Ruthless Revenge: Priceless Proposal

“Not required, bella. Do not, even for a moment, believe I’m doing you a favor or that there’s anything personal to all this. You have your side of the bargain and I have mine to keep up.”

While she grappled with his ruthless warning, he leaned forward and unbuckled her belt. “We will see Jackson tonight at a party, Clio. I made sure he can’t get to you before the evening. But obviously he will be foaming at the mouth to see you and to challenge me. He will make a scene, bella, and if I’m right about Jackson, it’s going to get dirty.

“Do you have what it takes to face him, Clio?”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then I will drag you with me anyway. Jackson needs to be stopped and I won’t get an opportunity like this again.”

The utter ruthlessness with which he said it stunned Clio. Every time she thought she knew him, he surprised her again. Once again, she wondered why Stefan despised Jackson so much.

But with a self-preservation instinct she should have had long before this, she didn’t prod him. For some reason, understanding what drove Stefan was a territory she didn’t want to go into. So she reassured him of her own intentions. “I’ll never want him back in my life, Stefan. This week has helped me see more than just Jackson’s betrayal.

“I’ll need you to stand by me tonight, but yes, I’m ready to take Jackson on.”

For once, there were no doubts in his gaze as it swept over her face searchingly. And Clio measured her progress in that green gaze, felt a small flicker of hope for herself.

“You have me, bella. For as long as you want.”

The moment Stefan helped her out of the limo onto the private estate in the Hamptons where the night’s party was, Clio heard the exponential rise in the intensity of the charged atmosphere.

Flashes of cameras and microphones were thrust in their faces from behind ropes. Their names seemed like a chant on a hundred lips.

Jackson had always been a media favorite, too.

Handsome, hardworking, successful—the perfect poster boy for America’s success stories. Or at least that was the image he had liked to project.

But the crowd that the security team was trying to corral tonight was like nothing Jackson had ever warranted.

Clutching the ring on her finger like a lifeline, Clio fisted and unfisted her hands as security guards ushered them inside the mansion through the throng.

“Mr. Bianco, are you seeing Ms. Norwood now?”

“Ms. Norwood, is it true you and Mr. Bianco were college sweethearts at Columbia?”

“Have you left Jackson Smith for Mr. Bianco? Or is it his bigger and better status and wealth that lured you in?”

She almost slipped until Stefan caught her hand in his and shielded her with his body. There was no end to the relentless questions, no lower depth that they could attribute to her motives.

Gritting her jaw, Clio followed Stefan’s lead until one bold reporter shot out a hand and blocked Stefan’s path.

“Give us one sentence, Mr. Bianco. Is Ms. Norwood just one of your usual arm candies or is there anything special about her?”

Stefan stilled and took in the crowd around them with a sly smile. Tugging her to his side, he wrapped an arm around her waist until she was plastered to him.

Something glittered in his gaze as he looked at her and a hundred flashes went on again to capture that mesmerizing look.

His gaze was molten fire, his mouth a study in sensuality.

Every inch of Clio gathered into a trembling ball at that heated look. He raised her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles, making sure the diamond on her finger caught the glare of every flash.

He played them so well.

Clio shivered uncontrollably. Gathering her against him, Stefan absorbed the tremors as if his solid, hard body was made for the very purpose of cushioning her and her emotions.

“After all these years, it didn’t take us long to realize how perfect we are for each other. Ms. Norwood has done me the honor of agreeing to marry me, yes. And whoever else has been in her life until now, it’s me she’s walking to the altar with,” he announced, possessiveness and pride dripping with each word, a flash of his Sicilian temperament wreathing his face.

It was all an act, Clio reminded herself, a perfectly orchestrated one by a man who wanted to hit his opponent where it would hurt.

The crowd went ballistic at the direct cut aimed toward Jackson. Her breath balling in her throat, she clung to Stefan’s hard frame to stop from being mobbed with more questions.

