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I took hold of her hand. ‘This is a conversation you need to have with him. I need you to know the truth.’
‘Then tell me the truth,’ she insisted.
‘You wouldn’t believe me.’
‘So, what are you suggesting?’ she said and I saw the tears in her eyes.
‘I’m releasing you from this contract between us. You’re free to go whenever you choose. You should go home and speak to your father and then decide what you want to do next. But that information in your hands hurts my business almost as much as it hurts your father. So, I want you to think about that and why I would ever release it.’
‘Alex,’ she started to say. ‘I don’t know … what are you talking about?’
‘I’ve booked you on the red eye to New York tonight. Hugo will drive you to the airport and then one of your father’s men will pick you up from JFK.’
‘So, that’s it? I can just go? Just like that? You and me are done?’
I took her face in my hands. ‘You and me will never be done, Alana. I hope you come back to me. I hope that you weren’t lying when you told me that you love me. But, yes, you are free to go, princess.’
She looked up at me, with tears in her eyes and a look of confusion on her face. I wanted her to go and see her father and find out the truth, but I also wanted her to wrap her arms around my neck and tell me that of course she loved me and that she couldn’t stand to be without me.
But she said none of those things. Instead she uttered two words, and they broke my ice-cold heart.
‘Thank you.’
ALANA
I walked up the few steps of my parent’s old Brownstone and rang the doorbell. My pulse raced as I waited for the door to be answered. I had pored over the papers that Alejandro had given me last night, and they had made for very interesting reading indeed.
If they were genuine, then my father’s explanation for my forced marriage to Alejandro just didn’t make sense. If what I’d read on those papers was true, it seemed that my father had an entirely different reason for marrying me off to the King of L.A and the heir to the Montoya family business.
Of course, I knew that paperwork could be faked but I had an awful feeling that it hadn’t been, and that Alejandro was the only one telling me the truth.
I took a deep breath.
I could do this!
I was about to confront my father, the man I had always looked up to, and accuse him of something so heinous, it was unthinkable.
Cassandra, my father’s PA, answered the door to me. ‘Alana?’ she said with a look of surprise on her face. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to see my father, Cassie. Is he home?’
She nodded and stepped aside as she opened the door wider. ‘Of course. Come in, come in. He’ll be so happy to see you.’
I followed her into the kitchen, where my father was sitting drinking coffee and reading the morning papers. I wondered briefly why Cassandra was here so early in the morning, but dismissed the thought from my mind. I had enough to confront him with without wondering if he was having an affair with his PA.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said as he looked up from his newspaper. ‘What are you doing here?’
I shrugged. ‘I just needed to see you, Daddy.’
He folded his paper and stood up, crossing the kitchen and placing his hand on my shoulder. ‘Is everything okay, Alana?’
I blinked back the tears. How the hell was I going to do this? ‘Where’s mom?’ I asked.
‘In bed. She’s having one of her migraines,’ he replied with a roll of his eyes. My mother spent more time in her bed than any other person I’d ever known.
She always had some ailment or other. I thought about asking him to go get her, or marching up the stairs and waking her myself, but I thought better of it. I wondered if she knew what her darling husband had done.
She had always taken his side over mine. He had always been the most important person in our family. Everything had always been about him and his career, and until that moment, I had never even thought to question it.
