“I have a meeting with your brother this afternoon. I will get you custody of Nicole. I gave you my word.”
“My brother is coming here?”
“Sheikh Mohamed al-Maghrib came to see me at my office yesterday, demanding proof of my claims against Aziz. I went to Morocco to get it but, after twenty years, evidence is scant. I need your brother’s signed confession.”
She asked quietly, “Are you ever going to tell me what they did to you?”
He shook his head. “I’ll have my secretary book you on the first flight to London today. My lawyers will be in touch regarding finalization of your sister’s custody. It’s the easiest end for both of us. We’ll never have to see each other again.”
Never see him again? Never?
Instantly, her heart felt as shredded as her wedding dress. She tried to tell herself it was all for the best but, as she rose to her feet, covering herself with the edges of the torn silk, it was all she could do to keep herself from crying.
“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal over this. Even if it’s true that I love you, why should you send me away? Why would you care?”
His expression became hard, almost savage. “Because I care about you, Tamsin,” he ground out. “There—are you satisfied? I care. Enough that I don’t want to see you hurt. And if you stay with me, you will be.”
It was true. She knew that he would hurt her and if they had children, they would be hurt as well. She should be grateful for his mercy in letting her go. She should run as fast as she could and never look back.
But she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even move.
She loved him.
“The Sheikh thinks I’ve insulted his family,” Marcos said grimly, “and, unless I can prove otherwise within two days, it will mean war. I want you a million miles away, but London will have to do.”
“You’re trying to protect me from them?”
He shook his head. “Not just them. Anyone who loves me ends up hurt or worse. I won’t let that happen. Not to you.” He turned away, then paused to give her one last look from the door. “Goodbye, Tamsin.”
He turned back towards the door and she realized he intended to walk away from her for ever.
“What if I’m pregnant?”
He paused and, without turning around, he spoke in a low voice. “I will always take care of you both. You’ll have all the money you will ever need. But you’ll both be better off without me.”
She put her hands to her cheeks. How could she argue with him when everything he said was true? But, as he started to walk away, she couldn’t let him go.
She ran towards him, blocking him from the door. “I’m staying with you.”
He gave an angry, exasperated sigh. “Tamsin—”
“Just for your meeting with my brother. I don’t care what you say. My first priority is Nicole’s welfare. For all I know, when you see Sheldon you’ll forget all about helping me and just push him out of a window or something. I can’t allow Nicole to be left in Camilla’s custody.”
“Push him out of a window?” He looked incredulous. “I have a little more self-control than that.”
“I’m not leaving until I know my sister’s safe.”
His eyes were as cold and gray as an arctic winter. “She’s safe for now. Sheldon and his wife took her to London last night and left her with an old nanny, Allison something.”
“Allison Holland?”
“Yes.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. If Nicole was with Allison, that meant she was warm and fed and properly looked after. She’d once been Tamsin’s nanny too.
“He’s trying to appear like a responsible guardian,” Marcos continued grimly. “He must know we’re going to seek custody.”
“All the more reason for me to stay and help sort things out.”
“You’re wasting your time. A few hours isn’t going to change my mind about us.”
“Fine, I get it. No wedding. Getting married to you wasn’t exactly my idea, anyway.” Resolutely, she pushed away the heartache and all the glowing hopes she’d wrapped in the beautiful dress that was now tattered around her shoulders. Ending their relationship was for the best, she repeated to herself firmly. “I’m staying for Nicole. It has nothing to do with you.”
His jaw twitched. “Fine.”
“Fine.”
He turned to go.
“Marcos?”
“What?”
“I want to thank you.” Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to meet his eyes. She forced herself to speak the truth she knew in her heart, even though it hurt her. “Thank you for not loving me.”
Tamsin sat in Marcos’s modern office in the heart of the financial district. The broad windows behind his desk showed much of the length of the Paseo de Castellana. She could almost see Marcos’s penthouse some distance away. She wished she was back there, in his arms, in the comfort and pleasure of his bedroom, before she’d ever realized she loved him.
Gripping the edges of her chair, she blew on her tea for the tenth time. She felt Marcos’s hands on her shoulders as he stood behind her, but it made her more nervous than ever.
“Your brother cannot hurt you any more.”
“He can keep Nicole from having a decent childhood.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Her hands were shaking. She took her first sip of tea, only to discover that it was quite cold. No wonder. Marcos’s secretary had brought it to her when they’d arrived, and for the last twenty minutes she’d been breathing on it like a pregnant woman at Lamaze practice.
At the thought, Tamsin’s hand involuntarily went to her belly. She forced herself to be calm. She wasn’t pregnant and soon she would have the proof. She would leave Marcos as he wished, leaving his darkness and revenge far behind her, and start a fresh new life with Nicole. The life Nicole deserved.
She should have been grateful.
Instead, leaving Marcos felt like going to prison for life.
“What did you mean earlier?” Marcos asked abruptly.
