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 had to sacrifice yourself to save me.”
“No,” she gasped, “you’ve got it all wrong...”
“You never respected me.” He forced his voice to remain calm when his shoulders were tight with repressed fury. “Not my intelligence, my judgment or my strength.”
“Respected you?” she choked out. “I loved you. But I knew what was about to happen. I couldn’t let you drown with us. You had nothing—”
“You’re right,” he said coldly. “I had nothing. No money. No influence. You knew I couldn’t pay for lawyers or speak to politicians on your behalf. So you decided I was useless.”
“No.” She looked pale. “I just meant you had nothing to do with it—”
“You were my fiancée. I had everything to do with it. I would have tried to protect you, to comfort you. But you never gave me the chance. Because you believed I would fail.”
Her voice sounde
d strangled. “Darius—”
He held up his hand sharply. “But now I have made my fortune. Everything has changed. And yet you still intended to disappear and keep my child secret from me for the rest of your life.” A new, chilling thought occurred to him. “What story did you intend to tell the baby, Letty?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
“What were you going to raise my child to believe? That he or she had no father? That I hadn’t wanted him?” An old childhood grief he’d thought long buried suddenly shook the ground beneath his feet, like an earthquake threatening to swallow him whole. “That I’d purposefully abandoned him?”
“I don’t know!” Letty cried. “But you said you’d take the baby from me. I had no choice but to run!”
Darius stared at the woman he’d known for most of his life. He’d loved her for such a short, sweet time. He’d hated her far longer.
He himself had been abandoned by everyone who should have loved him as a child. His whole young life he’d never felt like he really belonged anywhere.