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                          #  Introduction #

Story name : ALWAYS MEANT TO BE

Female lead : Angela Gracia. Age : 26.

Profession : Accountant ( but unemployed due to work harassment by boss)

Relationship status : Single

Male lead : Nicolas James Romero ( Nick) Age : 29

Profession: Business tycoon and president of Romero Inc.

Relationship status: "Single" (According to him and a womenizer according to tabloids)

When they were young they loved eachother where even engaged with eachother had promised will get married when Nick finished his course at university but something happened and they parted at bitter terms breaking off the engagement. And Nick has beared hatred against Angela for a long time .

Now in present times Angela's mother needs expensive medical treatment now. What can she do? Angela has no choice but to Approach Nick Romero and ask him to reconsider the marriage they abandoned eight years ago, in return for financial help?

Nick agrees, but on his terms: he wants a son. Yes, Nick has seized his chance for vengeance!

How they look

8 years ago

Nicolas and Angela

Angela now

Nick's will be updated in the upcoming episodes .

(* These photos are from Pinterest and rightfully belongs to the respective owners. )

...----------------...

Chapter One

''YOU ARE FIRED MISS GRACIA "her boss vented at Angela and threw her a check of severance pay.

Angela knew wasting her breath on complaining about Mr Black wasn't going to get her job as an accountant back because she realized it quickly enough that Mr Black was a relative of her company chairperson so there wasn't much she could do though she thought of filing a sexual harassment case against him but it wouldn't be great as she had no proof against him and the company will not let her have the security footage of the harassment as they had to protect Mr black.

And these days her mother's health was not any good so she decided to let it slide as she knew her mother's nature of worried and anxious person that about the complain it might effect her health to much worse condition.

As a single parent her mother Sylvia had suffered a lot to take care of Angela that she was always busy when not busy with work she did spend all her attention on Angela so ,

knowing that her mother was really sick she didn't want to make her worry more.

She accepted the check and left her boss's office and while she struggled to collect her office cabin's stuff she saw that Mr. Black was smirking at her looking like a proud person and it pissed her off to the point of bloody rage and when he entered her office grin like cunning fox that he was waiting to comment on her.

And when he slightly touched her thighs as she was holder box trying to move as he was standing next to office door she had reached her limit and she turned dropping her box and kicked him in the nuts before picking up box and leaving .

" Ahhh! ohh holy hell what did you do ! " he shouted in agony he was almost in tears .Every person was seeing this with atmost interest .

" Bitch I'm going to make you suffer for this " he howled in pain.

But Angela didn't turn to look back at jerk .

Angela always left the scene whenever at the sight of confrontation and she knew she could have filled a case in court and make him pay for his mistake not just by hitting him where the sun doesn't shine. But she knew that her efforts will be worthless on such prices who don't have conscience.

She never knew that her decision right now will make her worry but things were turning for Angela and not for good at the moment.

'You have ruined your life just as your mother did,' Paul Eric Gracia condemned.

Angela studied her grandfather with hooded eyes the colour of blue black . She was sick with nerves but she had come on a begging mission. If venting his heart out put the older man into a better mood and made him look more sympathetically on her mother's plight, she could stand the heat of any attack.

Well-built and fit, for all his seventy-plus years, the white-haired older man paced the lounge of his luxurious Evante city hotel suite, his aged features forbidding.

'Look at you, still single at the age of twenty-six! No husband, no children,' he cited grimly. 'Eight years ago, I opened my home to you and I attempted to do my best for you...'

As he paused for a necessary breath, broad chest expanding, Angela knew what was coming next. Beneath the sable black hair she wore confined in a Fish tail, her pale skin turned red and became pronounced.

'And how was my generosity repaid?' Her Grandfather was working himself up into a rage at the memory.

'You brought dish­onour on the Gracia family name. You disgraced me, destroyed your own reputation and offered unforgivable insult to the Romero family—'

'Yes...' Angela was desperate enough to own up to mur­der itself if it calmed her grandfather down and gave her the chance to plead her mother's cause.

'Such a marriage as I arranged for you...and very grateful you were to have Nicolas Romero at the time!