“When?” she asked, although she already knew.
His hands were still on her shoulders as he looked down at her, his face an inscrutable mask. “When you thanked me for not loving you.”
Tamsin immediately felt her fingers and toes turn to ice. But he’d asked her the question. He deserved an answer.
“Because of your need for revenge,” she said quietly. “I can’t live with a man whose whole life is tangled up in rage. Marrying you would poison me. It would poison our children. But, even knowing this, I still wouldn’t have been able to resist you.” Their eyes locked. “Thank you for not loving me.”
His hands tightened. “Tamsin—”
“The Winters are here, señor,” one of his assistants interrupted over the intercom.
Marcos pressed a button on his desk. “Send them in.” Releasing the button, he clenched his jaw. “I’m surprised that Winter would bring his wife.”
“I’m not.” She took another sip. Still shaken from telling Marcos the truth, and now facing Camilla into the bargain, she needed all the fortification she could get. “She has always been the Lady Macbeth type, pushing him into everything. Before they were married, he wasn’t nearly so bad.”
The door opened and Tamsin rose shakily to her feet.
“Señor y Señora Winter,” the secretary announced. Then, in accented English, “Can I get you some tea? Coffee?”
“Nothing,” Camilla said.
“I’d like a Scotch,” Sheldon said.
“I’ll get it,” Marcos said, staring fiercely at Sheldon. The secretary left with a nod.
Her half-brother squirmed uncomfortably under his gaze. Looking at Marcos’s razor-sharp jaw and clenched fists, Tamsin wondered if he could really throw Sheldon out the window. He looked as if he were holding on to his icy veneer only by the barest self-control and, at any moment, he might take her brother’s throat in his hands and wring his life away.
Mar
cos turned on his heel and poured a small glass of Scotch. He presented it to Sheldon with a smile that was nothing more than a flash of sharp white teeth. “Have a seat.”
“Not until you tell me why you’ve summoned us here,” Sheldon said. “You’ve got some nerve to—”
“Oh, do sit down, Sheldon,” Camilla snapped. She perched on a seat with her skinny legs tucked beneath her and her expensive handbag on her lap. “Let Mr. Ramirez speak. The sooner we’re done here, the sooner I can return to that dear, dear child.”
“Dear child?” Tamsin gasped. “You starved and exploited her so you could spend her trust fund on plastic surgery and ski trips!”
Camilla gave her a pointed smile. “I was merely giving the child a chance to experience her first taste of independence. Because of you, really.”
“Me?”
“Of course. You had such a cloistered upbringing, and yet you turned out to be the biggest slut in London. A change of child-rearing technique seemed to be in order.”
“Oh, you—” Jumping out of her chair, Tamsin longed to slap Camilla’s tight, smug face. But Marcos stopped her.
“I suggest,” he said tersely to Sheldon, “that you put a rein on that cat. Before you both regret it.”
Sheldon looked startled, as if having any control over Camilla was an idea that had never occurred to him before.
“How dare you?” Camilla’s nose quivered in outrage. It was, Tamsin supposed, the only part of her face that hadn’t been artificially stretched or frozen into immobility. “You are the one who will regret speaking that way to me. The price of Nicole’s custody papers just increased by a hundred thousand pounds.”
“You are selling my sister?” Tamsin cried.
“Why shouldn’t I? Her trust fund is almost gone. The chit is worthless to us. I could sell her for far more elsewhere. How much do you suppose a little blonde girl is worth to a man like Aziz?”
For a moment, Tamsin couldn’t breathe. “Don’t you have a soul?”
“Of course I do.” Camilla looked pleased with herself. “And the courts will believe it. If you try to take her, I will convince them I love that child as my very own. I’ll smear you both in the press with every loathsome secret you have. Even if I have to make everything up.”
Tamsin glanced at Marcos, who’d been listening silently from the swivel chair behind his desk. Why was he doing nothing, saying nothing?
Camilla glanced down at her long, perfectly manicured fingernails. “Better for you to pay. I know Mr. Ramirez can certainly afford it. Nicole’s price was two million pounds, but now it’s a hundred thousand more. And the more of my time you take, the more I will charge. It’s only fair.”
Marcos folded his hands behind his neck, tilting his head as if in thought. “And you agree with your wife, Mr. Winter?”
Sheldon bit his lip. “Well, of course I wouldn’t actually sell Nicole to some harem somewhere. That would be quite barbaric—”
“Shut up, Sheldon,” his wife hissed. Looking abashed, he fell silent and took a furtive sip of Scotch.
“I see.” Slowly, Marcos stood up. “I have another deal for you,” he said pleasantly.
“A better one?” Camilla demanded.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Go ahead,” she said airily.
