“Why are you mad at me? I thought you’d be glad to hear that Carmelina no longer has control of the company.” I thought you’d be glad I was able to help you, he almost said. She had to know he’d saved her chance at becoming CEO.
Without saying a word she turned on her heels and walked toward a small room beyond the larger one they’d just exited. He followed her in silence, certain that whatever he was walking into, it would not be pleasant. Once they were inside the room, she turned to face him. Her eyes were furious.
“Why could you let me think for ten years that you chose my father over me? How could you, Rodrigo?” He stumbled as what she said sank in. She knew.
“Ivelisse was not supposed to say anything.” He exclaimed, his mind and body in absolute turmoil. “You were never supposed to know. I was trying to keep you safe. To protect you from all these filthy lies and schemes.” He looked up at her and he could tell she saw the brokenness in his eyes, but he didn’t have the energy to hide it anymore.
“You really let me believe all this time that when I needed you most you chose him? That I wasn’t worth anything to you?” She shook her head as tears streamed down her face. God, he had made such a mess of everything.
“I had no choice, Esmeralda,” he spat out, now his own anger and resentment coming to the surface. “I’m always the one to fall on the sword. The one to do what needs to be done and then get scorned for making the hard choices. Like everyone else you chose to believe that I’m a cold, selfish bastard.”
She flinched at his words, but she regrouped quickly and soon she was on him again. “Maybe we all assume that because you give us nothing, Rodrigo. You love to be the martyr. Acting like no one cares about you. Like it’s Rodrigo Almanzar against the world. Maybe people judge you because none of us really know you. Because you keep everything so tightly locked inside we can’t get close enough. Because you never let anyone in.”
“I let you in,” he said in a voice he could barely recognize.
A sob escaped Esmeralda’s throat at his words and when he reached for her she came to him. He pressed his mouth to hers in a frantic kiss. He felt like he was grasping at the last chance he’d ever have to touch her. She opened for him, like she needed him as desperately as he did her. Teeth scraping, hands grabbing, nails scratching. As if they were snatching the last bits of each other they’d get before they lost it forever. But after another moment she pushed him away.
“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t. I’ve been doing this all week. Letting my feelings make me forget how hard it was to lose you. How much it hurt to know my love for you wasn’t enough. That it won’t ever be enough.”
“Esmeralda.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say. He needed to say it. “I love you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut like she couldn’t bear to hear the words at all. “Don’t say that. Don’t tell me that when you hid the truth from me. When you don’t treat me as your equal. Love is not just desire and lust, it’s trust, it’s a partnership, Rodrigo. My father spent years telling my mother he loved her and when it came down to it, he let her find out he married someone else on the news. Turned his back on her without even so much as an explanation.” She swiped at her cheeks where tears were streaming down. “You say you love me, and yet in the past twenty-four hours you let me stay in the dark about a situation that had everything to do with me. That could determine my future.” The raw pain in her voice, knowing he was responsible for putting it there, felt like someone was twisting a knife in his chest.
“I didn’t want to worry you. Carmelina’s a viper and she has no scruples. I wanted to spare you having to deal with her.”
She laughed bitterly. “You think I don’t know who Carmelina is, Rodrigo? That woman refused to let me come see my father when he was dying in the hospital. If you hadn’t made sure my mother heard about it when he passed away, I would’ve found out he died from an obituary.” She looked and sounded exhausted, bone tired.
“I’m not a child, Rodrigo. Do you know why I decided to claim the CEO position?” she asked, and he straightened, dread sitting in his stomach like lead. “It’s true that I wanted to claim my place. That I wanted a chance to create my vision. But I also wanted to take something from you.”
It hurt to hear it, but in a way he understood. Her face was streaked with tears, misery rolling off her in waves. “I was so hurt. The two men in my life always choosing their damned corner offices over me. So, yeah, I wanted to take it from you.”
She sounded small and wounded, and even as her words poked holes in his chest, he ached for her. “My father and his dysfunction, his games, turned everyone in his life into pawns. All of us wondering how we were lacking. Trying to blindly fix ourselves to deserve his love and his regard.” Her words almost knocked him to the ground. Because she was right. “But now I realize that he had nothing to give. My father’s only love was Sambrano. The thing he built, which in the end he couldn’t care for, either. And I’m done thinking there was something in me that wasn’t enough. I’m more than enough, and I deserve someone who sees that,” she said, pressing a palm to her chest. “I deserve someone who sees me as an equal and continuing to expect it from people who can’t give it to me is going to destroy me.”
“This job is all I have, Esmeralda,” he ground out, even as he saw the last bit of light go out of her eyes.
“Someday you’ll figure out that’s a lie you’ve been telling yourself. Too bad that when you do, you’ll have pushed everyone who loves you away.” And with that she walked out on him without a backward glance.
Eighteen
“Did you really think I was just going to let you get away with ignoring my calls?” Marquito asked as he pushed into Rodrigo’s office. He’d gone home after the fallout with Esmeralda and had ignored everyone who’d tried to reach out to him. He was wrecked and at a loss of what to do, because she was right about everything.
