The Greek Billionaire and I (12 page)

Three seconds of absolute silence passed.

Three seconds of the most unbelievable agony.

Three seconds of the most devastating betrayal.

Mykolas threw Velvet’s phone against the wall, and as its screen smashed into pieces, he grimly wished he could destroy his feelings for his duplicitous wife just as easily.

****

“My husband wants me to go to his office?” Velvet was bemused. Mykolas had told her to wait here so they could leave together and now this?

The waiter nodded. “Right away if possible, Mrs. Sallis.”

Oh!

Her lips curved. Mykolas had decided to give in and indulge her need for a quickie then. She smiled and thanked the waiter and hurried to the elevator. Would it be too much if she took off her underwear now?

Imagining the look on his face made her decide on the spot, and she hurriedly stepped out of her lace underwear just before the elevator’s doors swooshed open. Of course, this left her with the evidence in her hands, and she impulsively decided to hide it inside his secretary’s drawer and come back for it later. Or at least she hoped she would remember to take it out later.
Most times
, Velvet thought fondly as she opened the door to his office,
he made her forget everything but his name
. He was just that good at—

And that was when she saw it.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she screamed.

No, this was not possible.

This was not possible.

THIS WAS NOT POSSIBLE!

She didn’t pause to think. She just reacted, just ran towards the couple in the dark and grabbed the hair of the woman who was on her knees and giving Mykolas head. And then she was slapping Mykolas. Slapped him so hard because she knew whatever hurt she inflicted on him wouldn’t even be a fraction of what she was suffering right now.

“Why?” she screamed. “Why, damn you, why?” Tears blinded her, but she didn’t need to see him anyway. She would see him forever now, and it would always be Mykolas being pleasured by another woman.

“Because,” he said savagely, “it gave me a fucking kick to let you know that you’re not irreplaceable.” He caught her flailing wrists and forced them down. “It gives me a fucking kick to hurt your damn pride because that’s all I can hurt since you don’t have a fucking heart!”

He had the urge to shove her away, but he forced himself to simply let her go. He needed the damn practice and told himself that this was more like a necessary excision, like cutting a fucking infected limb before it ended up killing the rest of his system.

Velvet felt like she had been punched in the gut when Mykolas suddenly released her, in a way that made her feel she was toxic and he no longer wanted himself contaminated by her presence. God, it hurt so badly, almost to the point that she wished he had just pushed her away. At least that showed he cared enough to hate her.
 

His words didn’t make any sense at all, but did it matter? All she knew was that she had been wrong. He didn’t love her.

But in the end, she found herself begging. Dammit, she couldn’t stop herself from begging. “Please make me understand.”

And yet the coldness never left his face. “There is
nothing
to understand.
Nothing.
This farce is over. Get the hell out of my life and if I ever see your face again, I’ll have you arrested for stalking.”

Weak is a dick, weak is a dick, weak is a…

She couldn’t lie to herself anymore.
 

Dick was not the one who was weak. It was her. Velvet was weak. No, not Velvet. It was Dotty who was weak.
 

Dotty was weak. Dotty was weak. Dotty was weak.

Somehow, she took pleasure in chanting the words in her mind as she turned her back on Mykolas and left his office. She didn’t even feel the slightest need to look back. There was no point. He was part of the same past where Wayne and Lindy existed, a part of her life that she had to ignore if she didn’t want it to kill her.

It was only when she got to the lobby that she realized she didn’t have any money. She had left her bag in Mykolas’ office. She wouldn’t even be able to withdraw from the bank, not when there was nothing to withdraw since she had stupidly – oh God, how stupid she had been all this time! – used all her money this morning to buy a fucking gift for Mykolas. It had been her proof to herself that she was not weak – that she was strong enough to love and trust.
 

Yeah, well, stupid her.

Dotty was weak. Dotty was weak. Dotty was weak.

Another thought occurred to her, one that almost sent Velvet to her knees.

Oh God, she even didn’t have panties on.

All she had were memories and…

Velvet forced herself to turn around and face the gaping security guard, who had been trying all this time not to make it obvious that he had been staring at her. Tugging the rings off her fingers, she gave it to him and said, “It’s your lucky day.”

And then she started to walk to the airport.

Chapter Eleven

“Are these
all
her financial records?” Mykolas asked the next day, his face cold and unreadable as he took the documents from the head of his security team.
 

“They are
everything
, even the ones that should not have been publicly accessible.”

When the other man left, Mykolas remained motionless behind his office desk for a while. Even now, he loathed himself for being so gullible. Even now, he questioned his motives for wasting his time tracing Velvet Lambert’s every move. What did he hope to find with these papers? A reason or an excuse he could cling to so that he would be able to take her back without hating himself for being a lovesick fool?

In the end, the reasons didn’t matter. He simply had to know. He had to know.
 

And when he started reading, he found that none of the figures matched with what he had expected.

Velvet had two bank accounts.

The first one had been opened the year she had arrived in Greece. It had an impressive initial deposit, but the cynical part of him wondered whether it was the result of another successful conquest brought about by Velvet’s irresistible beauty. What followed were regular deposits and very minimal withdrawals except for the occasional checks she sent to Wayne Garfield.

