Chapter Twenty Seven

Third-person Pov

"Do you know who they call sexy Cleo?" Gabriel finally blurted out the question that had been on his mind for hours.

He had asked Antonia to have dinner with him, just so that he could have the chance to ask her if she recognized the name.

As soon as Antonia heard Gabriel mention the name 'sexy Cleo', her entire body froze in shock. She couldn't remember the last time she had heard that name from anybody else's lips, and what was especially unsettling was the fact that it was coming from Gabriel.

"Where did you hear that name?" she quickly asked, hoping that it wasn't what she was thinking.

Gabriel sighed before responding. "There was a strange woman at the company earlier today who insisted on seeing me, and she even claimed that she knew who you were. Of course, I didn't believe her, but she gave me a name and mentioned that you would recognize the name," he explained.

He could already tell by the look on her face that she was horrified at the mention of the name, and it only made him even more curious to confirm if that woman that he saw today was really her mother.

Antonia's world felt like it had crumbled as soon as Gabriel explained that her mother had gone to see him. She couldn't believe Cleo's audacity, even after she had sent her to hell years ago and warned her to stop bothering her life.

The very thing she hated to talk about was her relationship with her mother, and she didn't like the idea of having to even mention to Gabriel that such a woman was the person who gave birth to her.

"What did she say to you?" She questioned Gabriel, wanting to know the specifics of their meeting.

"She didn't say anything in particular. All she told me was that she was your mother, and she mentioned that she had tried coming here, but apparently, you refused to meet with her," Gabriel responded, purposely leaving out the fact that she had asked him for money.

It was already obvious to him that Antonia wasn't pleased that he had met her mother, so he figured that talking to her about her mother's demand for money would only upset her even more.

"I'm sure that can be everything, Gabriel. She must have mentioned something else to you, and I want you to be completely honest with me without leaving anything out," Antonia retorted, demanding the truth.

If there was one thing she knew her mother would mention, it had to be her criminal record. For some strange reason, Cleo was very proud of the fact that she had been in jail several times, and she never failed to mention it to whoever cared to listen to her speak.

She also knew that the only reason her mother was trying to reach out to her was because she just came out of jail again and wanted to demand money from her.

Gabriel cleared his throat nervously, unsure of what to do. "Well, she mentioned that she just came out of jail, but I don't think that is relevant to this conversation, Antonia. If you feel uncomfortable talking about her, then you don't have to. I just wanted to confirm if what she said was true, and that's all," he responded, still living at the part where she asked him for money and also threatened to expose her relationship with Antonia.

Antonia rolled her eyes in frustration. "I can't believe that crazy witch is still refusing to leave me alone!" she hissed in anger, feeling the urge to throw something around.

"Can I ask how long this has been happening? Does she usually harass you this often?" Gabriel asked.

"More often than you can imagine, Gabriel," she answered. "Since she goes in and out of jail quite often, she has a habit of looking for me whenever she's released since I'm the only useful one she gave birth to. Unfortunately, the rest of her children turned out exactly like her, so I have to carry the cross of dealing with her harassment whenever she needs money to throw away," she explained.

Gabriel sighed, confirming exactly what he suspected. "And do you usually give her money?" he asked.

Antonia nodded her head. "Well, at the beginning of my career, I had no other choice but to give her money since having the world find out that I came out of her was not an option. She threatened me at everybody that she got that she would expose that I was her mother, and personally, I'd rather lose my mind than have people find out she gave birth to me," she responded.

Gabriel sighed. Now more than ever, he was curious to know exactly what had happened to Antonia and why her mother wasn't registered as her mother.

"I'm sorry to bring this up right now, but when I did a background check on you at the beginning of our agreement, you were registered as an orphan without any parents. So may I ask why that is, and why your relationship with your mother is so sore?" he managed to gather his courage to ask, half-heartedly expecting her to shut him off and tell him to mind his business.

"Did you not see what she looked like? Did that person look like a normal person to you?" Antonia retorted, wondering why he would ask such an obvious question.

"I mean, I can tell that she doesn't take care of herself, but what I want to know is how long your relationship with her has been this bad and how you were able to destroy any traces of your relationship with her," he clarified.

Antonia chucked bitterly. "My relationship with her has been bad since the day I was born, Gabriel. That woman has been nothing but a thorn in my flesh, and just so you know, I didn't shut her out and register myself as an orphan. I am an orphan. My adopted parents are both dead, and that is why my profile says that I have no parents," she clarified quickly.

"So she gave you up for adoption?" Gabriel asked, letting his curiosity get the best of him even though a part of him was telling him to stop with the questioning now before she'd get upset.

Antonia scoffed. "You know, I would have been so much happier if that was what happened, but that wasn't what happened, unfortunately. That woman sold me to a stranger on the streets for a hundred dollars, simply because she needed money to buy drugs," she blurted out with rage, causing Gabriel to freeze on the spot.

He had not been expecting to hear something that crazy, and he didn't know how he was supposed to react to it.

"She did what?" he questioned quietly, still in absolute disbelief.

"You heard me loud and clear, Gabriel," Antonia confirmed, not surprised by Gabriel's reaction.

Besides her adopted parents and Kendra, she had never told anybody else the story with her mother, especially never to a man. She had always felt like she would be judged harshly for how terribly rough her childhood was, and she also didn't want anyone to look at her with pity.

"I was sold to a strange man for a hundred dollars, but thankfully, the man who bought me from my mother wasn't a bad person. According to the orphanage, he had bought me because he felt like my mother would have sold me off to anyone just to get her hands on money, and he was afraid that she might end up selling me off to bad people," she explained.

"Apparently, my mother was suffering from withdrawal syndrome, so she wasn't in her right mind and was a danger to my life on the night that she told me," she added.

Gabriel was stunned into silence as he struggled to believe what he was hearing. He had heard of bad parenting before, but never had he heard of something this serious.

"How old were you when she did this?" he questioned her softly, watching her struggle to keep her tears from falling.

Antonia sighed before responding. "I was three years old when it happened, Gabriel, but you want to know the worst part? She came back for me. She found me at the orphanage and took me away after promising to never neglect me again, only for her to go right ahead and sell me off again. And it was all because of her addiction to drugs."