by Madyson Grey
“Goodnight, Victoria. Go inside and lock the door.”
She stepped inside and turned to close the door. She took one more look at him standing with his hands in his pocket, his expression grim.
“Goodnight.” The word was low, barely audible but he heard it.
Rafael leaned on the balcony of his penthouse apartment. He held a glass in his hand as he peered into the darkness. What was it about Victoria Thornton that had him so uncharacteristically giddy? He was feeling like a schoolboy with his first crush. He was definitely attracted to her physically, but his attraction went much deeper than mere sex.
Actually, his recent attraction had begun many months prior, when David Thornton had first started talking to him about Victoria. When he had first seen her photograph. When he had first realized that there could be a woman somewhere that aroused in him more than sexual feelings.
What he didn’t know was how she would react should he tell her that he was the one who taken over her father’s company. David had told him a two or three years prior that the business was in deep financial straits. Although since, then he knew that David seemed less worried about the debt and more focused on selling the company. He didn’t know how much Victoria knew about her father’s business. His mind drifted back to the circumstances that had facilitated his meeting David Thornton.
Raul Rivera had been a poor, but proud Mexican man who had come to California when he was but a boy of sixteen. He had come on a work visa, and then stayed and worked to become an American citizen. He had joined the Army when he was twenty and served his adopted country honorably for four years. After his discharge, he settled in Los Angeles, married Manuela Diaz, and sired two boys.
But he had such a hard time keeping a job that the family often went without necessary food and clothing just to pay the rent on the little shack they lived in, and he often sank into depression. Then he sought relief in the bottom of a bottle, but he never found it there. All he found was more poverty, more heartbreak, more depression.
The last job that he had was one that he had managed to hang onto for over a year. He was a janitor in a skyscraper office building in downtown LA. It was hard work: sweeping, mopping, waxing, dusting, vacuuming, cleaning toilets, and washing windows on three floors. Every janitor in the building was assigned three floors to maintain. It was a backbreaking, ten-hours-a-day job, but it kept the rent paid and meager food on the table.
Although he had been hired through Human Resources, he had one day met the owner of the building, who maintained a suite of offices on the ground floor, one of his assigned floors. The owner happened to be working late, and so was in his office when Raul went in to clean. The landlord had just raised his rent another twenty dollars a month, so in sheer desperation, Raul screwed up his courage and asked the building owner to give him a raise.
The owner turned him down flat. No explanation. No apology. Just no. He had barely looked up from his desk to even see who was speaking to him, much less have any compassion for a hard-working janitor who emptied his trash and cleaned his toilet daily. It was all Raul could do to hold the tears in check, he was so discouraged. But the next time he saw the man, he asked him again for a raise.
This time his employer looked him straight in the eye and told him no. He said that if he gave Raul a raise, he’d have to give all the janitors a raise. Then all the secretaries. And so on up the ladder. And that couldn’t happen. So, no. Don’t ask again. When he came to work drunk a few weeks later, he was fired. That was the last straw for this humble, hard-working husband and father.
So one day not long afterward, he told Manuela he was going to look for another job, kissed her and the boys good-bye, and left. A policeman came to their shack later that afternoon, bearing the tragic news that Raul had stepped in front of a moving train and ended his life. That day life changed for Manuela, Mateo, and Rafael. Manuela now had to go and look for work.
She eventually found it: the same job as a janitor in the same skyscraper office building in downtown LA. She was even assigned the same floors as Raul had had. It was an even harder job for Manuela than it had been for Raul, because she also had to come home and try to keep house, cook meals for herself and her boys, and try to keep them out of mischief.
Mateo was old enough when their father had died that he knew where Raul had worked, and he understood some of the hard times his parents had and how poverty had driven his father to drink and depression. He grew up harboring a hatred in his heart for the man whom he blamed for his father’s suicide. He both feared and resented his mother getting a job working for the same man, but she reassured him that she would never abandon them as had Raul.
Mateo tried to instill in his little brother, Rafael, the same hatred, although it didn’t sink quite so deep in Rafael. What did sink in deeply was a determination to climb above the grinding poverty of his parents and their neighborhood, and be rich. He didn’t care to be famous, but he vowed he would someday be rich. And if it was at David Thornton’s expense, so much the better.
As soon as he was old enough to hire out, he, too applied for a job at the same skyscraper office building in downtown LA. Only he applied for the position of messenger/errand boy. This job not only paid a small wage, but, depending on where and to whom he was sent to deliver messages or run errands, there could be a tip awaiting him. He soon learned that if he complimented the ladies on their looks, the tip was usually larger. Or if he were extra respectful to the men, they would be more generous.
It didn’t take Rafael long to perfect his smooth, skillful ways of flattering people in a way that seemed sincere, yet garnered him handsome tips. By the time he was twenty, he was moonlighting as a waiter in a posh restaurant in Beverly Hills where his nightly tips were often double what his monthly wages at the skyscraper were. He began a savings account that grew rapidly. He learned to study the Wall Street Journal and began to play the stock market.
