‘I’m so sorry. And yet she loved him all her life?’
‘To the exclusion of anyone else,’ he confirmed bitterly. ‘Even me. Especially me. It’s why she wouldn’t prove that he was the father or demand a DNA test. She always claimed that if I had never been born then they would still have their relationship. She said he’d only done what he did because he’d had to, and that she didn’t want to ruin his reputation.’
‘So this is why you’ve never spoken about it. Because you were ashamed.’ She shook her head. ‘But you have nothing to be ashamed over, Lukas. This is his wrongdoing, not yours.’
‘You misunderstand,’ Lukas said harshly, his eyes so hard that she felt almost crushed. ‘I’m not ashamed. I never was. I’m telling you this because it was the moment I vowed to myself that I would get my revenge. The moment I vowed that I would do what my mother couldn’t, and I would ruin his reputation.’
‘Is he worth it?’
‘He was determined to punish me—a twelve-year-old kid who went to see him because it was what my dying mother had begged me to do.’
‘When he threw you out of his house.’ She nodded, able to see how hurtful that must have been to an already traumatised kid.
Lukas was such a strong man that it was sometimes easy to forget he had once been a young boy. And probably a terrified one at that.
‘No. Because after I left him, before I had even got back home, there were lawyers and police there threatening to send her to jail if she ever repeated her so-called lie that she had slept with him. And that I was his son. Oti, she wasn’t able to get up off the couch, she was so ill, so they had broken down the door and entered, anyway. That was how much power he had then.’
‘My God, Lukas...’
Oti hesitated, trying to understand. Trying to work it out.
‘I can see that’s how you felt as a twelve-year-old, Lukas. But why now? Why this? You’re globally successful. Haven’t you already won? Why not just walk away?’
‘Because you can’t walk away from people like the Rockmans. They’re relentless. If you walk away, they take it as a sign of weakness and come after you all the harder. And when my company first started out, he used every trick he could to wipe me out.’
‘He tried to wipe you out?’
‘People said the way I took over Roc Holdings was uncharacteristically hostile.’ He shrugged. ‘Now you know why. But he struck the first blow. Roc Holdings was all about hotels and exclusive boutiques. They weren’t interested in the tech game, or the fourth industrial revolution. But he knew who I was, and he pulled in every contact he could to try to destroy me and my business.’
‘It didn’t work, though,’ she pointed out. ‘Which surely shows how successful you are. LVW Industries is world-renowned.’
‘It wasn’t LVW Industries that he tried to destroy. It was my first company, one I set up as a teenager. He bankrupted me. More than that, he trampled my reputation with lies. It nearly destroyed me. And the only reason was because it was me. My company. Just because he could. He wanted me to see that he had that much power.’
‘I never knew.’ She shook her head, shocked. ‘I still don’t see how marrying me could help you,’ she said dubiously.
‘The reason Rockman got away with saying the things he did about my mother was because he had friends—well-connected, respected friends—who could back up what he’d said,’ Lukas continued. ‘Friends who could provide alibis for all the nights my mother had claimed to be with him. I vowed to make them pay too.’
‘But...’ she began. And then, suddenly, it all fell into place. She stared at him in horror. ‘My father?’
His silence was all the confirmation she needed.
‘My father was one of his friends.’ She felt suddenly sick.
‘Your father is the one person who could have given my mother some degree of peace before she died,’ Lukas gritted out. ‘If he’d only told the truth and admitted that he knew they’d been in a relationship—even if he’d simply admitted that they’d slept together.’
‘Because he definitely knew?’ How could she doubt it? She was under no illusions that her father had ever been honourable.
‘Your father knew,’ Lukas confirmed, his voice painfully raw. ‘He provided Rockman with alibis for the occasions he’d been with my mother. And then your father backed up his lies that my mother was delusional, claiming they’d never met, let alone slept together.’
‘My God, you must hate him, almost as much as you hate your own father,’ she breathed. ‘And he knew, but he pushed me to marry you, anyway.’
‘Did you really expect any better from a man who sided with his friend over his daughter, when that man’s son assaulted you?’
She felt herself blanch. It was one thing knowing the truth, but it was worse hearing someone else say the words out loud.
‘Maybe it wasn’t...quite the way it sounds,’ she managed, even as she could hear how brittle and fragile her voice was.
But the look of disgust that twisted Lukas’s face terrified her.