Chapter 3

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.

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