You got emotional and teared upwhen he gave you your betrothal ring. I remember the occasion well!'

Angela clenched her teeth together: a necessary self-restraint. Hot, cringing humiliation and some anger was eating into her self-discipline.

'Then you threw it all away in a wanton moment of madness,' Paul Eric Gracia ground out with bitter anger.

''Shamed me, shamed yourself—''

Angela whispered tautly,

' 'Eight years is a very long time—''

'Not long enough to endow me with amnesia!' her grandfather countered harshly.

'I was curious to see you again. That's why I agreed to this meeting when you wrote me an email asking for the meeting. But let me tell you now without further waste of time that you will receive no financial assistance from me.'

Angela reddened. 'I want nothing for me...but my mother, your daughter—'

Paul Eric interrupted her before she could mention her mother's name. 'Had my foolish daughter raised you to be a decent young woman, according to our traditions, you would never have brought dishonour upon me!'

At that judgmental assurance, Angela's heart sank.

So her innocent parent was still to suffer for her daughter's sins. Squaring her slim shoulders, she lifted a chin every bit as determined as his own. 'Please let me speak freely—'

'No, I will not hear you!' Spyros stalked over to the win­dow. 'I want you to go home and think about what you have lost for you and your mother. Had you married Nick Romero —'

'I'd have castrated him! and then slowly killed him'

Angela's control over her tem­per slipped as the older man made it clear that their meeting was already at an end.

Her grandfather's questioning brows rose almost as high as his hairline.

Angela coloured. 'I'm sorry—'

'At least Nick would have taught you to keep a still tongue when a man is speaking to you!'

Angela sucked in a deep, steadying breath. He was as mad as fire now.

She had done nothing but add fuel to the flames. No doubt she ought to have arrived steeped in black mourning clothes and ashes and hung her head with anguished regret when he referred to her broken engagement.

Paul Eric moved his hand in a gesture of finality. 'You could only win my forgiveness by marrying Nick.'

Fierce disappointment filled Angela to overflowing. 'Why don't you just throw in climbing a mountain too?'

'I see you get the picture,' her grandfather said dryly.

" Look grandfather My mother is innocent and she’s really sick and if not for proper treatment she might die right now I'm not in position to pay for her treatment as I have lost my job and my company isn't giving me referrals for my new job just help me once. " She was breathing faster as she said that so fast like a bullet train.

But her plea was meant to silence as Her Grandfather didn't hear a thing just looking at the work in his hand like his Granddaughter hasn't just told him that his only daughter's terminal disease.

Maybe she also ran her thoughts wild and did some thinking .

But there was a dark devil reading about now inside Angela's head.

'If I could get him to marry me, would I still give him the dowry the Gracia business empire?'

The older man dealt her a thunderous appraisal look.

'What are you suggesting? Get him to marry you? Nicolas James Romero, whom you insulted beyond belief, who could have any young woman he wanted—'

'Few young women come with as large a dowry as you offered as a sweetener to the deal over me eight years ago.'

Paul Eric Gracia was digusted at her bluntness. 'Have you no shame?'

'When you tried to tell me off like one of your servents , I lost my illusions and my sensitivity,' his granddaughter as­serted curtly.

'You still haven't answered my question.'

'But what is the point of a question that crazy?' The older man flung both hands up in complete exasperation.

'I'd just like to know.'

'I would have signed control of Gracia Industries over to Nik on your wedding day...and I would still gladly do so, were it possible!' Weary now, his big shoulders slumping, Paul Eric Gracia vented an embittered laugh at what he saw as a total impossibility. 'My only desire was to pass on the business I spent a lifetime building into capable hands. Was that so much to ask?'

Angela's generous mouth compressed. The longevity of his name in the business world meant so much more to her grandfather than family ties. 

Her mother Sylvia Gracia might long to be reconciled with her estranged father, but the older woman had never blamed him for turning his back on her. However, an increasing sense of despair was creeping over Angela. Her grandfather was immovable. He had admitted to only seeing her out of curiosity. So why was she still hanging around where she wasn't welcome?

Angela walked stiff-backed to the door and then decided to make one last attempt to be heard. 'My mother's health is failing—'

Paul growled something at her in outraged in his mother tongue, his refusal to listen instantaneous.