He’d hoped to figure out how to talk to her, but tell her what? That they could make it work, even as he intended to take the job she was fighting for? He had no clue, but he could not deny the unbearable hollowness he’d been feeling since the moment she’d walked away from him.
And now here he was two days later, still at a loss on how to fix any of it.
“I’m not in the mood, little brother. The meeting with the board is in two hours and I still have no idea what’s going to happen. And no matter what, there’s no winning. Either I keep the job and she hates me or she gets it and I have to start over.”
Marquito made a dismissive sound, which only made Rodrigo’s mood darken further. “Starting over owning twenty-five percent of Sambrano is not exactly a bad place, and the board will never let you go. You know that. You own a quarter of this company now, Rodrigo,” Marquito said, spreading his arms in the air. “Let that sink in. You had the means and the resources to come up with two hundred million dollars in a day. You have a stake in this place. You’re no longer an employee, you’re part owner of this studio.”
He heard the words and still he felt nothing. He’d finally found a way to push out Carmelina, to defuse her power over the future of Sambrano, but he couldn’t even enjoy it. Because in the process he’d ruined everything with the woman he loved. He could say that now. He would not hide from the truth now, and his love for Esmeralda was the greatest truth of his life. Just because he’d forced himself to ignore it for ten years didn’t make it less of an undeniable fact.
“Esme knows about what went down with her mom ten years ago.” Rodrigo knew he sounded wrung out, but there was no helping it. He was really at his wit’s end.
“Shit.” Marquito whistled. He’d been away at college when all that went down, but over the years his mom had talked about it. “I assume she didn’t take it well.”
He laughed bitterly at his little brother’s understatement and he got up to get a bottle of water from the mini fridge in his offi
ce. “You could say that. She accused me of not trusting her, then when I told her I loved her she yelled at me some more. Then she told me I didn’t treat her as an equal and was going to die alone.”
He knew he was being unfair, that it was a hell of a lot more than that, but he was hurt. He felt once again that trying to do the right thing had cost him everything.
“She told me I had a martyr complex,” he muttered, then snapped his head up when Marquito choked on the coffee he was drinking.
“You agree with that?” His little brother’s cheeks flushed red at the question.
“I mean, she’s not totally wrong.” Marquito at least had the decency of sounding contrite.
“Of course she’s not. What she are we talking about again?” Jimena’s voice resounded in the office as she strode in. Figured that he would have everyone in Manhattan still talking to him here to hand him his ass at his lowest moment.
His brother, the traitor, grinned at his friend’s arrival and lifted his coffee cup in Rodrigo’s direction. “Esmeralda seems to have regaled my brother with some hard truths before telling him to get his shit together.”
“Ah,” Jimena responded in a tone that sounded very much like it was about damn time someone did.
He ought to throw them both out of his office, but they were the only two people left in his corner. “Are you two here to help me or pour salt on my wounds?”
“Did you hear the same thing I heard, Marquito?” Jimena asked, clutching her chest dramatically. “Did Mr. Lobo Solitario just utter the H-word?” She actually stage whispered, but he didn’t think either of them were funny.
“I ask for help, dammit,” Rodrigo said through clenched teeth. “You two think this is a joke? The woman I love thinks I would choose a job over her. Everyone in my life thinks I’m some kind of selfish, power-hungry drone. And I don’t even know what all of this has been for,” he said, looking out the window that gave him a clear view of Central Park and beyond. One of the most coveted views on earth, and looking at it right now, he felt empty.
“Maybe Carmelina was right, and I did sell my soul for this.” He thought of the renovated brownstone that had costs millions, the ranch in Santa Fe with acres of land he’d never even been to, the villa in Punta Cana he rarely ever got to anymore. Money and properties that at one time seemed unattainable. He had so much now. But did he really enjoy any of it? He knew he wouldn’t like the answer if he asked it out loud.
“Carmelina is never right,” Jimena stated tersely as Marquito nodded in agreement.
But wasn’t she? All he did was work and try to prove again and again that he deserved to be where he was. No personal life to speak of. And it had made him bitter. It had made him closed off, cold. After Esmeralda and then his mother, he had shut down. Until she’d walked back into his life a week ago and made him question everything.
“Rodrigo, for sixteen years you operated in the shadow of a brilliant but deeply flawed man, who cared for you, yes, but who also tended to treat the people he loved like shit.” Jimena’s voice was soft, like she didn’t want to hurt him, but her gaze didn’t waver from his. And he knew he had to hear this. “Which means, one, you need a really good therapist ASAP and two, you have to figure out what it is that you want, because news flash, you can do that now. You can walk out of here this minute and you will be doing it as a very wealthy man with a résumé and skill set only a few dozen people on the planet have. I can think of at least five networks who would ask you to name your price if it got out that you’re a free agent.”
“It’s not that simple,” he told Jimena, even as her words buzzed in his head.
“It is, though. You, my friend, have arrived at a place in your life where professionally and financially you not only have nothing to worry about, you have choices.” He knew she was right. But the truth was he didn’t want to leave Sambrano. His loyalty to this place was about more than just getting the corner office or the three letters after his name.
