Lush Money (Filthy Rich)

by Angelina M. Lopez

  She touched the folded-up sheaf of documents in her sweater coat and allowed them to give her strength.

  The man stopped just short of looming. “Come with me,” he said tersely. He was handsome if you liked men carved in granite. His width more than doubled hers and as they approached the elevators, Sofia realized she would be stuck in a tiny box for fifty-five floors with those shoulders. And lots and lots of aggression.

  He let it hiss out the second the elevator doors closed, which made Sofia white-knuckle the documents. “What are you doing here?” he asked, jaw clenched as he stared at the ascending numbers.

  She could become quite princessy and tell him it was none of his business. But this was Henry, the head of Roxanne’s security, so who came to visit his employer and why was very much his business. Secondly, she’d never quite recovered from the cold-blooded way he’d looked at her at their first meeting, when she’d tried to attack Roxanne. She’d stared certain death in the eyes. Lastly, she’d come to suspect in her brief observations over the last insane months that Henry might care for his employer slightly beyond the bounds of a standard employer-employee relationship. She didn’t blame him; everyone who spent time with her sister-in-law seemed to fall in love with her. Sofia was half in love with her herself.

  His massive biceps, revealed in his short-sleeved black polo shirt, skipped and jumped as he kept his face tilted up toward the numbers. He wasn’t angry. He was scared. For Roxanne.

  Sofia wondered what he’d seen from Roxanne in the last three weeks. She wondered if it was anywhere near as heartbreaking as what she’d seen from her brother.

  She decided to tell him the truth. “I’m here to see if she’ll take Mateo back.”

  And so quick that her brain couldn’t keep up with the movement of her body, Sofia found herself pressed up against the elevator wall, her shoulders delicately but implacably pinned.

  “Leave,” Henry growled into her face, his quarterback good looks transformed into something snarling and terrifying.

  Shocked frozen, Sofia stammered, “I—I—”

  Her shoulders were squeezed infinitesimally more in his massive hands. “Leave. I’ll make an excuse for you. Don’t show your face—”

  Outrage bloomed larger than her fear. “No!” Sofia demanded, wriggling against his hold. “I’ve got to—”

  “You don’t know what it was like.”

  Suddenly, his bulk was leaning toward her, as if she could help hold him up. He leaned the top of his head against the elevator wall, kept his mouth close to her hair. He seemed to be...wilting. Sofia had the outrageous impulse to put sheltering arms around him.

  “You don’t know what it was like,” he said again, almost whispering, keeping close dark secrets. “When we... William got to her first. A family from town had seen her walking the highway, had taken her home and called the sheriff. William got to her first and then called me and Helen. We got there as soon as we could. But you don’t understand how bad...” His breath was soft in her hair. “She couldn’t stop crying. She was like a little girl. Just crying and crying.” Then his voice did drop to a whisper. “She used to cry like that. That’s what Father Juan said. When she was little, when she’d been left somewhere, she’d cry until she made herself sick.”

  During one endless, liquor-soaked night, Mateo had ranted about the woman who’d birthed Roxanne Medina. As Henry pushed himself away, Sofia wiped at her eyes before putting a hand on his arm. “Please don’t compare that horrible woman to my brother,” she said. “He’s devastated, too. He knows he did wrong. He’s trying to make it right.”

  Henry shook her off by crossing those massive arms over his chest. “Then why isn’t he here instead of you?”

  “He...he doesn’t know I’m here...” Though if the three un-listened-to voice mails on her phone signified anything, he suspected. “He’s working right now to save their marriage. I’m trying to save...everything else.”

  Henry continued to stare without comment. Sofia glanced over his head and realized she had eight floors to convince him.

  “Roxanne Medina is the only woman for my brother,” she implored. “And my brother is the only man for Roxanne. And if we let them screw this up, they’ll settle into the worst part of themselves and tell themselves they’re okay.” She glanced at the numbers and talked faster. “They’ll tell themselves they’re better off: Mateo, scrounging around in the dirt and trying to save everyone but himself. Roxanne, icy and impenetrable and so, so alone in her tower.”