She knew she should speak up, she knew that she was remaining calm just as she had done with Jackson. But for the life of her, she couldn’t utter a word through the tightness in her chest.

She couldn’t help but wish, with a powerless fury, that time would turn back.

Before Stefan had changed and before she had let herself be lost. Before life had woken them up to the gritty reality of it all.

“Mr. Bianco, will you settle down in New York now that your betrothed is here?”

“Will you make New York the base of operations for Bianco Luxury Real Estate?”

For the first time that evening, Clio saw a momentary doubt shadow Stefan’s gaze.

His grip over her wrist tightened into a vise and she gasped.

Instantly, it loosened but he didn’t break his stride to answer their questions this time.

* * *

Clio made it through most of the evening with herself intact. Of course, she had to remind herself more than a few times that what she and Stefan were putting on was an act.

Because it was intoxicating to be in the company of a man who didn’t belittle anyone to prove his own worth, a man who could acknowledge the value of a competitor, a man whose confidence and self-belief was so bone deep that it was enthralling to watch for someone like her who had lost all sense of herself.

And because of their genuinely shared history, it was doubly easy to slip into the role of a loving fiancée, to finish each other’s sentences, to laugh at a shared joke without having to communicate.

They fit together too well, as he had noted. More than one conservative businessman, some Stefan claimed had never liked him previously, dropped by to congratulate and backslap him.

To tell him in obvious terms that he had made a fantastic choice by finally giving up his playboy ways and turning into a family man.

His brows rose, he laughed as his cell phone continued to chime with calls from his board members from all over the globe.

The worst part of the evening was standing by him without betraying the shiver that went through her when he casually touched her every other minute.

A hand on her waist, a kiss on her cheek, the intimate way he pushed a strand of hair that had slipped from its knot behind her ear, the way his long fingers lingered over her nape, sometimes dipping lower, sometime pressing into the very spot on her shoulders where she was getting stiff.

The chemistry that they had discovered in Athens seemed only to grow exponentially even under the most innocent of touches.

It thrilled her and scared her equally.

Excusing herself, she made her way to the buffet table. Determined to look her best tonight, and at Stefan’s urging, which was the nicest way to put his high-handed arranging of her day, Clio had spent most of the day lazing in the ultraluxurious spa at the Chatsfield, nibbling cucumber slices and drinking kale juice that had her looking supersuave in her designer dress—again arranged for her by her arrogant “fiancé”—but that had also left her on edge with hunger.

A migraine was looming, she was sure, and she wanted to stop it before it got worse.

She was about to grab a plate when her nape prickled, and a familiar scent sent her gut twisting into the most painful knot. She cast a look around and realized Jackson had her cornered.

“I didn’t think you had it in you to lure someone of Bianco’s stature. Fool me, huh, Clio?”

Nastiness dripped from every word Jackson uttered. But Clio held off the impulse to instantly scan the crowd for Stefan.

This had begun with Stefan at her side, true, but it was high time she looked after herself. Squaring her shoulders, she turned around.

His mouth curling, Jackson swept his blue gaze over her with such disdain that sweat pooled over her skin.

“Don’t make a scene, Jackson.”

“Oh, come on, Clio. After that entrance, after that clip of you crawling all over him out there for the world to see...after you jumped into his bed without even telling me we’re through, you disgust me.”

That he could think all that of her, that he could say it to her face stunned Clio.

“You’re the one who’s been fooling me for months,” she said, unable to curb the words from falling out of her mouth. All the warnings she had given herself about not betraying what she had seen flew out. Her throat felt like there was glass stuck in it and she had to remind herself that it was not her shame.

“God, you had sex with Ashley and you laughed at me with her.”

Something like shame filled his gaze, and was gone in a nanosecond, a calculating look emerging in his features. “So that’s what this is about? Payback? You think you’ll dangle yourself on his arm and make me sorry for what I did? You think I’ll come running back to you and beg for forgiveness?”

His gaze took in her designer dress, her upswept hair, the diamond on her finger as if he was cataloging everything about her.

