One Week to Claim It All

by Adriana Herrera

  “I want to kiss you, Esmeralda.”

  Her arms were already circling around his neck. “If we’re going to do this, just do it, Rodrigo.”

  He crushed his mouth on hers and the world fell away. It was like not a single day had passed since they’d last done this. She pressed herself to him as he peppered her neck with fluttering kisses. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew this was the height of stupidity, that they were both being reckless. That if anyone found out about this, she would probably sink her chances to get approved by the board. But it was so hard to think when he was whispering intoxicatingly delicious things in Spanish. Preciosa, amada...mia.

  It was foolish for him to call her his, and what was worse, she reveled in it.

  “I can’t get enough of you, Esmeralda. I never was able to.”

  * * *

  One Week to Claim It All by Adriana Herrera

  is part of the Sambrano Studios series.

  Dear Reader,

  Growing up I could not get enough of romance novels and telenovelas. Sinking into one of those high-drama love stories could help me escape for a few hours into a world where people had thrilling and glamorous lives.

  I imagined that those fabulous characters looked like me and could come from a Caribbean island just like I did. To be able to write Sambrano Studios, a series about a Dominican family at the helm of a television empire, has been an absolute delight—teenage me would be ecstatic!

  The Sambranos are a family whose passions run high and their many secrets are deeply hidden. They’re dreamers and strivers, and boy, do they love drama. Rodrigo and Esmeralda, the first couple in the series, have a history. Esmeralda is the illegitimate daughter of the patriarch of the Sambrano family, and Rodrigo is his protégé. They were in love once, but Rodrigo’s put his ambitions before Esmeralda, and now she’s the only thing standing in the way of him claiming his place as CEO of Sambrano Studios.

  I hope you enjoy this first story in the Sambrano Studios series!

  Happy reading!

  Adriana

  Adriana Herrera

  One Week to Claim It All

  Adriana was born and raised in the Caribbean, but for the last fifteen years has let her job (and her spouse) take her all over the world. She loves writing stories about people who look and sound like her people, getting unapologetic happy endings. Her Dreamers series has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist and has been featured by the Today show on NBC, Entertainment Weekly, O Magazine, NPR, Library Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post. She’s a trauma therapist in New York City, working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

  Books by Adriana Herrera

  Harlequin Desire

  Sambrano Studios

  One Week to Claim It All

  Carina Press

  The Dreamers series

  American Dreamer

  American Fairytale

  American Love Story

  American Sweethearts

  American Christmas

  Dating in Dallas

  Here to Stay

  Visit her Author Profile page at Harlequin.com, or adrianaherreraromance.com, for more titles.

  You can also find Adriana Herrera on Facebook, along with other Harlequin Desire authors, at Facebook.com/harlequindesireauthors.

  To my mother and my tías: Miguelina,

  Yudelka, Patria, Rebeca and Francis.

  To me, you will always be the embodiment of

  glamour, resilience and fierceness.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Fake Engagement, Nashville Style by Jules Bennett

  One

  Esmeralda Sambrano-Peña leaned on the door to the small Washington Heights apartment she shared with her mother and took a moment to catch her breath. She could hear the excited chatter and laughter coming from inside, and the image of her mother and her three aunties holding their weekly get-together brought a tired smile to her face. Her tías and their penchant for neighborhood gossip and salacious jokes always managed to put her in a good mood. And after an extremely long and disappointing day it was comforting to hear familiar voices.

  Her smile flagged when she realized she’d have to tell her mother, in front of her tías, that her project had been turned down. Again. Esmeralda sighed and tried to regroup with her body resting against the door. This rejection had hurt more than the others because she’d come so close. The TV series pilot she’d been trying to sell for almost two years had been inches away from actually getting produced. But at the last minute the producers had backed out, claiming the subject matter didn’t have wide commercial appeal. Esme let out a frustrated huff as she put the key in the door and pushed it open.

  “Hola, Mami!” she called tiredly from the narrow hallway leading to their small living room, while she took off her shoes and hung her jacket on the rack by the door. The apartment wasn’t big, but it was enough space for them. Two bedrooms, with a living room and kitchen, on Riverside Drive was real estate gold in New York City. Esme flinched at the memory of how they’d ended up in the apartment she and her mother shared. Thinking about the reasons they’d been forced to move here in the first place still filled her with anger, even ten years later.

  “Mija, the tías are here,” her mother called loudly, as if Esme wasn’t only a few feet away.

  She shook her head, a smile tugging at her lips, as she stepped into the living room and found the four older women sprawled on the sectional couch, each with a glass of wine in hand. They were dressed to the nines, as always. To her mother and her aunts, leaving the house without a perfectly put together outfit and full makeup wasn’t even an option.

  “Ladies.” She walked over and dutifully kissed each one on the cheek. They were supposed to be discussing self-help books. But each week the affirmations and book talk lasted about thirty minutes, and the rest of the time was dedicated to downing chilled Moscato and gossiping about the latest news in the neighborhood or back home in the Dominican Republic.

