AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I love you. Could you ever love me?”
When Santiago finally rose at dawn, he felt bleary-eyed, more exhausted than he’d been the night before. It was the middle of the night in New York, but he didn’t care. He phoned the pilot. The man politely let him know that they’d arrived safely in New York, and Miss Langtry had been picked up at the airport by his usual driver and the bodyguard.
“Is there a problem?” the pilot asked.
“No problem,” Santiago said abruptly and hung up.
He pushed down his emotions, determined to stay numb. He went downstairs in the castle and ate breakfast, reading newspapers, just as Nadia and his father did. Three people silently reading newspapers at a long table in an elegant room filled with flowers, the only sound the rustle of paper and the metallic clank of silverware against china.
Santiago went numbly through the motions of the day, speaking to his father’s lawyers, skipping lunch for a long conference call with a Tokyo firm in the process of being sold to Santiago’s New York-based conglomerate.
He didn’t contact Belle. He tried not to think about her. He was careful not to feel, or let himself think about anything deeper than business. He felt utterly alone. Correction: he didn’t feel anything at all.
Exactly as he’d wanted.
At dinner that night in the great hall, both his father and his sister-in-law were lavish in their abuse of the woman who’d left them the previous night.
“Nothing but a gold digger,” Nadia said with a smirk. “As soon as I told her you’d always support the baby she left, didn’t she?”
Santiago stared at his crystal goblet with the red wine. Red, like blood, which he no longer could feel beating through his heart.
“You did the right thing, mi hijo,” the old man cackled, then started talking about a potential business acquisition. “But these money-grubbing peasants refuse to sell. Do they not know their place? They refused my generous offer!” He drank more wine. “So we’ll just take the company. Have our lawyers send a letter, say we already own the technology. Check the status of the patents. We can ruin him then take his company for almost nothing.”
“Clever,” Nadia said approvingly.
Santiago didn’t say anything. He just stared down at his plate, at the elegant china edged with twenty-four-carat gold. At the solid silver knife beside it. He took a drink of the cool water, closing his eyes.
All he could think of was Belle, who’d tried to save him from the cold reality of his world. From the cold reality of who he’d become, as dead as the steak on this plate.
Belle had tried to be his sunshine, his warmth, his light. She’d loved him. And for that, he’d sent her away forever. Both her and his unborn daughter.
“You are very quiet, mi hijo.”
“I’m not very hungry. Excuse me,” Santiago muttered and left the dinner table with a noisy scrape of his hard wooden chair. In the darkened hallway, he leaned back against the oak-paneled wall and took a deep breath, trying to contain the acid-like feeling in his chest. In his heart.
Tomorrow, his father intended to hold a press conference to announce that Santiago would be taking the Zoya name as rightfully his, along with the Zoya companies, eventually folding his own companies into the conglomerate. The duke also would start the process of getting Santiago recognized as the heir to his dukedom.
He was going to be the rightful heir, as he’d dreamed of all his life. He was about to have everything he’d ever wanted. Everything he’d ever dreamed of.
And he’d never felt so miserable.
If he closed his eyes in the hallway, he could almost imagine he could smell the light scent of Belle’s fragrance, tangerine and soap and sunshine.
Suddenly, he had to know she was doing all right. It was early afternoon in New York. Reaching for his phone, he dialed the number of the kitchen in his Upper East Side mansion.
Mrs. Green answered. “Velazquez residence.”
“Hello, Mrs. Green,” Santiago said tightly. “I was just wondering if my wife—” Then he remembered Belle was not his wife, not even his fiancée, and never would be again. He cleared his throat. “Please don’t disturb Belle. I just wanted to make sure she is doing well after her trip home.”
There was a long pause. Her voice sounded half surprised, half sad. “Mr. Velazquez, I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Miss Langtry is at the hospital... She’s in labor.”
He gripped the phone. “But it’s too soon—”
“The doctors are concerned. Didn’t she call you?”