Venomous satisfaction filled his gaze. “Of course it is. Why else would a red-blooded Sicilian like Bianco, who’s known to never date a woman for more than a week, want to marry you of all the women on the planet?”

For the first time since she had heard the sound of him shamelessly shagging his assistant, Clio was filled with molten fury unlike she had ever known.

It was cleansing, it was invigorating and it burned any remaining doubt that somehow, it had been her fault.

She had done nothing wrong except for trusting a deceptive man with not an ounce of honor.

“You have pushed me beyond my limits already but be careful what you say about him. Stefan already doesn’t have much of an opinion about you.”

“You stupid whore,” he spat out, fear and something else shaking his well-muscled frame. “Can’t you see he’s just using you to get to me?”

They were drawing looks, she was aware of it as if there was another version of her scanning the room. Years of breeding and her own nature cringed at being amidst a spectacle, recoiled at being the center of attention. But she was damned if she let Jackson intimidate her, too, on top of everything else he had done.

“Don’t you dare take another step forward, Jackson.”

Something in her tone must have registered because he stopped, his mouth still wearing that nasty curl. “The minute he realizes you’re of no use to him, just as you weren’t to me, he’s going to dump your ass.

“He’s no more going to marry you than I did in three years. And when he does dump you, when he moves on to brighter and better pastures, I’ll still be here to laugh at you, Clio.

“You’re nothing but a crutch to be used.”

The knowing smile on his lips, the sneering tone of his words, the decided gleam in his eyes that there was nothing valuable about her to any man, the echo of her darkest fear that no man would ever love her for herself and not her name—it unleashed a firestorm in Clio.

She wanted to roar at Jackson, she wanted to raise her hand and slap the sneer off his mouth.

But he didn’t even deserve her anger.

Lifting her head high, she gave him an imperious look that cut him to size. “Be prepared to lose, Jackson. Everything,” she said loudly, glad that she sounded steady, confident.

She could not let him ruin what was left of her life in the city that she loved so much. She would not let him run her out of New York on a wave of scandal and shame. She could not let him still have so much power over her life, her happiness.

Even if it meant taking the biggest gamble she had ever risked in her life, even if it meant tying her fate to the one man who could help her become whole again, even if he did it by shredding her to pieces.

“You’ll be glad that you’re the first one to hear this. Stefan and I are going to be married in a week. Here in New York, at the Chatsfield. And you know what, Jackson? You’re invited.”

* * *

Dio, no!

Clio hadn’t just said that.

Standing at the back of the crowd that was hungrily lapping up the exchange between Clio and that scum, Jackson, Stefan stood rooted to the spot, a hundred different emotions crashing and derailing him from inside.

It felt eerily like that moment when Serena had callously and without even an ounce of emotion told him that she was done with him, that she had no use for him without his parents’ fortune.

In just a minute, he had lost everything—his parents’ respect and trust and love, the woman he had given up everything for, and the worst, his belief in his judgment, his emotions, in his self-worth.

His entire world had collapsed.

Her shoulders ramrod straight, her eyes breathing green fire, her small breasts falling and rising, her skin glowing with anger—it was the Clio he had admired and lusted after a decade ago.

She was spectacular to behold, truly an equal to goddess Athena at that moment as she battled the obvious fear that shadowed her gaze.

But even above the fierce pride and admiration he felt on her behalf for finally putting Jackson in his place was the most insidiously ugly and eviscerating thought he had ever faced.

Her boldness in so publicly and irrevocably announcing their wedding in a week...

Had this been her plan all along? Had the distrust and fragility in her eyes, the way she had trembled under his lips, the shadow of the woman that made him want to protect her from everything, had it all been an act?

The minute the thought erupted, Stefan felt acidic distaste flood his mouth. Cursing, he drove his fist into the pillar next to him, attempting to ground himself, struggling to contain his volatile emotions and his mind’s poisonous thoughts.

Dio, he didn’t want to think along either lines about Clio. And yet the distrust in him was bone deep.

