  Why hadn’t he?

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  Darius had convinced himself he was justified for his actions, because he blamed Howard Spencer for his father’s early, unhappy death.

  Letty was right. He was a liar. And he’d lied to himself worst of all.

  The truth was, deep in his heart, there had always been only one person Darius truly blamed for his father’s death, and it had been too painful for him to face till now.

  Himself.

  He closed his eyes as a memory that he’d pushed away for over a decade pummeled him. But today, he could no longer resist the waves of guilt and shame as he remembered.

  Eugenios had called Darius in the middle of the day.

  “I’ve lost everything, son.” His Greek father, usually so distant and gruff, had sounded lost, bewildered. “I just got a certified letter. It says all my life savings—everything I invested with Mr. Spencer—it’s all gone.”

  Darius had been busy working in his first rented office, a windowless Manhattan basement. He’d only gotten three hours of sleep the night before. It was the first time the two men had talked in months, since Letty had dumped him and caused Eugenios to be fired and tossed from Fairholme. Just hearing his voice that day had reminded Darius of everything he was trying so hard to forget. A lifetime of resentment had exploded.

  “I guess that pays you back for all your loyalty to Spencer, huh, Dad? All those years when you put him first, even over your own family.”

  Darius had been so young, so self-righteous. It made him feel sick now to remember it.

  “That was my job.” His father’s voice had trembled. “I wanted to make sure I never lost a job again. Never felt again like I did that awful day we found you on the doorstep...”

  The awful day they found him? Darius’s hurt and anger blocked out the rest of his father’s words as Eugenios continued feebly, “I had no money. No job. I couldn’t let my family starve. You don’t know what that does to a man, to have nothing...”

  It was the most his father had ever spoken to him. And Darius’s cold reply had haunted him ever since.

  “So you had nothing then, huh, Dad? Well, guess what? You have nothing now. You ignored me my whole childhood for nothing. You have nothing. You are nothing.”

  He’d hung up the phone.

  An hour later, his father had quietly died of a heart attack in his Queens apartment, sinking to his kitchen floor, where he was found later by a neighbor.

  Darius’s hands tightened to fists against the window.

  His father had never been demonstrative. In Darius’s childhood, there had been no hugs and very little praise. Even the attention of criticism was rare.

  But Darius and his grandmother hadn’t starved. Eugenios had provided for them. He’d taught his work ethic by example. He’d worked hard, trying to give his son a better life.

  And after all his years of stoically supporting them, after he’d lost his job and money, Darius had scorned him.

  Remembering it now, he felt agonizing shame.

  He hadn’t wanted to remember the last words he’d spoken to his proud Greek father. So instead he’d sought vengeance on Howard Spencer, carefully blaming him alone.

  Darius had thought if he never loved anyone, he’d never feel pain; and if he was rich, he’d be happy.

  Look at me now, he thought bitterly, surveying the elegant penthouse. Surrounded by money. And never more alone.

  He missed Letty.

  Craved her desperately.

  He loved her.

  Darius looked up in shock.

  He’d never stopped loving her.

  All these years, he’d tried to pretend he didn’t. Tried to control her, to possess her, to pretend he didn’t care. He’d hidden his love away like a coward, afraid of the pain and shame of possible loss, while Letty let her love shine for all the world to see.

  He’d thought Letty weak? He took a shuddering breath. She was the strongest person he knew. She’d offered him loyalty, kindness, self-sacrifice. She’d offered him every bit of her heart and soul. And in return, he’d offered her money.

  Darius clawed back his hair. She was right. He’d tried to buy her. But money didn’t make the man.

  Love did.

  Darius loved her. He was completely, wildly in love with Letty. He wanted to be her husband. To live with her. To raise their baby. To be happy. To be home.

  His eyes narrowed.

  But how? How could he show her he had more to offer? How could he convince her to forgive him?

  Forgiveness. His lips twisted with the bitter irony. The very thing he’d refused to give her all these months, he would now be begging for...