  The elevator gave a delicate ding as they reached the fifty-fifth floor. The doors slid open. She panted out, “If we let them screw this up, that’s on us.”

  As impenetrable as a brick wall, Henry stood in front of her blocking her way into the pale woods and glass of the executive floor. Sofia straightened her spine and put on the mantle of the implacable princess. In truth, as the seconds ticked down to the doors closing and the elevator descending back to the lobby, she fought the urge to shove, kick, and bite him aside.

  With a simple step back, Henry prevented the doors from closing.

  “I don’t disagree with you,” he finally said. It was something. “But you’re going to find this harder than you realize.”

  “Then help me.”

  After another twenty thousand years of staring at her, Henry finally turned to the side. “Okay. If I get fired, I’m using you as a reference.”

  Sofia smiled as she slipped past his bulk onto the creamy white carpet. “If you get fired, I’ll hire you myself.”

  * * *

  As Sofia continued to stare at the part in her sister-in-law’s hair, she began to sweat. How much was it to hire a personal bodyguard? She hoped her dwindling trust fund could take it.

  Because Henry was definitely getting fired.

  Roxanne already looked half frozen in ice—she was wearing a gorgeous-yet-cruel white leather dress that slicked over every one of her curves, and her liquid-red lips had pulled into a terrifying smile when she greeted Sofia without coming out from behind her desk. She wasn’t wearing her ring. When she noticed that Henry had stationed himself beside the door, when she told him, “That will be all, Henry,” like a queen of the ice castle and not at all like the bold-yet-kind Roxanne, she’d noticeably stiffened at his reply: “I’ll stay put until you hear what Sofia has to say.”

  Now Roxanne ignored them both as she had her head bent to her desk, reviewing and annotating a document, tiny red reading glasses pinched on her nose. Her hair, perfectly parted in the middle and swept stick straight down her back, was a rich glossy black down to the roots. Which Sofia were getting to know intimately.

  Sofia grabbed on to her patience, reminded herself of the woman sobbing on a Kansas highway and the man shattering his bourbon glass against the castle wall, and flipped her thumb across the papers in her sweater pocket. She could wait her much-beloved sister-in-law out.

  Finally, Roxanne leaned back in her office chair and took the reading glasses off. She flipped them haphazardly onto her desk. “Now,” she purred, eyeing Sofia and Henry. “What are you two up to?”

  Sofia took a deep breath and tried to remember the words she’d cobbled together on the plane flight here. Although the memory had barbs, she tried to remember what she’d felt like at this moment, heartbroken, betrayed, every warm-and-soft emotion scooped out by a man who’d said he loved her. That man, or his emissary, had never tried to make amends. But what if he had? What combination of words could make her forgive him?

  “My brother doesn’t know I’m here,” she began. “He wanted to come to you after.”

  Roxanne’s expression of bored patience didn’t change. She certainly didn’t react to the obvious question: After what? She was playing it as closed off as Sofia would. Don’t give them an opening. Not even a sliver.

  “But he’s making choices now that you’ll both regret later,” Sofia sai
d, trying to meet her sister-in-law’s eye. Trying to connect with the woman she’d grown so fond of. She took a deep breath. “He’s so very sorry. He regrets completely how he treated you. Once he’s done, he will be here on his knees begging for another chance. You can’t imagine how he’s been—he’s end-of-the-world depressed one moment and then barking out plans the next. I’ve seen him drunk and raving and an hour later he’s slurping down espresso and strategizing his attack. He’s haunted by how badly he hurt you—”

  Roxanne cut her off. “He did us both a favor,” she said with an indulgent smile. “How pathetic it would have been if we’d attempted some lifelong effort just because our pelvises bang together well. A week or two away from him finally shook me free of his penis spell.”

  Sofia hid her flinch.

  “Just imagine if we’d kept down that road. He’d be saddled with a wife and child he didn’t want. And I’d be saddled with the Monte.” Roxanne rested the long red tips of her nails against her exposed cleavage. “I’ve made my fortune saving failing companies, but I still needed to be cleared of his cock before I could see what was glaringly obvious: Your kingdom is doomed. Trust me, sweetie, we both dodged a bullet.”