Even as he hated that she was changing his life, even as he couldn’t get a handle on his suspicions, he knew how much making a life here meant to her, knew how much she loved this city.

Reminded himself of the desperate courage that had shone in her eyes when she had shown up at his suite.

Running a hand along his brow, he looked back at her.

Jackson was nowhere to be seen and she was surrounded by well-wishers.

A little of the color was back in her cheeks as her gaze swept through the hall, looking for him.

She had more than surprised him, true. But she couldn’t be allowed to indulge in it again, couldn’t be allowed to warrant this much emotion from him—whether surprise or fury or this want for her that was becoming a force he couldn’t fight.

If she wanted him to marry her, there was only one way that he could do it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN CLIO HAD moved a decade ago to study at Columbia, New York, the young, handsome playboys she had become friends with had captivated her. Even through the hardest times over the past decade, she had never once considered returning home to England. She had had such spectacular plans for when she would marry, where she would live for the rest of her life.

But she had never meant to make her dream come true this way. Catching back the sigh that wanted to escape, she looked up at Stefan, streetlights and huge ads bathing his face in strips of light.

The hardest New York winter held less frost than Stefan’s gaze in the interior of the limo. For the rest of the evening and the drive back to Manhattan, they hadn’t exchanged a single word.

Gazing out through the windows, he kept his phone glued to his ear the entire length of the drive. And judging from his conversation, Clio realized he was handling a crisis with his holdings in Asia.

It was a small comfort that he wasn’t freezing her out intentionally as she waited on tenterhooks for his reaction.

If he had snarled at her, if he had called her a hundred names, if he had let that fiery temper explode and lashed out at her, Clio would have had some estimate of his reaction.

But this silent chill that he seemed to radiate from every pore, for the first time since she had seen him standing on the terrace of the Empire State Building, arrogance and power emanating from him, left Clio afraid.

Even the ruthless stranger she had come to know this past week would have been welcome.

Feeling a lead weight in her chest, Clio followed him through the gleaming entryway into the soaring luxury hotel steeped in tradition. Every inch of the plush interior screamed over-the-top opulence and extravagance.

Nothing but the best for Stefan Bianco.

But every time she walked in through the doors of the Chatsfield, saw the eager staff greet Stefan, Clio was reminded of the fact that Stefan didn’t own a home. Anywhere in the world. He lived aboard his private jet, flying across the globe as his business dictated, without any connection to the world.

And here in New York, of all places, he hadn’t even intended to stay past the week.

They had decided they would just leave it as an open-ended engagement. Scary prospect as it had been, she had even started looking for a new job.

The walls felt like they would cave in on them and trap them in the tension forever as the steel doors of the elevator closed and they were carried to the penthouse suite.

The unobstructed panoramic views of Manhattan from the suite’s glass balconies didn’t fascinate her as they usually did. The glittering diamond skylights, the floor-to-ceiling windows, the unique artwork alongside stunning artifacts...nothing held her interest tonight.

It was the silent man who did.

Without taking his gaze off of her, he undid his cuffs. Next came the buttons on his dress shirt. Clio held his gaze, even as the shadow of his olive skin under the shirt beckoned.

The column of his throat was a visual feast as were the chiseled angles of his face.

“Damn it, Stefan. Say something.”

Not even Jackson’s ugly name-calling shredded her composure as Stefan’s silence did.

His olive green gaze was hard, flinty even. “I have never been maneuvered into a corner so publicly and so irrevocably, bella. I think I have been rendered mute.”

Maneuvered? Her stomach tying in knots, Clio blinked. There was no anger in his words, no resentment in his tone. Something else lingered there on a razor’s edge, waiting to strike.

“Stefan, I don’t know what came over me. I have never lost my temper like that.”

His posture screamed careless lounging but Clio knew he noticed every breath she took, every nuance that crossed her face.

