Page 16 of The Runaway Bride and the Billionaire

I thought back to earlier that evening when Matteo had shown up at my door. I couldn’t believe he’d come to invite me to have dinner with him. It was the most he’d ever done since we started living together.

I felt strangely guilty for leaving him to have dinner alone while I went out with Lisa. I considered apologizing but I knewthat wouldn’t do anything to help. I thanked Agnes and walked to my room. I paused briefly by Matteo’s door and for a moment, I wondered what would happen if I knocked. Would he be happy to see me? Would we talk things out? Would we finally reconcile?

I didn’t get the answers to those questions because I never knocked.

Chapter 8

Matteo

Hearing Amelia leave the house made me feel even more stupid for setting up this dinner for her. What was I thinking when I asked Agnes to serve dinner for two in the dining room?

It was a stupid thing to do.

I ate in silence as I stared down the long table at the seat Amelia was supposed to occupy. I couldn’t help wondering who she was meeting up with. I knew she’d been exploring the city but when I saw her earlier, she didn’t look dressed to explore. She was clearly meeting up with someone.

I tried not to think about that. Amelia was free to have dinner with whoever she wanted. I wasn’t her boyfriend. I was simply her roommate. It was a strange term to use for two people whohad so much history between them, but it was perfectly accurate for the situation.

In the days that followed my failed dinner attempt, Amelia and I spoke even less than before. I knew I’d been avoiding her and I knew it was childish but it was the only way I could survive living with her. Seeing her so often was killing me.

Every time I saw her I was reminded of the day she dumped me. The day she broke my heart while the ring I bought for her burned a hole in my pocket. Even now, the ring sat in the left drawer of my office table. I’d thought about throwing it away many times over the years, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Instead, I let it haunt me every day. On most days, I would open the box and stare at the ring just like I’d done on that day five years ago. I still remember parts of the proposal speech I planned to say. And I remembered how nervous I was that day. After what Amelia told me, my nervousness was quickly replaced with sadness.

She still didn’t know that I was going to propose that day and I would make sure she never found out. I wouldn’t be able to survive that level of embarrassment. Plus, things between Amelia and I were already complicated enough. There was no need to make it worse by telling her the truth.

I’d given Eddie the day off, so I was driving myself to work. Doing that allowed me to clear my head a bit.

When I got to the office, I was surprised to see Kayla standing outside the building. I pulled into the driveway and turned off the car engine. Kayla rushed over before I even got a chance to step out of the car. I could tell from her panicked expression that something bad had happened.

“Mr. Hayes. Good morning.”

“Morning. Is there a reason you’re meeting me outside the building?” I asked. I reached inside the car to get my briefcase. Then I closed the door and locked the car.

As I walked into the building, Kayla walked beside me and filled me in on the latest crises. “Fitzroy Corp is trying to poach one of our cement suppliers.”

“Which one?”

“Ryx Cement.”

We had at least five companies that we sourced cement from. They didn’t deal exclusively with us but we were their biggest client. Of the five companies, one of them was quite renowned. They were respected all over the city and regarded as the best suppliers in the business. Anyone who worked with them immediately got more connections. That company was Ryx Cement.

Fitzroy Corp was a rival construction company that started three years ago. The owner, Alberto Fitzroy, was a spoiled brat who inherited a lot of money after his father passed. He started a construction company with some of his inheritance and over the years, his company has mirrored every one of my actions.

If I got an investment from a firm, Fitzroy Corp would try to obtain an investment from that same firm. If I secured a contract to build a skyscraper or just to fix some roads in the city, Fitzroy Corp would find a way to secure that too.

It was like Alberto was just mindlessly following my footsteps. I’d done my best to ignore him. For the most part, his actions weren’t harmful, just mildly annoying. But this latest endeavor would definitely be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

There was no way I was letting Fitzroy Corp take Ryx Cement. I had to stop them from joining the Ryx Cement clientele list because I knew Alberto wouldn’t just stop there. He’d try to dethrone my company and become the biggest client. If hemanaged to do that then his company would get a lot more respect in the industry. Respect that would be unfairly given seeing as the CEO only ever copied my actions.

I had no idea how I was going to stop Ryx Cement from moving forward with Alberto. After all, they were an independent company and they were free to supply to whoever they wanted. The only good news was that I knew for a fact that Alberto didn’t have the funds to match the deal my company had with Ryx Cement.

In the three years since his father passed, he’d managed to burn through all the money and his company was only surviving thanks to the Fitzroy name. It was how he’d managed to keep up with me all these years. I had the talent and business acumen while he had the connections. Thankfully, my skill won out in the end.

I hadn’t heard about Alberto in a while so I assumed he’d finally given up on trying to copy my company. This news about Ryx Cement made me very uncomfortable. I wondered what Alberto was up to during all that time when I didn’t hear about him. What if he’d been gathering funds and he was now able to match or even surpass the deal I had with them?

I called for an emergency meeting so my staff and I could discuss a way forward. When I stepped into the meeting room, they were all already waiting there. We spent the next three hours discussing potential solutions.

Sadly, we still didn’t reach a definitive way forward. After the meeting, I went back to my office to brainstorm and that was where I spent the rest of my day. I didn’t even notice when it got late because I shut the blinds of my office window hours ago.

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