The Consequence Of His Vengeance. Jennie Lucas

my last paycheck, then buy bus tickets.”

      “I still don’t understand why Rochester,” he said with a scowl.

      She sighed. “I told you. My friend Belle knows someone who knows someone who might be able to get me a job there. Everyone says it’s nice. I need you to start packing.”

      “I have other plans today.” His voice was peevish.

      “Dad, our lease is up in two days. I know it’s not fun, but whatever you don’t pack, I’m going to have to call the junk dealer to take.” Her throat ached. Maybe all their leftover stuff was junk, but it was all they had left. Of Fairholme. Of her mother. Her voice tightened. “Look, I know it won’t be easy.”

      Sitting at the peeling Formica table where he was doing the crossword, Howard glared at her with irritation. “You just need to tell that man of yours you’re pregnant.”

      They’d been having this argument for months. She gritted her teeth. “I can’t. I told you.”

      “Poppycock. A man should be given the opportunity to take care of his own child. And you know, Letty,” he added gruffly, “I won’t always be here to look after you.”

      Howard—look after her? When was the last time that had been true, instead of the other way around? She looked at her father, then sighed. “Why don’t you believe me?”

      “I knew Darius as a boy.” Fiddling with his untouched coffee mug, he looked at her seriously. “If you’d just help him see past his anger, he’s got a good heart—”

      “I’m not gambling on his good heart,” she said bitterly. “Not after the way he treated me.”

      Her father looked thoughtful. “I could just call him...”

      “No!” Letty shouted. Her eyes blazed. “If you ever go behind my back like that again, I will never talk to you for the rest of my life. Do you understand? Never.”

      “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “But he’s your baby’s father. You should just marry him and be happy.”

      That left her speechless for a minute.

      “Just be packed by the time I return,” she said finally, and she went out into the gray, rainy September morning. She picked up her last check at the diner—for a pitiful amount, but every dollar would help—and said farewell to her fellow waitress Belle, who’d moved to New York from Texas the previous Christmas.

      “Anytime you need anything, you call me, you hear?” Belle hugged her fiercely. “No matter where you are, Rochester or Rome, remember I’m only a phone call away!”

      Letty didn’t make friends easily, so it was hard to say goodbye to the only real friend she’d made since she’d left Fairholme. The thought of going to yet another new apartment in a new town where she didn’t know anyone, in hopes of starting a job that might not even exist, filled her with dread. She tried to smile.

      “You too, Belle,” she managed. Then, wiping her eyes, she said goodbye to everyone else at the diner and went back out into the rain to deposit her check at the bank and get two one-way bus tickets to Rochester.

      When Letty got back home, her hair and clothes were damp with rain. Her father wasn’t at the apartment, and his suitcases were empty. All their belongings were still untouched, exactly where she’d left them.

      She’d just sort through everything herself, she thought wearily. Once she’d figured out how many boxes they’d have to leave behind, she’d call the junk dealer.

      Of the eight billion dollars her father’s investment fund had lost, three billion had since been recovered. But the authorities had been careful not to leave him with anything of value. Their possessions had been picked over long ago by the Feds and bankruptcy court.

      What was left was all crammed into this tiny apartment. The broken flute her mother had played at Juilliard. The ceramic animals Constance had painted for her daughter as gifts, starting with her first birthday. The leather-bound classic books from her grandfather’s collection, water-damaged, so worthless. Except to them. Her great-grandfather’s old ship in a bottle. Her grandma Spencer’s homemade Christmas ornaments. All would have to be left.

      We’ll get through it, Letty told herself fiercely. They could still be happy. She’d raise her baby with love, in a snug cottage overlooking a garden of flowers. Her son would have a happy childhood, just as Letty had.

      He wouldn’t be raised in some stark gray penthouse without a mother, without love...

      Letty started digging through the first pile of clutter. She planned to stay up the whole night scrubbing down the apartment, in hopes their landlord might actually give back her security deposit.

      Hearing a hard knock at the door, she rose to her feet, overwhelmed with relief. Her father had come back to help. He must have forgotten his key again. Sorting through their possessions would be so much easier with two of them—

      Opening the door, she gasped.

      Darius stood in her doorway, dressed in a black button-down shirt with well-cut jeans that showed the rugged lines of his powerful body. It was barely noon, but his jaw was dark with five-o’clock shadow.

      For a moment, even hating and fearing him as she did, Letty was dazzled by that ruthless masculine beauty.

      “Letty,” he greeted her coldly. Then his eyes dropped to her baby bump.

      With an intake of breath, Letty tried to shut the door in his face.

      He blocked her with his powerful shoulder and pushed his way into her apartment.

CHAPTER FOUR

      SIX MONTHS AGO Darius had wanted vengeance.

      He’d gotten it. He’d ruthlessly taken Letitia Spencer’s virginity, then tossed her out into a cold winter’s night. He’d seduced her, insulted her. He’d thrown the money in her face, made her feel cheap.

      It had been delicious.

      But since then, to his dismay, he’d discovered the price of that vengeance.

      In Darius’s childhood, back on the Greek island where he was born, his grandmother had often told him that vengeance hurt the person who committed it worse than the one who endured it. When the kids at school mocked his illegitimate birth, sneering at his mother’s abandonment—Even your own mitéra didn’t want you—his grandmother had told him to ignore them, to take the high road.

      He’d tried, but the boys’ taunts had only grown worse until he was finally forced to punch them. They’d all been bloodied in the fight, but especially Darius, since it had been one against four.

      “So you see I’m right,” his grandmother had said gravely, bandaging him afterward. “You were hurt worse.”

      In Darius’s own opinion, that vengeance had been not only justified, but strategic. The boys at school had never taunted him again.

      But this time, his grandmother had been proved right. Because Darius’s vengeance against Letty had hurt him more than he’d ever imagined.

      Instead of quenching the flame, that night together had only built his desire for her into a blazing fire.

      He wanted her. Every night for the last six months, he’d half expected Letty to contact him. Once her prideful anger had faded, surely she would want him back—if not for his body, then obviously for his money.

      But she never had. And when he’d remembered the haunted look on her beautiful heart-shaped face the night she’d told him she loved him, the night he’d taken her virginity and tossed her ruthlessly into the dark, he’d had moments when he’d wondered if he might have been wrong.

      But how could he be wrong? The evidence spoke for itself.

      Still,