The last two transactions were completed online in the morning of their wedding day. The first was another check of $100,000 transferred to her lawyer Lester Wilkins. The remainder, a sum amounting to a little over $2,000, was withdrawn as cash.

Her second account was even more perplexing. She had opened it a week ago. And when he read the details of the one and only transaction for the account, Mykolas realized that it was the $100,000 check he had given to her.

It remained untouched, even today.

Mykolas moved on to the next group of documents, and that was when the alarm bells started to ring. They were application forms for a non-profit foundation intended to benefit victims of crimes related to drug abuse. The initial capital was $100,000.
 

Was the non-profit to be a front? Would she use it to ask for more money from him for her lover?
 

The thought had his fist clenching, and he had the strongest urge to flip his table and destroy every piece of evidence that suggested Velvet Lambert had been untrue to him.
 

Why? Why, damn you, why?
 

She had sobbed and screamed the question at him. He wanted to roar the same question at her. The pain of her betrayal was so great it nearly crippled him. Same fucking question, but at least he meant his. With her, he knew it was all a fucking act. She did not care about him. All she had ever cared about was his money, and God, how skillfully she had played him. She would probably be laughing her way to the bank when she found out that on the same morning she had sent Wayne Greenfield a hundred grand, he, Mykolas Sallis, had torn their prenup contract.

The memory of his stupidity was like acid, and a second later he did end up destroying his desk. Punched the wall. Smashed glass into pieces with his bare hands. He destroyed everything in sight, but the pain remained because he could not destroy the memories he had of Velvet.

Why? Why, damn you, why?

****

It was almost ten in the evening when he arrived at his home. His manservant received him stony-faced, and Mykolas was tempted to fire the damn man on the spot. In all the years Dodds had been working for Mykolas, he had rarely spoken or given his opinion. The old man had even preferred to work around the apartment only when Mykolas was not there to “disturb” him when he was cleaning. But somehow, Velvet had managed to fool the old man, too. It was obvious in the way Dodds looked at him that the crusty old man blamed him for Velvet’s absence.
 

“You have a visitor,” Dodds informed him woodenly. “A Mrs. Chantal Blakely.”

The shock of realizing that his stepmother was in his home was enough to make Mykolas briefly forget his black mood. When he strode into his living room, Chantal was indeed there. The years that passed had made little difference to her, other than the fact that she wasn’t as thin as she used to be.
 

“Do I merit a hug, Mickey?”

She had been the only one to call him that. It had first been her way of getting his attention by making him angry but in the end, it had turned into a term of endearment from mother to son.

His fury over Velvet’s betrayal had left him tired, vulnerable, and looking at Chantal, Mykolas wasn’t even able to summon up an ounce of resentment. All he could remember were the good times. He said gruffly, “Of course, Chubby.”
That
had been his way of retaliating when he was a boy.

She laughed, he smiled, and they were in each other’s arms. When Chantal was seated across him and Dodds had finished serving them drinks, she said wistfully, “I’ve always hated myself for giving in to the pressure, you know.”

“You were young,” he murmured. “I understand what you went through—”

“I wasn’t the young one then. You were. I loved you like a son. I made you see me as a mother and yet in the end, I gave you up and I’ll never…” Chantal inhaled sharply. “I’ll never forgive myself for that.” Tears made her eyes hazy. “Even when I remarried and gave birth to my children, I always thought of you as my child – my firstborn and I…I told my children about you, too. I told them that maybe one day, you’d be able to forgive me for not standing up to your father.”

Mykolas’ lips twisted. “If you mean you wished you had been able to change him so that we could remain a happy family, then that would have been impossible.”

Chantal shook her head. “No. Not that.” She looked at him with dawning realization – and pity. “You don’t know, do you?” Before he could answer, she sighed, “Oh, Mickey. How you must have hated me all these years.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I asked your father if I could see you again. And it seemed to hurt his pride, offended him somehow, that I wanted to see you more than him, so he threatened to destroy my life – even my parents’ – if I ever attempted to contact you.”

Mykolas’ face was white by the time Chantal finished speaking. Damn his father. He had always been a vain, jealous fool and Mykolas could easily see how his pride had made him see his own son as a rival. “You are right,” he said tightly. “I should have realized you would not give me up so easily—”
 

Chantal started to cry at his words, and Mykolas drew his stepmother into his arms. “I’m sorry you married the old bastard.”

“I’m sorry the old bastard is your father.”

Chantal’s teary quip somehow reminded him of Velvet, but he stoically pushed the thought away. He would get rid of her, every fucking memory, even if he had to die trying.

When Chantal pulled away, she asked with an eager smile, “And your bride? Where is she?”

Mykolas stiffened. “She’s…not here.”

“Oh.” Chantal’s smile became teasing. “She seemed to be a very headstrong woman. I bet she can easily run circles around you. When I first read her letter—”

He asked sharply, “She wrote to you?”

“Surely you know—you don’t?” Chantal paled. “I thought…when you didn’t throw me out of the door, I thought she had told you everything and you were expecting me.”