Chapter 4
Derek’s pov
I was shocked when Valentina walked in on Candice and I together. I didn’t even like Candice that much, and she was far less attractive than Valentina is. I like a bit of meat on my woman, and Candice has as many curves as a 14 year old boy just gone through a growth spurt.
I only started to sleep with her as she was a family member of one of the managers in the company, so I knew she could help me get promotions if I kept her happy in the bedroom. She hated Valentina, and it was easy to tell it was out of pure jealousy.
Valentina is beautiful, intelligent, and has a charming personality. Candice is average at most, not the sharpest tool in the box, and about as funny as a heart attack. The only reason she had a decent job was because of the family member.
She managed to skate through life using others in the workplace to make herself look good, and you could tell she was an entitled bi.tch. She or her family didn’t even have the means to back up the attitude. They were comfortable in monetary terms, but they were by no means rich.
I hated it when she would insult Vatentina, but I would go along with it and join in to keep her happy. I had almost gotten the promotion I was after, and then I could get rid of her. It wasn’t even like she could stop me either.
Personal relationships in the workplace were not allowed. It was very rarely investigated, though. But if I complained about her, she would be in more trouble than I was as she had been higher up in the company.
It wouldn’t look good for one of their departmental managers to be extorting s*x from a worker in exchange for getting them promotions. Especially when that worker was in a long-term relationship and recently engaged, so I knew how to keep her quiet.
Now, none of that sh.it mattered as Valentina had caught me before I could put an end to it myself, and I was devastated. I know it was wrong to cheat on her, and if I knew who her family was, I would never have done it, but I only found out after I had started sleeping with Candice.
I did actually love the girl, and she was the only one I could see having a life with. She would never forgive me now, especially after the performance Candice put on. Why the fu.ck would she tell Valentina that I was infertile.
I mean, it was pretty much true, and also, the fact that I don’t particularly want kids, but I never intended on telling Valentina. I had planned on discovering it after we had tried for them for a while and acting appropriately devastated by the fact.
Valentina would be so worried about me she wouldn’t care about the fact we wouldn’t have children. At least, that is how it went in my head. I knew she wanted a family, at least 2 children, as well, so I would have given her time to get over it.
None of that would happen now. If the cheating wasn’t enough to stop her from forgiving me, then the lie about children would be. I still had to try and get her to forgive me, though. It wasn’t just even about her family anymore, either.
I knew I would never get another girl as amazing as her, and even without her family connections, she would go far in the business world. That was why she was working her way up in her own company, as she had a fantastic work ethic.
I called and called her cell phone, and then got desperate enough to call her friends. They knew if I was that desperate to get in touch with her, I had fu.cked up badly. She wasn’t with them, and they were not willing to even suggest where she might be
I knew she had either gotten a hotel or even a last-minute flight to her family to spend Christmas with them. I still tried to get in touch with her in any way I could. After a while, she blocked my number and blocked me on all her social media.
I would have to wait until the offices opened again after Christmas to try and speak to her if she didn’t appear home again. Candice was pi.ssed at me. She didn’t like that I was ignoring her in favour of trying to get in touch with Valentina.
I needed to keep her sweet for the promotion, so I apologised and asked her to stay the night, there is no way that Valentina was coming back tonight anyway, so it’s not like I could make things any worse with our relationship.
I was right she didn’t come and again on Christmas day she didn’t turn up. Candice ended up staying for Christmas, giving her family some excuse on why she could not make it. She even tried to make the food for us that Valentina had bought.
We ended up getting a takeaway in the end because if I ate what she tried to make, we would end up in the hospital with food poisoning. Yet another thing Valentina is better at, Valentina is an amazing cook, I love eating her food.
It was the most pathetic Christmas I had ever had. Candice was oblivious to it all. She was quite happy in her own little world while trying to play happy families with me. The woman was delusional. Even if Valentina never took me back, I would not stay with her.
It would be more fun spending the rest of my life in an asylum than being with her. She couldn’t even have a decent conversation. There was nothing going on between her ears other than looking good and having the latest design.
I felt so much relief when Candice finally left on boxing day, I swear that woman would make me bald, I felt like tearing my hair out constantly. At least now I had some silence, so I could think about what I could do to fix this.
Candice thought I was wrong about Valentina being a Steel. She says that if she was, she would never have worked in the mail room. She thought at most some distant relative who they had taken pity on, and she would never inherit their billions.
Candice, in her simple-minded brain, just couldn’t fathom why someone would work so hard if they didn’t have to. She thought all women were like her and would stay at home doing whatever the hell they liked if they had an unlimited amount of money.
I could see her point in some ways. If I were from a ridiculously rich family, I would want the Ceo’s job as soon as I got my qualification, which is pretty much what Giorgio Steel did. I knew that Valentina wasn’t like us, though.
Valentina wanted to make her own way. The company she is at is only a few years old. She didn’t want a ready-made business. I know she makes the big decisions there even if no one else does. I saw an email from the acting Ceo asking their next steps.
So not only is she working in each department, she is also running it behind the scenes, like an episode of undercover boss or some sh.it. I didn’t realise how fu.cking lucky I was that she even looked in my direction until it all went wrong.
My parents were upset that she wasn’t there to say hi to them at Christmas over the phone, and Candice made sure they heard her voice, so I had to explain myself. Both of my parents are now furious at me. They adored Valentina.
Mum hates cheaters as she grew up seeing the pain it caused her mother each time she found out about another affair. I know she won’t look at me in the same way again. She is so disappointed in me, and it hurts to know I have upset her so badly.
I was glad that I didn't have to be in the office until after the new year, our company was closed for two weeks over the holiday season. Something else I had lied to Valentina about so I could spend time keeping Candice happy.
I knew Valentina had to be in the office, even though they had a skeleton staff over the holidays. She had some designs to finish, and I guess she also had to make sure it was all running smoothly.
So here I am, sitting in my car, waiting to see if I can get a glimpse of her. Not even half an hour into the company opening I discovered I was on the banned list so I couldn’t even go and see her in her current department, I would just have to to wait on her to leave at some point.