A Wife for the Billionaire
Chapter 123: SOFIA

Chapter 123: SOFIA

I wondered who it was. Probably it was her lover, Mr William coming to pick her up or drop a gift. The man was smitten.

It was pathetic. The pair had been on how many dates already and the man just couldn’t stay a day without sending gifts and wackass notes.

I pitied him. Whatever this was, I doubt it was love at least on Alicia’s side. The bitch was incapable of anything love. I couldn’t be more right when I say that, whatever they had going on was a fling. A fling that would pass as soon as Alicia gets tired of it all.

Don’t let the fact that the twins have already met the guy fool you. She does that. She lets her guys believe that since they’ve been introduced to her kids, her family that they were important. That the relationship was real and gaining serious ground. But in essence, it was all bullshit.

Alicia was a goddamn player, through and through.

Sometimes, I wonder if that was how it had been with Simon. If she at one time had loved him or was it all a fling that ended up with twins. Or perhaps she had loved him only to discover that he had been playing her and now she was shielding herself and her world from another upending.

I almost pitied the late Mr Blake. He must’ve gone through hell in her hands, no wonder the poor man indulged in gambling and drinking. Any escape from Alicia’s cruelty and tantrums would have been bliss to him. Too bad he had to die from it.

"Who could that be?" Alicia queried, echoing my thoughts.

"Felix, are we expecting any guests?" She went on facing the senile steward who shook his head in a negative.

"What about you, my dearests? Did you invite anyone over?"

"No, mama" the twins echoed as one.

"Who knows it could be Charlie, calling on Sofia here" Anna exasperated, oblivious to how much her words affected her twin.

"Oh yes, it must be" Alicia said, nodding, "the lad will make a fine husband. You are lucky"

The last part was directed to me, forcing me to smile. I didn’t feel lucky in the least. I just lost my one chance at making my dreams come true, I was this close and now the only thing I’m close to is, becoming a goddamn wife and a mother.

The scowl on Mira’s face almost made the whole thing worth it, but the fact that I was going to endure yet another stretch of time, faking a smile and pretending I was the luckiest girl in the world while also putting up with Charlie’s lovesick ass, churned my stomach.

The knock came again. Louder this time, startling all of us.

"Great" I muttered to myself as Alicia ordered the butler to go and see who it was.

I smelled the billionaire even before the valet jogged to back to where we were to announce to Alicia,

"Ma’am, Mr Richard Wellington is here to see you"

I would have mirrored the start Alicia made at the mention of his name. But I’ve been in the jerk’s presence far too many times that I was past the surprise.

"Oh my goodness! Are you certain, Felix? How can you even be sure it’s him?" Alicia asked, adjusting the same chocolate brown corporate gown she had done to work.

"No offense Ma’am, but everyone in New City knows who Richard Wellington is, in fact I think the entire world knows who he is"

"And he’s here?" Mira asked, rising and peering towards the lobby as if she expected to see him there.

"He must be here to see me," Anna boasted, puffing her sleeves, "perhaps he realized that there’s no need for choosing another when I’m the obvious choice"

"Silence!" Alicia called, stopping Mira from offering a retort, "Felix, go and let him in."

I might not be startled, but I was curious. What was he doing coming here? Was he that desperate?

That trail of questions bouncing off the walls of my mind, opened me to the realization that there was a possibility of Alicia spilling the tea.

Dread washed over me as I heard him grumble, making his way to the sitting room where we were,

"About damn time"

Lanke, the kind hearted man I had already met and Richard’s driver, flanked him as they appeared into view.

The billionaire still donned his immaculate dark violet suit. He walked with his hands stuffed inside his pockets and dark shades rimmed his eyes. He looked like a movie star, a famous celebrity. A heartbreaker, a devil.

"Mr Wellington, welcome to my humble abode." Alicia said, almost bowing as she rose. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, we just weren’t expecting you"

Lackadaisically, as if he didn’t hear her or that he did and chose to ignore her, he removed his shades and looked around. His eyes traveled round the room, the paintings, the pieces and fragments of the past on the mantel, the furniture, the chandelier, he took in everything with a grimace especially when his eyes reached me.

The interior decor and the Blake Mansion must be second class compared to the luxury he was used to. Alicia was doing well, her late husband also tried, but they weren’t billionaires.

Alicia expressed her uneasiness as she asked,

"Is anything amiss, Mr Wellington?"

He snapped a look at Alicia, who cowered under his gaze. The twins themselves were swooning while also trying to hide behind their mother.

I was enjoying it all. Alicia and her daughters, getting treated the same way they’ve been treating me. He looked at them like they didn’t matter, like they were inconsequential.

Slowly, he walked to a painting, Garden, I had called it because I sorta painted it. I wasn’t as good as him but that painting had been one of my very best, if not the best.

It was of a woman in a yellow dress with patches of flowery patterns, sitting and hugging her knees in her garden, surrounded by flowers, the sun blazing above and her face shadowed by the wide brim straw hat on her head.

I had painted it when I was in high school. It had been a project, but it had meant more to me, it was a memory. A piece of my life before I came to live with the Blakes. A shard saved from the world I used to know before it shattered.

That was my mom sitting in her garden, enjoying the feel of the sun on her skin and how its blaze seemed to aglow the flowers and heighten their scents.

She had told me that as I sat on her lap that day, wearing a matching hat like hers. That was the only thing missing in that painting... myself.

I think that was why I had tried to make it exceptional. To immerse myself in it because I won’t be seen in it, but I could be felt in the colors, in the gentle strokes. If one looked closely enough.

I was never credited for that painting. Alicia claimed it for her daughters. She hung it up and each time anyone asked, she acclaims the credit to her twins.

The Garden wasn’t really award winning, it was mediocre at best compared to contemporary works by modern artists. But there was something about it that just arrested the eyes. Sara, my art teacher, had said that it felt like the painter was there just a few more span of the canvas, watching the woman with mixed emotions. Happy and sad.

She said that the colors used may have been bright and the image depicted may have been one of happiness, like a happy thought. But it wasn’t. In her exact words,

"I just can’t stop staring at it. It feels like a memory, a once happy memory, but at the time of painting, it no longer was"

Garden may not have won the art fair award but it was adored more. And as much as it killed Alicia that I was the painter, she still hung it up because she told everyone that her twins had collaborated on it. I remember it was Sara who suggested it.

Sara had known it was me who painted Garden and to rub it on Alicia’s face, she insisted that Alicia celebrated her daughters’ success by hanging the painting in the living room. There were others there when she had said that, even joking that it would be cruel to leave such a beautiful masterpiece to waste away in the attic or basement, as if she knew that that was exactly Alicia’s intentions.

For Sara and those who concurred in agreement with her words, even those who joked about visiting just to look at the painting again, Alicia had no other choice, but to hang it up for all to see.

"Beautiful piece," Richard said, "melancholy and nostalgia expressed with bright colors. It’s simply genius"

"Yes, my daughters are geniuses. Annabel and Mirabel," she tugged them to stand, "they collaborated on it"

"I don’t doubt that," the billionaire said, his tone sarcastic.

A snicker escaped me before I could manage it. Alicia and her daughters glared at me, their expression screaming, "Wait till he leaves".

As for the billionaire, he simply smiled.