“I want to stay at Sambrano. This is finally my moment. After all this time I’m poised to do what I’ve always wanted to do with the studio.” He thought of that old memo Esmeralda had found, the ideas he’d had and never been able to see come to fruition. He thought about the way Esme had clearly gotten his message. How she’d taken the seed of his idea and turned it into a vision for the future of Sambrano. They worked well together. They would make a hell of a team. “I have projects I want to see through. I have things I need to do. I want to stay.”
He loved the work he did here. He couldn’t let go of the possibility of what the future could hold with him at the helm...and maybe, maybe with Esmeralda there, too.
“And what else do you want?” Marquito asked, with a knowing grin on his face.
“I want her by my side.” He didn’t need to tell them who, they both knew.
“Then go get her, pendejo,” Jimena scolded him. “And don’t just decide on what you think is a great idea and roll with it without letting her in on it like a jackass. That’s what keeps getting you into messes.”
“You’re really taking advantage of the fact that I’m at a low moment to get all your digs in, aren’t you?” he told his friend, who responded with a smart-ass grin. But a plan was already forming in his head. His heart leaped with the possibilities and he smiled as a thought started to form. He might have a solution for how Esmeralda and he could both be at the helm of Sambrano. He just had to convince her that they were better together than they were apart, in business and in love.
* * *
“Mija, are you hiding from me?” Ivelisse asked Esmeralda as she was sneaking around at the crack of dawn, trying to get out of the apartment before her mother woke up.
“No, Mami,” she lied as she leaned in to kiss her mother on the cheek.
“I waited up for you until almost midnight.”
“I was just going over my presentation, with the board meeting getting moved up and everything...” she trailed off as her mother studied her, aware that there was a lot more to her late night at the office than the presentation.
“You never told me how things ended. Just a text saying Rodrigo wasn’t trying to push you out, and that you were fine. And you were MIA all day yesterday.” Her mother reached up to tug gently on the thin hoops Esmeralda was wearing on her ears. The ones made of intertwined rose, yellow and white gold that she always wore for good luck. The ones that Rodrigo had given her for her twenty-first birthday.
“Tell me, mija.”
“Rodrigo and I sort of started...” What could she even say? Hooking up like horny teens? That she’d told him she loved him and he’d said it back and then she’d walked out on him?
Her mother’s soft laughter brought her out of her highly embarrassing thoughts. “Ay, Mija, even if I hadn’t already suspected after you snuck in here almost at dawn after that cocktail party, I would’ve confirmed it the day he was here.” Her mother’s smile said you’re an adorable mess. “You two have always been very bad at hiding the way you feel about each other.”
“Well, it’s over,” she said miserably. She’d left that horrible meeting with Rodrigo and gone straight to her little office share. Had stayed there as much as she could since then. She could’ve gone home, but she didn’t have it in her to answer questions from her mother. And she just could not face anyone at Sambrano. Not after the mess with Carmelina. Especially not when they’d moved her presentation up.
But she was ready, in part thanks to Rodrigo. The footage he’d given her access to and that memo of his she’d found had sparked the idea for her plan, but the conversations they’d had this week had cemented it. Despite the many challenges and disappointments he’d had in his time at Sambrano, Rodrigo still believed in the company. He believed in the mission. And Esmeralda found that she believed in it, too. She could clearly envision a path forward and she hoped she could be a part of making it happen.
/> And then there were her very complicated feelings for the acting CEO of Sambrano Studios.
It had been almost impossible to walk away from him after he uttered those words she never thought she’d hear again. But Rodrigo could not untangle his sense of obligation and misguided loyalties to her father from what he felt for her. She loved him, but she would not be with a man who could not be vulnerable. A man who didn’t trust her, who didn’t treat her like an equal partner. She deserved someone who could see in her the person who complemented them, who thought of her as essential to their life.
Her father had turned his back on her because she didn’t fit into the image of the family he wanted to show the world. Rodrigo had walked away from her because he’d been ensnared by terrible choices. And even if she understood his reasons now, he could’ve told her the truth. He could’ve trusted that she was strong enough to bear it. But instead, he’d pushed her out of his life.
That was her, the person who never quite fit. The easiest one to crop out. The one whose absence wouldn’t alter the outcome. And she was done with that. She wanted someone to whom she was essential, someone who not only saw her as part of the picture, but who believed there was no picture without her. She deserved that.
“Of course it isn’t over.” Her mother’s voice pulled her back from her musings, and Esme had to smile at her determined expression. “You two are crazy about each other.” Her mother clicked her tongue and pulled her by the hand to the corner of the apartment that held their kitchen. “Ven, te preparé un desayunito.”
“Mami, I don’t have time for breakfast. I need to get this presentation perfect. These people are just looking for an excuse to push me out. I’m not going to give it to them by showing up late.”
“You have to eat, Esmeralda,” her mother declared as she puttered around. “And you have to stop this thinking like you don’t already belong there. Your father—”
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