Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires, #2)(11)

“I have no damn clue,” he answered gruffly. “But after you ran out last night, Seth told me you left a letter at the house. Want to tell me what it said?”

I finally looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t read it?”

“Never got a chance to,” he confessed. “Seth burned it.”

I listened while Aiden explained what had happened with his brother, and how he ended up never knowing all the things I told him in that missive.

“All I knew was that you’d taken off with a rich guy, a man who had a lot more to offer you than I did,” he concluded.

“Marco had nothing to offer me except money,” I explained. “But that’s not why I had to go.”

He folded his muscular arms across his chest and leaned back in his chair. “Then explain to me why you had to go, if you didn’t care about money.”

“I told you. I would have had no place to live. I either had to go with Marco or end up on the streets.”

“I would have helped you, Skye. I think you knew I would.”

A big part of me had known that Aiden would move heaven and earth just to make sure I was safe. But I’d had no idea how he would have felt if he’d known that I was pregnant. I’d been hoping he’d want to protect his child, too, which was why I’d written that letter.

“It’s over,” I said, hating the fact that those two words were filled with pain. “We have to move on.”

In hindsight, I wished I had found a way to wait until Aiden had gotten home, but I couldn’t change the past. I’d been stupid, young, and terrified. I regretted the fact that Maya had been deprived of family. All she’d ever had was me.

“Then by all means, let’s move on,” Aiden agreed. “Why are you here now? Are you looking to reconnect now that I have money?”

My anger flared, but I pushed it back down. Maybe I deserved that slam, since he was under the impression that I’d left him for more money-green pastures. “I don’t really want anything from you, but I have to tell you some things I think you need to know.”

“Such as?”

“I wanted to stay here,” I explained. “When my mother insisted that I go to San Diego and marry Marco, I didn’t want to do it. We fought pretty hard the day before you came back. We barely spoke after I married.”

“What about her grandchild?” Aiden questioned.

I shook my head sadly. “She didn’t care about Maya. My mother wasn’t exactly the grandmotherly type. She was sick in the head, Aiden. You know she was always crazy, but she was also brainwashed by the crazy church she attended in San Diego.”

“I’m sure she thought you were better off with him than me,” Aiden drawled.

“Marco’s parents were founding members of that church. That’s all she cared about. She thought I’d be lucky to have him. She never realized that she was part of a cult. Granted, they didn’t live in a commune, but that religious group had a hold on her, regardless.”

“How did you even meet your ex-husband?” he asked roughly. “I remember that you never went to that church once you got old enough to tell your mother that you didn’t want to go.”

“When I was seventeen, I did go with my mom a couple of times. I wanted to make her happy. But it only lasted for a short time. I didn’t like being there. The whole thing gave me the creeps. And so did Marco. He saw me there and decided he wanted me to be his wife. I think he wanted that all the more after I’d flatly refused to marry him. I wasn’t even out of high school yet when he asked my mother if he could marry me.”

“So you said no?”

I nodded. “And I refused to go to any events there ever again.”

“Then why in the hell did you give in later?” he asked in an angry tone.

I shrugged. “My circumstances had changed. I was desperate, Aiden.”

“And was your mother right?” he pressed. “Were you lucky to have him? Were you happy?”

“No,” I said in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “The only happy part of my marriage was my daughter. Maya was everything to me. She still is.”

“What in the hell did the letter say? What did you want to tell me? Did you want me to come and find you?”

“I did,” I admitted. “I asked you to come find me if you really loved me. To get me out of marrying a man I didn’t love.”

“But you never heard from me because I never read that letter,” he concluded. “I was left to assume that you wanted to be with somebody else because he had more money than I did.”

“I never wanted you to think that,” I told him adamantly. “Did I really seem like that kind of woman?”

Maybe I could understand why he had felt that way, but it still hurt.

“I had no idea what to think,” he said. “I still don’t. But if I had known that you didn’t want to be with Marino, I sure as hell would have found you.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said in a tremulous voice. “I thought you’d just trashed the letter after you’d read it, and you didn’t think about me anymore.”

I flinched as Aiden’s fist came down on the table. Hard.

“You knew damn well that I was crazy about you,” he snapped. “Did you really think I wouldn’t have responded to a cry for help from you?”