Filthy Rich Revenge: A Filthy Rich Billionaires Book - Lynn Raye Harris Page 0,27

wary. Your father’s opinion simply helped put the nail in the coffin.”

Rebecca’s heart squeezed. Yes, her father had been at the top of his game then. He’d had a lot of influence in the industry and would have been listened to with the reverence of an Oracle. She drew a breath into her painfully tight chest. “All right, thanks.”

“Ring me if you hear anything about Dubai.”

“I will.”

They said their goodbyes and Rebecca put her cell phone on the desk before leaning back in her chair. Icy dread dripped down her spine. What if Alejandro was right? What if it was her fault he’d lost his backing from the Cahill Group?

Oh God.

In a moment of weakness, she’d called her mother when she’d been sitting in the Madrid airport five years ago, her eyes puffy and red, her throat sore. She’d had no one else to talk to back then. She’d been stunned, hurt, humiliated. And she could still see the severe-looking wedding coordinator with her folder and her samples, asking for the groom and saying, “Gracias, I will wait for him to return. His fiancée is anxious to begin the plans, yes?”

Ridiculously, Rebecca had hoped for a mother-daughter connection, some sage advice. How she’d forgotten for those few moments that her mother was as shallow as a puddle, she’d never know. Amelie Layton made sympathetic noises, but she spent more time talking to her dog than she did offering advice.

Later, Rebecca realized she’d just needed to say it aloud to someone. Once she’d confessed, she had the good sense to regret it. She’d made her mother promise not to say anything to her father, a ‘just us girls’ pact. After the incident with Parker Gaines—hired by her father to prove that she was a weak, vulnerable female who couldn’t be trusted to run the company once he was gone—she didn’t want to give him any further evidence of her ‘feminine weakness.’ She’d had to be strong, had to prove she could run Layton International some day.

Since it hadn’t been like her father to keep quiet about her personal life—especially something as negative as a breakup with Alejandro—she’d breathed a sigh of relief when he’d never said anything. She’d assumed her mother had kept the secret after all. In fact, she’d always thought her father’s dislike of Alejandro happened much later and was due to simple rivalry. Ramirez Enterprises’ influence had grown in leaps and bounds while the Layton star had been sinking. It’d been hard for her father to accept as the years went by and their positions were reversed.

But what if his dislike was based on more than that?

Rebecca grabbed her phone and stabbed the number for her mother’s mobile. She wanted the truth, no matter how difficult. “Did you tell Dad about Alejandro Ramirez?” she demanded when Amelie Layton answered.

“Is that any way to talk to your mother, ma belle?” Amelie’s voice trailed off as she shushed her dogs. “I may have. I can’t remember. Is there a problem, darling?”

11

Several days of fighting with government officials in the United Arab Emirates had put Alejandro in a foul mood, especially since nothing was solved yet. Worse, his parents’ anniversary party was tonight at the Villa de Música. As much as he’d like to stay home and sit on the terrace with a glass of sherry, he had to put in an appearance.

The plane had landed half an hour ago. How his chauffeur got them through the mess that was Madrid traffic and to his villa in that little amount of time was nothing short of a miracle. One of these days, he was putting in that helicopter pad he kept thinking about. As his business spread, so did the necessity for trips abroad.

He usually kept a tuxedo on the jet, along with several suits and other things he might need, but his personal assistant had somehow sent everything to the cleaners without first rotating in a fresh supply. He had barely an hour to change and be on his way to the hotel.

Another year, another party to suffer through. Alejandro ripped at his tie and tossed it on the bed. Señora Flores had laid out a fresh shirt for him and his tux was hanging nearby, ready to go. Why must he suffer through these damnable parties every year? On the outside, Carmen and Juan Ramirez seemed the happy couple. They played it up quite well, in fact, except for a few public incidents Alejandro didn’t like to recall in