  “I see the book conversation is going well,” she teased, taking a seat between her mother and her aunt Rebeca.

  “What did they say?” Ivelisse asked, ignoring the comment about the neglected books on the coffee table. And of course the mere mention of her production meeting had the rest of the tías perking up. As soon as Esme sat down, she noticed that her mother looked a bit tense. Her usual cheerful expression was tentative, like she was anticipating trouble. She probably suspected Esme’s meeting had been a bust.

  Esme closed her eyes and shook her head, feeling defeated. “They passed on it.” Words of encouragement quickly followed from all directions. Her mom threw an arm around her and her tías all shuffled around so they could pat her on the leg or the arm in an effort to reassure her.

  “Their loss, mija. One day those dummies will wise up to your brilliance, and when they do, it’ll be too late.” Esme opened her eyes to find her tía Rebeca l
ooking thunderous. She had always been Esme’s number-one fan. Even back when Esme would make short films on her phone about events in the neighborhood, Rebeca would always sit down and watch, fully focused on her creations. She never hesitated to give her serious feedback.

  “Thanks, Tía,” Esme said wearily. She was grateful for their love and support. But she was too exhausted to go into the nonsense reasons the producers gave her for passing. “Enough about me. What else is going on—anything exciting happen today?”

  To Esme’s surprise they didn’t push her to share more about her meeting. Instead every one of them shifted their expectant gazes to Esme’s mom, who in turn got that look she only had when she was about to hit Esme with a strong dose of the Dominican guilt trip. She braced herself. “Qué pasó, Mami?”

  Ivelisse didn’t answer immediately, making a show of leaning over to get something that was sitting on the table. The energy in the room changed as soon as Ivelisse grabbed the white envelope. The tías all had their eyes on the piece of paper like it was a ticking bomb. For some reason Esme noticed that the vintage Tank Française watch Ivelisse never took off glinted in the light of the small lamp on the table. The gold Cartier watch had been a gift from Esme’s father. And even after everything he’d done, Ivelisse cared for it as if it was a rare treasure. “This came for you today, mija,” her mother said, bringing her out of her thoughts.

  Esme narrowed her eyes at the name on the upper left corner of the envelope. She recognized it as the attorney who was handling her father’s estate. She took it from her mother, noticing it had been slit open. “Mami,” she chastised as she pulled the paper out. Ivelisse just lifted a shoulder, not even attempting contrition.

  “It’s happening tomorrow, Esmeralda.”

  Her mother didn’t have to say what. Esmeralda already knew.

  There in large black font at the very top of the expensive stationery were the words FINAL NOTICE. Eleven months and twenty-seven days had passed since her estranged father’s death. Since she’d learned that, to the horror of his wife and his other children, he’d left a provision in his will to make Esmeralda the president and CEO of the television studio he’d turned into a billion-dollar empire. His last wish was to leave the daughter he’d barely acknowledged for most of her life at the helm of his company. Esme could still not quite believe it herself, and had done her best to ignore it whenever her mother had tried to show her the notices that had come every month since her father’s death. But she hadn’t turned it down, either, and now her time to decide was almost up.

  Patricio Sambrano had started small in the ’70s, producing some radio dramas and news shows in Spanish for the Latinx community in New York City. The shows became an instant sensation, and with the vision that would make him a legend in the entertainment industry, he soon realized what his people wanted was to see their stories on the small screen. He hustled and harnessed old friendships on the island and across the US, and over the next fifteen years he brought Latinx life to American television. He’d been innovative, gutsy, political and unapologetic about showcasing the culture, and the end result had been Sambrano Studios, the first all-Spanish, all-color network in the United States.

  Her father built something out of nothing with his ingenuity and raw talent. An Afro-Dominican man with barely a sixth-grade education had done all that. But as sharp as Patricio had been with his business, his personal life had been messy and undisciplined. Esmeralda herself was the result of one of the more chaotic times in Patricio’s life. Only weeks after becoming engaged to the daughter of a Dominican financier, he married her—consolidating his ability to expand the studio’s interests. It was a bold move that gave him the resources he needed to fully realize his dreams. It had been a surprise for everyone. Especially Esmeralda’s mother, who had been in a relationship with Patricio for almost five years and only found out about the wedding when she heard about it on the Sambrano evening news. She’d been pregnant with Esmeralda when she realized that the man she loved had never intended to build a family with her.

  When Ivelisse, devastated from his betrayal, finally told Patricio she was expecting, he told her he’d provide financially but he couldn’t be a father to any child outside his marriage. And in that, at least, he’d been true to his word.

