The Consequence Of His Vengeance. Jennie Lucas

must have revealed her real reasons for betraying Darius ten years ago. She couldn’t imagine he would even be talking to her now otherwise.

      But how to know for sure?

      Biting her lip, she said awkwardly, “I read about you in the paper this morning. That you sold. Your company, I mean.”

      “Ah.” His jaw set as he turned away. “Right.”

      His voice was cold. No wonder, Letty thought. She sounded like an idiot. She tried to steady herself. “Congratulations.”

      “Thank you. It cost ten years of my life.”

      Ten years. Those two simple words hung between them in silence, like a small raft on an ocean of regret.

      Their car entered Manhattan, with all its wealth and savagery. A place she’d avoided since her father’s trial and sentencing almost a decade before.

      Her heartbeat fluttered in her throat as she looked down at her chapped hands, folded tightly in her lap. “I’ve thought of you a lot, wondering how you were. Hoping you were well. Hoping you were happy.”

      Stopping at a red light, Darius abruptly looked at her.

      “It was good of you to think of me,” he drawled in a low voice, once again with that strange undercurrent. In the cold night of the city, headlights of passing cars moved shadows across the hard lines of his face.

      The light changed to green. It was just past ten o’clock, and the traffic was starting to lessen. Heading north on First Avenue, they passed the United Nations plaza. The buildings had started climbing higher against the sky as they approached Midtown. Turning off Forty-Ninth onto the gracious width of Park Avenue, they approached a newly built glass-and-steel skyscraper on the south side of Central Park.

      As he pulled his car into the porte cochere, she was craning her neck back in astonishment. “You live here?”

      “I have the top two floors,” he said casually, in the way someone might say, I have tickets to the ballet.

      His door opened, and he handed the keys to a smiling valet who greeted him respectfully by name. Coming around, Darius opened Letty’s door. He held out his hand.

      She stared at it nervously, then put her hand in his.

      He wrapped it tightly in his own. She felt the warmth and roughness of his palm against hers.

      He had to know, she thought desperately. He had to. Otherwise, why would he have sought her out? Why wouldn’t he still hate her?

      He led her through the awe-inspiring lobby, with its minimalist furniture and twenty-foot ceilings.

      “Good evening, Mr. Kyrillos,” the man at the desk said. “Cold weather we’re having. Hope you’re staying warm!”

      Darius held Letty’s hand tightly. She felt like she might catch flame as he drew her across the elegant, cavernous lobby. “I am. Thank you, Perry.”

      He waved his key fob in front of the elevator’s wall panel and pressed the seventieth floor.

      His hand gripped hers as the elevator traveled up. She felt the warmth of his body next to hers, just inches away, towering over her. She bit her lip, unable to look at him. She just stared at the electronic numbers displaying the floors as the elevator rose higher and higher. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy...

      The bell dinged as the door slid open.

      “After you,” Darius said.

      Glancing at him nervously, she stepped out directly into a dark, high-ceilinged penthouse. He followed her, as the elevator door closed silently behind them.

      The rubber soles of her white shoes squeaked against the marble floor as she walked through the foyer beneath the modern crystal chandelier above. She flinched at the noise, embarrassed.

      But his handsome face held no expression as he removed his long black overcoat. He didn’t turn on any lights. He never looked away from her.

      With a gulp, she turned away.

      Gripping her purse strap, she walked forward into the shadowy main room. It was two stories high, with sparse, angular furniture in black and gray, and floor-to-ceiling windows twisted around the penthouse in every direction.

      Looking from right to left, she could see the dark vista of Central Park, the high-rise buildings to the Hudson River, and the lights of New Jersey beyond it, and to the south, the skyscrapers of Midtown, including the Empire State Building, all the way to the Financial District and the gleaming One World Trade Center.

      The sparkling nighttime view provided the only light in the penthouse, aside from a single blue gas fire that flickered in the stark fireplace.

      “Incredible,” Letty breathed, going up to the windows. Without thinking, she leaned forward, putting her overheated forehead against the cool glass, looking down at Park Avenue far below. The cars and yellow cabs looked tiny, like ants. She felt almost dizzy from being so high off the earth, up in the clouds. It was a little terrifying. “Beautiful.”

      His reply was husky behind her. “You are beautiful, Letitia.”

      Turning, she looked at him in the soft blue glow of firelight. Then, as she looked more closely...

      Her lips parted with an intake of breath.

      She’d thought Darius hadn’t changed?

      He’d changed completely.

      At thirty-four, he was no longer a slender youth, but a powerful man. His shoulders had broadened to match his tall height, his body filling out with hard muscle. His dark hair had once been wavy and tousled, like a poet’s, but was now cut short, as severe as his chiseled jawline.

      Everything about Darius was tightly controlled now, from the cut of his expensive clothes—a black shirt with the top button undone, black trousers, black leather shoes—to his powerful stance. His mouth had once been expressive and tender and kind. Now his lips had a hard twist of arrogance, even cruelty.

      He towered over her like a king, in his penthouse with all of New York City at his feet.

      At her expression, his jaw tightened. “Letitia...”

      “Letty.” She managed a smile. “No one calls me Letitia anymore.”

      “I have never been able to forget you,” he continued in a low voice. “Or that summer we were together...”

      That summer. A small noise came from the back of her throat as unwanted memories filled her mind. Dancing in the meadow. Kissing the night after her debutante ball. Escaping the prying eyes of servants in Fairholme’s enormous garage, steaming up the windows of her father’s vintage car collection for weeks on end. She’d been ready to surrender everything.

      Darius was the one who’d wanted to wait for marriage to consummate their love.

      “Not until you’re my wife,” he’d whispered as they strained for each other, barely clothed, panting with need in the backseat of a vintage limousine. “Not until you’re mine forever.”

      Forever never came. Their romance had been illicit, forbidden. She was barely eighteen, his boss’s daughter; he was six years older, the chauffeur’s son.

      After a hot summer of innocent passion, her father had been infuriated when he’d discovered their romance. He’d ordered Darius off the estate. For one awful week he and Letty had been apart. Then Darius had called her.

      “Let’s elope,” he’d said. “I’ll get a day job to support us. We’ll get a studio apartment in the city. Anything as long as we’re together.”

      She’d feared it would hurt his dream of making his fortune, but she couldn’t resist. They both knew there was no chance of a real wedding, not when her father would try to stop the marriage. So they’d planned to elope to Niagara Falls.

      But on the night his car waited outside