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“I didn’t. Hate is too strong a word. I didn’t know her well enough to hate her. Let’s just say I was on to your mother a long time ago. When she told Eve to seduce me, I’d already found you.” He leaned back, rubbing his chin. “You two were cut from a very different cloth. You got the best parts of your father, and she got the worst traits of your mother. You weren’t just like her, anjo, but Eve was. Her true fault was never standing up to the woman trying to hurt you until it was too late.”
Until it was too late… “The money and the book,” I said to myself.
“I believe she was trying to give you a chance. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to get away from all this and hold a bargaining chip. You can…dump or bury her in a special place whenever you’re ready,” he added.
I hadn’t considered doing anything like that.
Letting out a small laugh, I shook my head and smiled at him, strumming my fingers on the leather arm of the chair. “Knowing Eve she’s exactly where she’d want to be.”
He nodded his head in understanding.
“Well, while you’re here, these are yours.” Pulling open his middle drawer, he took out a sleek black box, a pill bottle, and a slip of paper.
He laid them out in order. The box was slid across to me first. An image of a red iPhone was on the front. The prescription bottle was next, and then the paper.
There was a sum written on it—the same number that had been on the promissory note. With furrowed brows, I looked to Mateo for an explanation.
“The money your family was indebted…it wasn’t to me. It was always to you. Your father left you everything he could save from your mother.
“I’ve been running it through the real estate and casino so she would never know where it really was.
I wanted you to know you have money. Not mine—yours.”
Damn. I blinked, feeling my eyes burn a bit. It took me a beat to will the onslaught of tears away. Taking a small breath, I folded the piece of paper in half and placed it on top of my new phone.
This wasn’t the time to be getting emotional. Instead, I focused on what I knew needed to be done next. “What do we do about my mother? She’s never going to stop. We both know that.”
He steepled his fingers beneath his chin and slightly smirked. I knew right then he already had an idea on exactly how to handle her. Did I get the full detailed plan?
Of course not. Nothing with Mateo would ever be that simple.
“Why don’t you invite your friends for dinner tomorrow night?”
“Um…okay,” I replied, unsure what they had to do with any of this. I was pretty used to his sporadic subject switches, though.
“We’ll discuss it then. In the meantime, I have a few calls of my own to make, so why don’t you get yourself something to eat, and I’ll find you in a bit.”
With a lack of anything else to do, I nodded and gathered my things off his desk. I was halfway out the room when he spoke again.
“What would you do to stop her?”
Pausing, I thought about it just as I’d been doing since I found out she was Ace, only to come back to the same resolution. My father, my sister, Mateo, Camilla…I refused to let everything we’d been put through because of one person all be for nothing.
My father didn’t leave me everything just so I could turn around and allow an evil bitch to take it from me. And that’s exactly what she would try to do.
I had everything she wanted. I had the man, the money, and the empire. If she couldn’t have it, neither could I. That’s how she operated. I would put her in the ground before I ever let her take any of it.
This was my life; I was over my family…No—I was over her fucking it up.
My father gambled his cards with the devil, and I was going to make sure he won.
“I’ll do whatever I have to do,” I finally replied, walking out of the room.
Chapter Fifteen
He was not someone you wanted to fall in love with.
Lust, yes, but not love. Whoever found themselves confused between the two needed to run like hell, get as far away as they could, and beg some other divine entity to save their asses from the pretty devil dressed in a three piece suit