  And then after twenty-nine years of treating her like she didn’t exist, her father had overlooked his wife and his legitimate children to hand her the top position at Sambrano. Like that was supposed to make up for a lifetime of feeling like she didn’t matter. To erase the humiliation she and her mother had suffered at his hands. The decades of being ignored or receiving messages from third parties because her father couldn’t bother to pick up the phone when she called him.

  Still, he had paid for the education that gave her the foundation to get a start in the industry and gain the experience she needed to run the studio. Because no matter how many times she’d told herself she didn’t care what her father thought of her, when choosing a college she picked the University of Southern California because of their film and television program. When deciding on graduate school she went for an MBA with a focus in entertainment. Because she was a fool with daddy issues and despite being invisible to him most of her life, she still yearned for his approval.

  But she’d never asked him for a job. And because she was also her mother’s daughter, she’d wanted to show him that she didn’t need him. She wanted to climb to the very top of his own industry without him. Not once did Esme give her father the satisfaction of hearing her ask for his help. She never thought he’d noticed and yet, his last wish was to entrust her with his legacy. She could do so much as president of Sambrano, but not at the price of selling herself out. Her pride had to be worth something.

  And then again, maybe Patricio was just cashing in on the investment he’d made.

  “Mi amor, where did you go?” Her mother’s soft voice pierced through Esme’s tumultuous thoughts. A pang of guilt and anticipation twisted in her gut as she looked at the paper again. It felt heavy in her hands: this could be the door to pursuing the vision she had for the future of Latinx television. But her father had never given her anything that didn’t come at a cost, and the price had almost always been her pride. She’d learned long ago to always look for the strings whenever Patricio Sambrano was involved.

  “Mami, this is a joke. Just another way for him to put me in my place. His kids and his wife won’t stand for it.”

  Her mother and aunts responded to this with a choir of clucks and shaking heads. Her aunt Yocasta spoke before her mother could. “Mi niña, you know I’ve never had anything good to say about that cabrón.” She didn’t have to say who the cabrón was. Yocasta was never shy when it came to cursing Patricio Sambrano’s name for the way he’d treated Esme and her mom. “But that baboso wouldn’t risk his company to make a point. What he would do is go over the head of that bruja he married and put you in charge, if it’s what he thought was best for the company.”

  Even her tía Zenaida, who usually let her three sisters opine while she silently observed, chimed in. “Patricio was always ruthless when it came to his business,” she declared, while the others nodded. “If anything, I imagine he’d been keeping an eye on you and your hustle.” She leaned over to tug one of Esme’s curls, making her smile. “I hated that jackass, may he rest in peace.” At that they all crossed themselves in unison, as if they had not all been cursing the man’s name a second ago. Esme would’ve smiled at their ridiculousness, but she could barely move from the warring emotions coursing through her.

  “For better or worse he always put that studio first,” Zenaida said, which prompted a flurry of nods from the older women. “If he picked you to be the president and CEO it’s because he thought you were right for the job.”

  “His wife is going to make my life a living hell,” Esme said, unable to hide the real wariness in her voice. Carmelina Sambrano was not above humiliating her. B
ut that got Ivelisse’s back up.

  “She can try, but you can stand up to her,” her mother said with a confidence Esmeralda wished she felt. “And besides, you’ll be in charge.”

  “I don’t know, Mami.” She hated that even thinking of being rejected by her father’s wife and children made her feel small.

  Ivelisse made another clucking noise and pulled Esme closer. “Screw them. Go in there tomorrow and claim your place. Use them and this opportunity to do all the things you’ve been wanting to do but haven’t gotten the chance to.”

  Esme’s chest fluttered with an ember of hope and longing at her mother’s words. Ivelisse was right, she’d been killing herself for the past five years—trying and failing to get her projects off the ground, but she could not get a break. Because her ideas weren’t “commercial” enough, or relatable to the “mainstream” audience. She was tired of getting doors shut in her face because she refused to compromise. As head of Sambrano Studios she could make her dream come to life. Put shows out there that reflected all the faces of Latinx culture.

  If she wasn’t pushed out by Carmelina first.

  “Mami, that woman is never going to let me stay. And I don’t want to sink to her level.” Ivelisse had been a wonderful mother, gentle and kind, but she was a fighter when it counted, and the mention of her old foe lit a fire behind her eyes.

  “Carmelina won’t know how to fight you, baby. That woman has never done a day of work in her life. When you go in there—smart, competent, full of fresh ideas—that board won’t know what hit them.” That ember was now a tiny flame fueled by the faith Esme’s mother had in her. Still, she’d learned the hard way not to trust anything that came from her father.

  “But won’t the board have someone picked out already? Someone that doesn’t come with the drama that I will certainly cause?”

  Her mother averted her eyes at her question and that gave Esme pause. “Mami?” she asked wearily as she scanned the paper in her hands again, looking for whatever her mother wasn’t saying. And when she got to the very last paragraph she understood. Her body flashed hot and cold, just from reading that name. There in black and white was the last push she needed to jump right into an ocean of bad decisions.