“I know it’s not something you ask a friend over dinner, but I would owe you...” Shaking her head, Clio caught the words in her mouth. In her wildest dreams, she had never thought she would beg a man to marry her, to ask someone to turn such a big lie into reality.

She reconsidered it in her own head.

If she didn’t value herself, no one else would. Not Jackson, not the world and definitely not Stefan.

And she needed Stefan to value her, to respect her. Suddenly, it felt like the most important thing in the world that he did, that she become at least half the person he had known a decade ago.

“I’ll bring you everything I can on him, Stefan. This is my city, and my life. I will not let him steal any more from me.”

“Think carefully, Clio. You might only be exchanging one awful man for another. Because I’ll not change anything in my life for a woman, cara. Not even a surprise wife.”

Now there was no taunting smile, there was no lazy charm, only utter seriousness in his gaze. Urgency pounding through her, she reached him and grabbed the lapels of his shirt. Thrust her face so close to his that the masculine heat of him swathed her, pinging across her skin, infiltrating every cell and pore. “What do you mean?”

The rhythmic whir of the fax machine in the open study as it cranked out documents filled the cavernous lounge. The sound chafed against her skin as Clio waited for an answer, her breath suspended in her throat.

Grasping her wrists, he pushed her back. Prowled to the fax machine and returned with a sheaf of papers.

He produced a gold-tipped fountain pen from somewhere and nodded toward the sheaf of papers.

“It means the marriage will be only in name, Clio, a contractual agreement that we will both sign. It means all you will get from me is a peanut allowance. It means you’ll sign a prenuptial contract and a nondisclosure agreement that you won’t reveal any of this to another soul or sell the story or write a memoir of our life together at a later time.

“It means you won’t dictate who occupies my bed after we’re both through with Jackson, and you’ll not throw allegations of love at me.

“If you accept and then violate any of the above, the consequences will be far-reaching.”

Clio gasped for breath, as if someone had kicked her in the gut, as if something icy and vicious had been stuck in her chest. Tears pricked behind her eyelids, her lungs struggling to breathe.

“You think...you actually think I planned all this?” she poked him in the chest, hurt splintering into a millions shards. “You think I orchestrated it so that our farcical engagement turns into a real marriage and I can mooch off your millions?”

“The thought crossed my mind, sì,” he said, without blinking, without a beat, without wondering how much pain he was causing her with his casually elegant shrug.

Clio slapped him so hard that her arm jerked at the impact. Her entire body shuddered but it was still nothing compared to the sharp pain in her chest.

Before she could draw another breath, she was plastered against his hard body, her arms twisted behind her in a firm grip, her breasts crushed against his chest, her lungs filled with the scent of him.

* * *

Stefan didn’t know what shocked him more. The fact that Clio had actually slapped him, or his outrageous reaction to it.

He had to have truly become a twisted bastard because the sight of her—out of control with anger, her elegance all ruffled, her composure fraying, her lithe body vibrating, turned him on as if a fire had been lit inside his very blood.

That he had driven her to be that old Clio again felt like a win more than anything.

He turned rock hard and she was like heaven in his arms.

He held her hands tight with one hand and shuddered as her breasts rubbed against his chest. The tight tips of her nipples visible against the flimsy silk she had on drew his gaze. The scent of her perfume drenched his pores.

Dio, the woman smelled absolutely divine.

He moved his free hand over his own cheek, and then over hers. She was so silky soft that his mind instantly wandered to other areas. “Corner me into marriage first, then slap me second...no woman has even come close to what you have achieved today, tesoro.”

She pushed at him again with her hands, not that he budged at her attack. “Don’t you dare call me that, whatever the hell it means.”

“Then do not push me into retaliating the only way I know, bella.”

The more she struggled against him, the more aroused he became. He gave himself over to the moment and enjoyed the novelty of his own reaction.

Most of the women he had dated the past few years had been simpering, talking him up, catering to his every need before he even knew it. Until one face blended into another, until he was nothing but a carefully constructed projection of himself in their eyes, until there was nothing but emptiness inside him...