“What?” she gasped, confused. What did money have to do with custody of their baby?
“Ten million dollars.” He looked down at her. “I will give you ten million dollars to go.”
For a moment, she couldn't breathe.
Then outraged fury rushed through her. “No!”
“Is ten million not enough?” He leaned closer to her, his black eyes holding an unfathomable darkness in their depths. “You're holding out for twenty?”
“I won't sell her for any price!”
“Him,” he corrected unthinkingly. “You have a price. We both know you do. Just tell me what it is.”
“I don't want your money, I just want you to let us go!”
“A hundred million dollars. That's my final offer, Ellie. I advise you to take it.”
A hundred million dollars.
She stared at him in shock. It was an unimaginable number. And Diogo meant it. She could see it in his eyes. A powerful billionaire like Diogo Serrador could make a single call, and the forty dollars in her bank account would instantly be transformed into a hundred million dollars.
He truly thought he could buy her baby. Just like that.
His reckless arrogance made her catch her breath. What kind of man would think he could buy and sell anything he wanted—even the precious relationship between mother and child?
“But you don't even want to be a father!” she choked out. “You had a vasectomy. You don't want children. Why try to take mine?”
He clenched his jaw. “I had the vasectomy to make sure that no child of mine was in the world without my knowledge, to be hurt by someone who doesn't have the judgment or resources to be a decent parent.”
Fury raced through her.
“And you think you'd make a decent parent just because you're rich? You've never been able to commit to anyone for longer than a week. You'd likely grow bored raising a child and abandon her. I wouldn't choose you as my child's father if you begged me!”
The hard look in his eyes could have shattered diamonds into dust.
“Agree to my terms, Ellie. Until the baby is born, I'll treat you like a queen. Then you will be a rich woman, free to pursue life and enjoy your own romances to your heart's desire. What is your answer?”
She clenched her hands. He really thought she would sell her child to the highest bidder then go gallivanting off to find a boyfriend and spend her millions?
She set her jaw, facing him with eyes full of hate.
“My answer? That's easy,” she spat out, clenching her hands. “Go to hell.”
Go to hell?Diogo cursed softly in Portuguese.
He was already there.
He'd been a fool to sleep with Ellie in the first place. An employee—a small-town girl—a virgin. What had he been thinking?
He hadn't been thinking. That was the problem. Returning from an all-night deal in Rio, triumphant over an acquisition, they'd been stopped on their way back to the hotel when their car was halted by an impromptu street celebration along the Avenida Atlântica. Samba music and dancers had poured from Copacabana, some samba dancers dressed in sequins and feathers, others barely dressed at all.
Diogo had pulled Ellie from the car. He'd cleared a path for them, walking the last blocks to the Carlton Palace. They'd passed an alley where a man was making love to a woman against a wall. As he kissed her lips and caressed her breasts, a different man knelt reverently between her naked legs.
Diogo was a Carioca by birth. He hadn't been shocked. But he'd instinctively glanced back at his wholesome junior secretary trailing behind him, her hand clinging tightly to his own. He'd seen her look in the alley, and her pink lips had parted in a hoarse intake of breath.
And then she'd turned and looked straight into Diogo's eyes.
Wordlessly asking him to touch her.
Begging him to taste her.
Suddenly, amid the frenzied celebration of the music- filled batucadas swaying to the frenetic rhythm filling the air like exotic perfume, he'd really seen Ellie Jensen. Not just as a beautiful girl, but a pure-hearted beauty, skin white as snow, hair like spun gold. Ellie had been so desirable that it had made him hurt inside. As if he'd gone back in time to when he'd still believed in love and fidelity…
He shook his head. Love? Abestado. He'd stopped believing in that particular fairy tale long ago. But he'd known then that he had to have Ellie or die.
People lost their minds during Carnaval. They discarded marriage vows without repercussion or blame. Diogo had briefly lost his senses beneath the pounding rhythm—nothing more and nothing less.
He didn't remember how he got her upstairs to his penthouse. He just remembered the way she'd trembled beneath him in bed. Her gasp of pain and his own shock when he'd discovered she was an untouched virgin—not wholesome just in appearance, but reality. He'd tried to pull back, but she'd reached up and kissed him with lips so tender and sweet that all possibility of stopping was swept away. He'd thrust into her slowly, inch by agonizing inch, until he heard another slow-rising cry rise from deep inside her. He made her come again, and then a third time, until the tears in her eyes were from pleasure too great to bear.