By listening in on conversations at the restaurant he worked in by night, and by keeping his ears open in the skyscraper by day, he learned to be a very shrewd investor. It seems that he had the knack for buying at the right time, and then selling at the right time. He often went through the trash in the building owner’s office, and other offices, too, looking for bits of information that he could use to increase his knowledge and his earnings.
Rafael kept all of his financial successes secret. He did support his mother in a modest way, moving her out of the bad neighborhood in which he had grown up, to a decent neighborhood. They now had plenty of food on the table, the rent was always paid, and the house was kept at a comfortable temperature no matter what the outside temperature was. She kept her job, but was proud of Rafael for working two jobs and helping her out.
Mateo was a different story. It seemed that he was born lazy. He much preferred to hang out with his friends, go to the beach, or just party wherever and with whomever. At Manuela’s urging, he would take a job for a few weeks or months, then quit, claiming the boss didn’t like him, or he was sick, or whatever other excuse he could come up with. It got to the point where Rafael just gave him an allowance and told him to move out.
In time, the building’s owner approached Rafael and asked him if he would be interested in being his personal assistant. That job would entail appointment settings and coordinating his calendar, running personal errands for him, maintaining his car, and other such tasks. It also came with double the wages. He jumped at the chance. Now he could learn even more about business and how to become successful at it. Not that he wasn’t already doing quite well. He just wanted more. More included learning how to take down his boss. That was what he had been working towards all these years.
The building’s owner? None other than David Thornton. Rafael had a method to his madness. He would learn even more about this man and his business dealings and somehow, someday, he would squeeze Mr. Thornton right out of his own business. That would serve him right for the injustice his father had suffered so many years befo
re.
So Rafael launched his evil scheme by learning who David Thornton’s rivals were and began planning how to betray him to them, thereby forcing him into bankruptcy. When that time came, Rafael would be there to buy him out. The whole scheme would have worked, too, if it hadn’t been for one minor detail. He grew to like the man. And David Thornton grew to like Rafael, also. He did teach Rafael many trade secrets and encouraged him to pursue a degree in business, which Rafael eventually did. David also told him things about his father that he had never known before that took the wind right out of his sails in regards to avenging his father’s death.
However, over the next few years, large amounts of money began disappearing from the accounts of Thornton Enterprise. Rafael knew where some of the money was going, but not all of it. He knew some was going to pay down large debts, but that wasn’t the whole picture. Then some of the amounts missing became even larger. One day, David Thornton asked Rafael to accompany him on a business trip to San Francisco. Rafael was pleased to go. It was on this trip that David revealed the mystery behind the shrinking bank account. It was also the last business trip that David Thornton would ever take. For it was just a few weeks after returning from that trip that he put a bullet in his brain in his home office.
Chapter Nine
Marian was waiting up for Victoria when she returned from her date with Rafael.
“Well, how did it go?” she asked.
Victoria had seen a light on in the living room and had gone in to see who was in there.
“It was fine,” Victoria said.
She wasn’t sure how to break it to her mother that Rafael seemed like a perfectly charming gentleman.
“Did you learn anything?” Marian wanted to know.
“I learned that Rafael knows more about me than I know about him, and that he is a very charming gentleman. And that he had never eaten Thai food before today.”
“I mean, did you learn anything useful,” Marian said a tad sarcastically.
Marian was determined to keep her tongue in check with her daughter. Victoria was no longer a child. She was a grown woman with a job and a home. And unless Marian treated her with kid gloves, she would go home to Seattle without having ever accomplished all that Marian needed to have her achieve.
“No, I didn’t,” Victoria sighed. “He was just a very pleasant dinner companion.” And more sexy than any man has a right to be.
But she wouldn’t rile her mother by admitting how attracted she was to this man who was her alleged enemy. No, she would string her mother along for the two months that she committed to, and then she would escape back to Seattle and what she had come to consider her real life. She also knew that men can be very deceptive. This smooth, suave demeanor could be the cover for a demon of the most evil ilk.
“Where did he take you?”
Marian’s attempt at post-date, mother-daughter conversation was both amusing and sad to Victoria. Where was this mother when she was a teenager and craved this relationship. The other girls at school would tell of their girl talks with their moms, but Victoria never had a story like that to tell. Her mother was usually out later than she was, attending one social event or another—anywhere she could go to be seen by the “right” people. Whoever they were. Victoria didn’t even care.
Every time that Marian would try to entice Victoria to go to a socialite party with her, Victoria would use every excuse she could think of to get out of going. Once in a while she’d lose and get stuck going to some incredibly boring party that was filled with incredibly boring people. It seemed that all the people at those events knew how to do was drink, gossip, and swap partners. She was sickened by that lifestyle and was thankful every day that she had escaped it. Yet, here she was, right back where she’d started from. Thankfully, it was only temporary.
“To that little Thai place on the beach that Daddy took me to,” she said, nostalgia creeping into her voice. “It was the last place he ever took me before I moved away.”
