“What are you talking about?”
He raised the tablet toward her. “I just watched the coverage of your press statement.”
“And?”
“You left out the most important part. Again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My statement was concise. I followed the details of the investment contract, just as your legal team dictated, and I stopped it from downgrading into Twenty Questions about my personal life.”
“Your personal life,” he said softly, “is not just yours anymore.”
She waited for him to elaborate. Unknown dread pooled in her gut.
The limo came to a stop in front of the plush New York Plaza Hotel, where the awards ceremony was being held. She could hear the hushed roar of the crowd outside.
Before she could blink he opened a small velvet box.
Drawing a painful breath, she tucked herself farther into her seat, her heart pounding behind her ribcage. He’d done this on purpose—waited until the last minute.
The diamond twinkled in the dark, every cut and glitter of it breathtaking in its princess setting. There was an accompanying band of white gold, exquisitely simple in contrast to the glittering diamond.
Alarm twisted her stomach into a knot. That simple band might very well be an invisible shackle, binding her to him. And it could unlock every impossible hope, every dangerous dream she had so ruthlessly squashed to survive. “I don’t want to wear it. I don’t know what you think this achieves...”
Her words faltered as he gently tugged her hand into his and slipped the rings on her finger. They were cold, heavy against her skin, yet she felt branded.
“It puts a stop to the dirty speculation about you...about my child.”
“What does it matter what the world thinks?”
“Do you know when the first time my mother took me to see my father was?”
Every other thought fled her mind. She just stared at him. She knew he didn’t like talking about his childhood. And she hadn’t pushed him six years ago.
“I was six. We stood outside his house for three hours before he even met with us. Then she took me again when I was seven. Every year she would drag me to his doorstep, hoping this time he would accept me as his son. I grew up hearing the neighborhood’s taunts—bastard and so much more. She wanted a different life for me, a better one, but I never cared. I didn’t think he owed me anything. Until she ended up in the hospital.”
A cloud of dark anger surrounded him in proportion to the incredible cruelty of his father’s treatment. A knot twisted in her own gut. Could she blame him for how much he had hated his father? Because she knew, firsthand, what a parent’s negligence, even indifference, could do to a child. “How old were you?”
He blinked as though suddenly realizing she was there. “Sixteen. Her body was weakened by years and years of hard labor and not enough food. I couldn’t pay for her treatment, and she’d made me promise I wouldn’t go back to the street gangs. So I went to see him. By myself for the first time.”
Her gut churned, the subdued violence in him raising the hairs on her neck. Sixteen years old—he had been nothing but a child himself. Suddenly she had a feeling where this was going. She understood what had angered him so much. Guilt spiraled through her.
“I went to the offices of his construction company. I begged him to pay for her treatment. I told him I would work for him for the rest of my life. He had his bodyguard drag me by my collar and throw me out. She died that night. And I swore I would take everything from him. I didn’t stop until I destroyed him.”
“Diego, how would I—?”
“There is very little I have asked of you or will ever ask of you. But when it comes to our child I won’t settle. I will never be that boy who was denied his rights ever again.” He shrugged—a casual movement, in complete control of himself. “I want my child to be recognized as mine. You had the perfect chance to do that at your press statement. You didn’t. So now we will do it my way.”
* * *
Diego let his fingers linger around Kim’s as she stepped out of the limo and joined him on the red carpet in front of the New York Plaza.
He felt her fingers stiffen in his, her body already taut as a tightly wound spring.
For a minute everything around him, all the ruckus, faded away as he let himself indulge in the gloriously sensuous figure she made by his side.
The cream-colored dress drew a straight line, covering her breasts, but it was the sexiest sight he had ever seen. His fingers fanned out of their own volition over her back. The cut of the dress was such that it didn’t begin again until the upper curve of her buttock.