Angela spun back, blue-black eyes flashing like gems. 'If she dies poor and miserable, as she is now, I hope your con­science haunts you to the grave and beyond, because that's what you'll deserve!'

For a second, Paul Eric Gracia stared at her with expres­sionless dark eyes. Then he swung away, his broad back stiff as an iron bar.

Leaving her grandfather's suite, Angela got into the lift before she slumped. Minutes later, having got herself back under control, she crossed the busy hotel foyer back out into the open air.

Maybe she should run really insane and kidnap Nicolas James Romero she thought with enormous bitterness. If she'd had the money she could have hired hitmen to snatch him out of his limo. And she could have personally starved and tortured Nick in some dark, dank cellar with a completely clear conscience. After all, she hated him. She really, really hated him.

Although already wealthy beyond avarice, greed had led Nik at the age of twenty-one into getting engaged to a plain- jane girl like her who'd had no attraction for him but her value as the promised Gracia heiress.

Nick Romero had broken her heart, dragged her pride in the dirt and ultimately ensured that there was no prospect of her Grandfather ever forgiving either her or her mother.

But then maybe her mother had been born under an unlucky star, Angela conceded, wincing at the hardness of the pavement beneath shoe soles worn thin as paper with over­use.

For the first twenty-one years of her mother Sylvia's life been cocooned in a world of wealth and privilege.

Then she had made the fatal mistake of falling in love with a foreigner .

Meeting with heavy paternal opposition, Sylvia had fled to Longford town to be with her boyfriend. But the two days after their wedding Angela's father had crashed his motorbike and died. Even when Sylvia's parents knew that they hadn't forgiven her for marrying against their wishes and shaming the family name.

Shortly afterwards, Sylvia had discovered that she was preg­nant.

From that point on there had been no turning back: she was expecting a child and she was a young widow with angry parents who didn't want her to be a widow with a child. Her only talent a willingness to take any manual work available, Sylvia had raised Angela alone.

Throughout her childhood, Angela could only recall her mother with a wan, exhausted face, for Sylvia Gracia had never been strong person she was a fragile woman. And the reality was that all those years of taxing physical labour had wrecked what health she did have and weakened her heart.

Once Angela had been old enough to get a job of her own, matters had improved.

Now Angela regretted kicking Mr.Black in between the legs as it costed her a secure job and reasons were that her former company had not given her a referral letter for her resume and she was a victim of bad rumors created by Mr. Black saying that she took company money in her pockets . She couldn't do anything about it now if only she had filled a complaint against him and the company she would not have to suffer for support by Asking her Grandfather .

And her savings where going really fast like lighting in the medical treatment now the situation was that in last four months they had move to a smaller apartment as right now

Angela was not able to pay yearly rent for their four bedroom cottage with a garden attached.

The council had rehoused them in a tough inner city estate. Her mother was so terrified of the aggressive youths there that she no longer dared to venture out.

Angela had been forced to watch the mother she adored decline before her eyes, growing ever more thin and weak, her brave smiles of cheer pathetic to witness. It was as if Sylvia Gracia had given up on life itself.

She was dying, Angela reflected sickly- painfully, dying inch by inch, always talking about the distant past now, because the unlovely present was too much for her weakened spirit to handle.

A much smaller apartment they had bad heating, no wifi, no smart house appliances, noisy, threatening neighbours without soundproof windows and surroundings bereft of all beauty. Nothing, nothing what­soever to look forward to with the smallest anticipation.

If only Angela had had the benefit of a crystal ball eight years ago... if only!

Would she have made the same decision as she had made then?

A despairing laugh was dredged from Angela's throat.

Guilt and all the regret her grandfather could ever had wished on her washed over her now. She would have been married to a billionaire! Long before her health had failed her mother would once again have enjoyed security and comfort.

Now, with bitter, realistic hindsight, Angela knew that had she had the benefit of a crystal ball at the age of eighteen she would have married a monster for her mother's sake!

She would love if only her life was like a reincarnation novel in which she can go back in time and change her decision.

Though she thought like that right now but what he had done at that time was like having a python choking your neck and a sword piercing your heart.