“That’s a coincidence,” Marian commented. “It’s not the usual place that a man of Rafael Rivera’s means would take a woman of your means on a first date.”
“No, it’s not. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised,” Victoria said. “I was even more surprised when he told me that Daddy had told him about our trip to Thailand and that he had taken me to that restaurant not long before I left home.”
“Your father talked to Rafael Rivera about you?” Marian was stunned.
“Apparently so,” Victoria said. “He knows several little tidbits about me, like where I lived and why I moved to Seattle.”
“They must have spent more time together than I ever knew about,” Marian mused. “All I knew is that your father told me that he had lost a good deal of money and that some young rich kid had offered to buy him out. I tried to tell him to just work it out; that he could work his way out of the slump if he would just try harder. But he said no, that he had already decided to sell out and try something new with the money from the sale.”
“Really?” Victoria said, eyebrows raised in question. “Did he say what he was going to do next?”
“Oh, it was some silly thing about opening a small art gallery on the beach and hoping that you would come be the curator for him. He was always talking about one scheme or another to entice you to come home. He really missed you, Victoria.”
“I really missed him, too,” Victoria said, tears threatening to form in her eyes. “He never mentioned the art gallery to me, though. And we talked every evening.”
“He wanted it to be a surprise,” Marian said. “Instead you got this awful surprise.”
“I still can’t wrap my head around the why of his suicide,” Victoria said. “Losing one’s fortune isn’t the end of the world. He could have picked himself up and gone on”
“Victoria! Losing a fortune of the size your father had is pretty well the end of the world. Why, we may still have to sell this house if you can’t get something out of Rafael in record time. Then what will we do? Where will we go? How can I face my friends when they learn that I’m … I’m … poor?”
She said the word as if it were akin to leprosy. Victoria was disgusted with her mother. Having to sell this monstrosity would probably be the best thing that ever happened to Marian. It might put her feet down on earth where ordinary people walk. She was more distraught over her financial situation than the fact that her husband of nearly thirty years had just taken enough – to make his heart stop.
“Mother, don’t you even care that Daddy is dead?” she cried out. “All you care about is your financial situation.”
“Well, of course I care that David is dead,” Marian said coolly. “He was my husband, after all.”
“You mean, he was your sugar daddy,” Victoria said bitterly. “If he had lived long enough, you’d have walked out on him rather than lose your precious station in society.”
With that, she fled to her bedroom and shut the door. Then she threw herself on her bed and cried herself to sleep. She awoke sometime in the middle of the night. Completely disoriented, she looked around the room trying to remember where she was. Oh, yeah. My old room. Daddy’s dead. Rafael. The thoughts flitted through her groggy mind, bringing her back to consciousness.
She rolled over and looked at the digital clock on the nightstand. 2:27. She sighed a sleepy sigh and got to her feet. She peeled off her dress, shoes, hose, and bra and let them fall onto the plush maroon carpet. She padded into the bathroom that adjoined the bedroom and used the toilet. She debated getting in the shower, but decided to put it off until morning. Instead, she wet a washcloth and washed her face.
She took a camisole off a hook on the back of her bathroom door and slipped it on. It was her sleepwear of choice. Then she turned back the covers on the bed and crawled in. As tired as she was, now sleep eluded her. She replayed the events of the previous evening over and over in her mind. Rafael was without a doubt the most attractive man that she had ever been out with. Heretofor
e, she had avoided sexy men—or they had avoided her. She wasn’t always sure which it was. At any rate, she hadn’t been on a date with a man like Rafael ever.
Well, unless you counted the summer she went out with Travis when she was fifteen. She was quite smitten with Travis back then. He was sixteen and had a driver’s license. Tall, dark, and handsome was the cliché that she had hung on him way back then. They had a blast that summer, cruising around in his Mustang convertible, hanging out at the beach, listening to music, and sharing milkshakes at Poppy’s Drive-In.
Their romance blossomed to the passionate kissing stage, but no further. Travis’s older sister had become pregnant at sixteen and he had seen what that mistake had done to her life. So he was determined that he would never put a girl through what his sister had had to deal with. It was fine with Victoria. She was very happy to keep their relationship light and fun.
But that fun had come to a crashing end when her mother happened to find out about it. Travis was from an ordinary middle class family, not the socially elite crowd that Marian ran with. For Victoria to date a boy who was beneath her station was totally unacceptable, and she told Victoria and Travis so in no uncertain terms.
Victoria tried sneaking around to see him a few times, but the tongue-lashing that he’d received from her mother wounded his pride. He’d never thought anyone could consider him trash. His father was a respected doctor in the community and his mother was a nurse. It wasn’t like they were poor. But to Marian, anyone who wasn’t in the billionaire category was beneath her station, and that of her daughter.
So they drifted apart, and the next school year she saw Travis with one or two other girls, when she saw him at all. She was heartbroken, and vowed that never again would her mother destroy a relationship of hers. The easiest way to do that at the time was to not get herself involved in another relationship. Eventually, the boys quit asking her out, which suited her just fine. At least that’s what she told herself.