  Sofia felt her lower lip trembling outside of her control. She knew—she hoped—that it was all a facade, Roxanne’s lash out after being made vulnerable. But Sofia looked up to her. She believed in her. It was hard to protect herself from punches she hadn’t expected.

  Roxanne formed those lush lips into a pretty pout. “I’m not trying to be mean. But your brother and I are over. You and I can still be friends, though. Henry can escort you to my assistant’s desk, and he’ll set up something the next time you’re in town. Henry?”

  Sofia leaned across the desk and grabbed the elegant finger trying to point her out of the office and out of Roxanne’s life.

  “Friends?” Sofia spat out, winding her fingers through Roxanne’s although the woman tried to tug away. “You’re more than una amiga. Tú eres mi hermana.”

  You are my sister.

  For the first time, Sofia saw something warm and dark snap in the icy blue of Roxanne’s eyes.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but you wriggled under my skin just like you wriggled under my brother’s,” Sofia said, palm to palm with Roxanne, keeping her close. “So, joder, maybe you and my brother don’t work out. But you’re always going to be a sister to me. And I’m certainly not going to talk to your assistant so I can hang out with you.”

  Roxanne had stopped struggling. “Your brother refused to make plans through my assistant, too,” she said numbly.

  Sofia smiled. “I bet.”

  “My assistant is really a wonderful person.”

  “Who, Brandon?” Sofia said. “We all love Brandon.”

  Carefully Roxanne unwound her fingers from Sofia’s. She leaned back in her chair, her hands at her waist, and looked out her magnificent windows. The bay was wrapped in fog, but up here, the sky was blue and bright. The top of the Golden Gate Bridge poked up from the fog like a glowing red promise.

  “I always wanted a sister,” Roxanne said, her eyes still on the view.

  She returned her gaze to Sofia, and Sofia realized then how much makeup she was wearing. How exhausted she looked. She wondered how many hours the woman had slept since Mateo broke her heart.

  “What are you doing here, Sofia? What message can be so important that you make my best man commit treason to deliver it?” Roxanne leveled retribution eyes on Henry and Sofia hoped that the half-hearted joke meant she wouldn’t have to hire the bodyguard.

  “He’s going to sign,” Sofia spat out before she lost her nerve. “They have a press conference scheduled for tomorrow. They’re making him sign in front of the world. He’s going to sell half the Monte to Fuller and CML Resorts.”

  Again, Sofia saw that snap of feeling. But Roxanne lowered her eyes to the desk, put her hands on the stack of paper piled in front of her. “That’s probably best. He wasn’t doing that great with a whole Monte anyway.”

  “That’s not funny,” Sofia hissed out.

  Roxanne shrugged an apology. But she didn’t look up as she half-heartedly fussed with the papers, aligning their edges. It was surreal: watching this supermodel billionaire futz at her desk like a schoolgirl being chastised.

  “Do you really think they’ll stop there?” Sofia insisted. “Once the king and his minions know they can get an inch, they’ll take a mile. They’ll keep slicing and slicing at the Monte, and Mateo will bleed at every cut. How long do you think he’ll survive watching everything he cares about being stolen away by a man he hates?”

  “What other choice does he have?” Roxanne said softly, tapping a stack of papers against the desk. “If he wants to stay prince—”

  “He’s not doing it for the princedom!” Sofia shouted, slapping at the pale wood, desperately wanting Roxanne to snap out of it. “He’s doing it for you!”

  Roxanne tapped the papers one last time. Then she sat them directly parallel an inch from the edge and folded her hands in front of her. Finally, she looked at Sofia. “What do you mean?”

  If Roxanne truly were her sister, she’d already be grabbing for a handful of hair. “He knows that agreeing to this deal is the beginning of the end. But he’s agreeing to it for you. To protect your secrets.”

  “They’re his secrets, too.”

