he couldn’t understand. His father had seemed just as strange, the emotionally distant chauffeur of this grand American king—Howard Spencer.
And look what the Spencers had come to now.
Darius had long ago torn down his grandmother’s shack in Heraklios and built a palatial villa. He had a penthouse in Manhattan, a ski chalet in Switzerland, his private race track outside London. His personal fortune was greater than anything Howard Spencer ever dreamed of.
And the Spencers were now living in this tiny, threadbare apartment.
But instead of feeling a sense of triumph, Darius felt strangely unsettled as he walked through her dreary kitchen and poured a glass of water from the tap. Returning to the equally depressing living room, he handed Letty the glass, then looked at the folded blankets and pillow on the floor.
“Who sleeps on the sofa?”
Letty’s cheeks turned pink as she looked down at the sagging cushions. “I do.”
“You pay all the rent, and your father gets the bedroom?”
“He hasn’t been sleeping well. I just want him to be comfortable.”
Darius looked at her incredulously. “And you’re pregnant.”
“What do you care?” she said bitterly. “You’re just here to take my baby away.”
Well. True. His eyes fell on the empty suitcases. “Where were you planning to go?”
“Anywhere you couldn’t find us.”
Darius stared down at her grimly. After his conversation with Howard Spencer, he’d had his investigator check up on Letty and found she’d only recently left her job as a waitress. She was still broke. None of the other employees remembered seeing any men around her, except one waitress, Belle, who had described Darius himself.
It seemed that, contrary to all previous assumptions, Letty wasn’t a gold digger. Not with other men.
Not even with Darius.
In that, he’d misjudged her. After the way Letty had crushed him so devastatingly ten years ago, informing him that she was leaving him for a richer man, he’d believed Letty was a fortune hunter to the core.
It made sense. His own mother had abandoned him as a two-day-old newborn for the exact same reason. To Calla, Darius had been the embarrassing result of a one-night liaison with her wealthy family’s chauffeur. She’d been determined to marry as befitted her station. She’d cared only about money and the social position that went with it.
But Letty wasn’t the same. At least not anymore.
Darius abruptly sat down on the sofa beside her. “Why didn’t you come to me when you found out you were pregnant? You had to know I would give you everything you needed and more.”
“Give? I knew you’d only take!” she said incredulously. “You threatened me!”
He ground his teeth. “We could have come to some arrangement.”
“You threatened to buy my baby, and if I tried to refuse, you would take the baby from me and—what were your words?—drive me into the sea?”
Darius didn’t like to be reminded of what he’d said six months ago. He’d rationalized his cruelty on the grounds of justice. But now…strictly speaking, he might have sounded a little less than civil, if not outright crazy. Irritated, he glared at her. “Drink your water.”
“Why? What did you put into it?” She sniffed the glass. “Some drug to make me pass out so you can kidnap me to a Park Avenue dungeon?”
He snorted a laugh in spite of himself. “The water came from your tap. Drink it or not. I just thought you looked pale.”
She stared at him for a moment, then took a tentative sip.
He looked around the tiny apartment. “Why are you living here?”
“Sadly, the presidential suite at the St. Regis was already booked.”
“I mean it, Letty. Why did you stay in New York all these years? You could have just left. Moved west where no one would know you or care about what your father did.”
She blinked fast. “I couldn’t abandon him. I love him.”
The man was a liar and a cheat, so of course Letty loved him. And she’d intended to raise their baby with him in the house, the man Darius blamed for his own father’s death. He ground his teeth. “Are you even taking care of yourself? Do you have a doctor?”
“Of course,” she said, stung. “How can you ask me that?”
“Because you’ve been working on your feet all day, until recently. And living in a place like this.” He gestured angrily around the threadbare, cluttered apartment. “It never occurred to you I’d want better for our child?”
She glared at him. “I wanted better! I wanted my baby’s father to be a good man I could trust and love. Instead, I got you, Darius, the worst man on earth!”
“You didn’t think so ten years ago.”
He immediately wished he could take the words back, because they insinuated that he still cared. Which he didn’t.
“Oh, you’re actually willing to talk about ten years ago? Fine. Let’s talk about it.” She briefly closed her eyes. “The reason I never showed up the night we were supposed to elope was because I was protecting you.”
His lip curled scornfully. “Protecting me.”
“Yes.” Her expression was cool. “The day we were going to elope, my father told me his investment fund was a fraud. It had stopped making money years before, but he’d continued making payouts to old investors by taking money from new ones. The Feds were already on his tail. I knew what was going to happen.” She lifted her luminous gaze. “I couldn’t let you get dragged into it. Not with all your big dreams. You’d just started your tech company…” She took a deep breath and whispered, “I couldn’t let my father’s crime ruin your life, too.”
For a moment, Darius’s heart twisted as he looked at her beautiful face, her heartbreaking hazel eyes. Then he remembered that he no longer had any heart vulnerable enough to break.
“You’re lying. You left me for another man. A rich man who could—how did you express it?—give you the life of luxury you deserved.” He snorted. “Though obviously he wasn’t much good. He must have dumped you the moment your father was arrested.”
“He couldn’t dump me.” She gave a low laugh. “He never existed.”
“What?”
“It was the only way I knew you’d let me go.” She lifted her chin and added with deliberate lightness, “I knew your weakness, even then.”
“Weakness?” he growled.
“You always said a man could be measured by his money. I knew you wouldn’t accept my just breaking up with