  But for her, he’d do anything. He set his jaw. With the same total focus he’d built his empire, he would win back his wife.

  Over the next month, he tried everything.

  He respected her demand that he stay away from her, even after his friend Velazquez sent him a link to a birth announcement, and he saw his son had been safely born, weighing seven pounds and fourteen ounces. Both mother and baby were doing well.

  Darius had jumped up, overwhelmed with the need to go see them in the hospital, to hold them in his arms.

  But he knew bursting into her room against her express wishes would have only made things worse, not better. So he restrained himself, though it took all his self-control. He cleaned out a flower shop and sent all the flowers and toys and gifts to her maternity suite at the hospital. Anonymously.

  Then he’d waited hopefully.

  He’d found out later that she’d immediately forwarded all the flowers, toys and gifts straight to the sick children’s ward.

  Well played, he’d thought with a sigh. But he wasn’t done. He’d contacted Mildred and she’d sent him via courier the jewelry bag he’d left in his office. He’d sent it to Fairholme, again anonymously.

  A few days later he received a thank-you card from Mrs. Pollifax, stating that the earrings had been sold and the money donated to the housekeeper’s favorite charity, an animal shelter on Long Island.

  He’d ground his teeth, but doggedly kept trying. Over the next week, he sent gifts addressed to Letty. He sent a card congratulating her on the baby. On Thanksgiving, he even had ten pies from her favorite bakery delivered to her at Fairholme.

  Pies she immediately forwarded to a homeless shelter.

  As the rain of November changed to the snows of December, Darius’s confidence started to wane. Once, in a moment of weakness, he drove by Fairholme late at night, past the closed gate.

  But she was right. He couldn’t even see the house.

  After the pie incident, Darius gave up sending gifts. When she continued to refuse his calls, he stopped those, too. He kept writing heartfelt letters, and for a few weeks, he was hopeful, until they were all returned at once, unopened.

  His baby son was now four weeks old. The thought made him sick with grief. Darius hadn’t seen him. Hadn’t held him. He didn’t even know his name.

 
His wife wanted to divorce him. His son didn’t have a father. Darius felt like a failure.

  In the past, he would have taken his sense of grief and powerlessness and hired the most vicious, shark-infested law firm in Manhattan to punish her, to file for full custody.

  But he didn’t want that.

  He wanted her.

  He wanted his family back.

  Finally, as Christmas approached, he knew he was out of ideas. He had only one card left to play. But when he went to see his lawyer, the man’s jaw dropped.

  “If you do this, Mr. Kyrillos, in my opinion you’re a fool.”

  He was right. Darius was a fool. Because this was his last desperate hope.

  But was he brave enough to actually go through with it? Could he jump off that cliff, and take a gamble that would either win him back the woman he loved, or cost him literally everything?

  The afternoon of Christmas Eve Darius got the package from his lawyer. He was holding it in his hands, pacing his penthouse apartment like a trapped animal when his phone rang. Lifting it from his pocket, he saw the number from Fairholme.

  His heart started thudding frantically. He snatched it up so fast he almost dropped it before he placed it against his ear. “Letty?”

  But it wasn’t his wife. Instead, the voice on the line belonged to the last person he’d ever imagined would call him.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “IT’S YOUR VERY first Christmas,” Letty crooned to her tiny baby, walking him through Fairholme’s great hall. She was already dressed for Christmas Eve dinner in a long scarlet velvet dress and soft kid leather bootees. She’d dressed her newborn son in an adorable little Santa outfit.

  She’d asked Mrs. Pollifax to make all her father’s holiday favorites, ham, plum pudding, potatoes, in hopes of tempting him to eat more than his usual scant bites. They’d even brought the dining table into the great hall, beside the big stone fireplace, so they could have dinner beneath the enormous Christmas tree.

  Letty wanted this Christmas to be perfect. Because she knew it would be her father’s last. The doctor had said yesterday that Howard’s body was failing rapidly. It would likely be only days now.

  Her heart twisted with grief. Her only comfort was that she’d tried her best to make his last few weeks special.