  “He doesn’t...” Sofia huffed in frustration, trying to cling to the patience that came in short supply for her on the best of days. “Do you think he’d trade half of his land and the livelihoods of so many people to protect his pride? So he’s a prince who married for money. That’s what princes do! He’s making this deal for you, to protect you and everything you’ve created from our father and your mother. He wants to show you that he chooses you. You’re the most important thing in his life. He’s willing to sacrifice everything else—even the kingdom he loves—to prove that.”

  Roxanne stared at Sofia with the befuddlement of a stranger in a strange land. “Why would he... I don’t... If...if that’s true, why isn’t he here telling me that instead of you?”

  Was that the tiniest note of hope in Roxanne’s voice amid all the skepticism? Sofia grabbed on to it. “Because he wanted it to be a fait accompli,” she said, pushing to the front of her seat. “He wanted the act over and done with before he came to you. So you would have no doubt that he valued you over the land and the vines and the kingdom. Over himself.”

  Sofia then slipped back into her seat, crossed her legs in her skinny jeans, and bobbed her heel. “But I thought that was stupid. You’re the most powerful ally the Monte has. Why tie your hands?”

  Roxanne narrowed her eyes at her. “Then all of this is conjecture. You can’t prove any of it. You mean to drag me back to the Monte simply to save your brother’s ass when—”

  Sofia was already drawing the folded documents out of her pocket. She threw them on Roxanne’s desk, right in front of her.

  Recognizing them, Roxanne flinched back. Then, as if unable to help herself, she gingerly spread them flat.

  Mateo had slashed his signature to the bottom of the divorce decree. Right next to Roxanne’s signature, which she’d had dated and notarized before she sent it.

  But in the margins, Mateo had written a note in blue. And he’d attached a small white envelope to the documents with a paper clip. Roxanne lifted the envelope from the page and read the note.

  I’m only signing this to get a do-over. I’m going to do it right this time. I’m going to court you then seduce you and then lure you into my bed. I may ask you to marry me every time I see you, but ignore me until I’ve earned it. I’m going to do everything in my power to earn it.

  I didn’t think I was worthy of you. I was afraid you’d see that. And my fear made me unworthy. That’s not an excuse. There is no excuse for what I did to you.

  But I hope yo
u give me a chance to grovel. I pray you give me a chance to do better.

  The worst thing I’ve ever done was make you believe your love was anything less than the rarest and most valuable gift. Better than fertile vineyards and prosperous kingdoms.

  You are my kingdom. A lifetime spent loving you is the only legacy I want.

  Her jaw clenched, Roxanne looked up and out her window. She wasn’t looking at the view. “This doesn’t...” She took a quick inhale, trying to steady herself. “I’m still useful to him. My money, my power. This doesn’t—”

  “Open the envelope,” Sofia said quietly.

  Roxanne ripped open the paper with trembling hands, a jagged frantic tear. Then she turned it over and shook.

  Torn pieces of rigid, light blue paper sprinkled down like confetti. Aghast, she put the envelope down.

  The check she’d provided Mateo, the only financial security the Monte had if he didn’t take Fuller’s deal, lay like inconsequential trash on her desk.

  Roxanne looked at Sofia and pinched her bottom lip, marring the sleek red lipstick. “He’s going to give away the Monte.”

  Sofia nodded, a told-you-so look on her face perfected by little sisters all over the world. “He’s going to give away the Monte.”

  Roxanne glanced over Sofia’s shoulder. “Henry, what are you still doing here?” she cried, smudging lipstick across her chin as she threw her hands out. “Go get my plane ready. Tell Helen we’re leaving. ¡Joder!”

  “I know,” Sofia said as she stood, snatched a tissue off a side table, and rounded the desk. Roxanne was already on the phone and clacking at her computer.

  Sofia grabbed Roxanne’s chin, cutting her off mid-sentence as her sister-in-law barked orders into the phone, and wiped the offending lipstick off her skin. “It’s impossible to find good help these days.”

  July: Day Three

  Roxanne Medina might have been the most badass, brilliant, beautiful, billionaire bitch around.