“You might have been able to bully Tamsin, but your methods will not work with me. I am not a naïve twenty-three-year-old with a kind heart. I am,” he said with a smile that sent a chill through Tamsin’s body, “a monster like you. And worse. I will give you two options. First—you both go to jail for child neglect. I already have evidence that will convince any court, as well as the financial ability to secure a verdict if that proves necessary. The scandal will be the final blow to your business. No woman will buy cosmetics from a company that’s linked to child abuse. You won’t even have enough money left to hire a decent lawyer, so I expect you’ll go for the maximum sentence.” Standing in front of her, he leaned back against his desk. “That is my best offer.”
“I don’t have to listen to this,” Camilla said. “Sheldon, we’re leaving—”
She started to stand up, but Marcos signaled for her to sit back into her chair.
For the first time that Tamsin had ever seen, Camilla was speechless.
“My second option,” Marcos continued as if nothing had happened, “is not nearly so generous. You know how I kidnapped Tamsin. That was nothing. I can make you both disappear. No one will even know what happened to you. You will just be another set of bones beneath the sand for archeologists to find in a hundred years.”
Camilla bit her lip, clutching her Prada handbag to her scrawny chest.
“I say,” Sheldon protested feebly, “you’re scaring my wife—”
“You are the one who should be scared, Winter.” Marcos turned on him. “I’ve spent twenty years dreaming of the day I would make you pay.”
Sheldon looked astonished. “Me? I know you have some grudge against Aziz, but what do you have against me? To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never even met.”
“Twenty years ago, you bought a formula for an anti-aging cream that Aziz stole from my father. Your lawyers got a crooked judge to award you the patent. My father was ruined, then died with my mother and brother. All these years, I’ve dreamed of taking revenge. And now that day has finally come.”
Tamsin gaped at him. Marcos’s father had created the formula for the original anti-aging cream? She knew the product well. It had been developed into W.I.’s best-selling line. She herself had often used the Conceal Stick to hide dark circles after a sleepless night. And, for all these years, Sheldon had taken credit for the formula. It had been his one success at the company, the one thing that their father had ever praised him for.
He’d stolen it from Marcos’s father.
And Marcos’s whole family had died, including the young brother he’d loved so much. But how? How had it happened? And how had he survived the pain?
Marcos stood before him, taut as a cocked rifle, his hands balled into fists. Tamsin wanted to take him in her arms, to tell him everything would be all right, to offer the comfort of her body and the comfort of her love.
Then she remembered that he had no interest in her comfort. To the contrary. He looked as if he really might rip out Sheldon’s heart with his bare hands.
It frightened her.
Her half-brother’s red face was beaded with sweat. “I’d already had three failures in R&D. My father was ready to kill me. I saw the formula and had to take it. But I didn’t mean to hurt anyone! I swear to God, if I’d known someone would die, I’d never have …”
“Right. You just took the formula and lived off the profits for the last twenty years. But now Winter International has fallen apart. What you didn’t do to ruin the company, I did.”
“You intentionally ruined me?” Sheldon blurted out.
“Yes. And I’ll do more. You deserve to suffer, as my family did.”
Hands clenched, Marcos took a step towards him. And Tamsin suddenly forgot her own fear in the terror that he might kill her brother. Whatever Marcos was, he wasn’t a murderer. She wouldn’t let him become one in a moment of duress.
Leaping to her feet, she grabbed his shoulder. He whirled to face her, his dark eyes wild, and for a moment she actually thought he might hit her.
“Marcos,” she said softly.
He recognized her, and some of the anger faded.
He took a deep breath and turned back to Sheldon. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to give custody of your sister to Tamsin. And you’re going to give me a signed confession about the formula that I can use as proof of Aziz al-Maghrib’s original theft. Do both these things and I will let you live. You will be penniless, and you will likely go to jail, but I will let you live.”
Sheldon licked his blubbery lips. “Yes,” he said with a resigned sigh. He rubbed his balding head wearily. “Yes. Justice would almost be a relief after all these years.” He
turned to Tamsin. “Take Nicole. Just take her. God knows I haven’t been a fit guardian.”
“Coward!” Camilla thundered, standing up straight and glaring at Sheldon. “I always knew you were weak. I wash my hands of you.” She pulled her handbag up on her shoulder. “Our marriage is over. I’m going to be with a real man who won’t cower and cave in and talk about justice.”
She stormed out. Sheldon watched her go with red-rimmed eyes, but didn’t try to stop her. He looked up at Marcos. “Now, what do you want me to sign?”
So this was what revenge felt like.
Marcos held the confession in his hand, staring at it while he waited for Tamsin to return from walking her brother to the elevator. He slowly set the paper down on his desk next to the signed custody agreement. He pushed both papers around, looking at Sheldon’s signature. After twenty years, he’d finally crushed Sheldon Winter. He’d finally gotten proof of Aziz al-Maghrib’s crime. He’d won.
But he’d thought it would feel … different. Where was his triumph? Where was his sense of peace?
Thank you for not loving me.
Abruptly, he turned his swivel chair to face the wide wall of windows. The sky was bright blue with an unrelenting sun, appropriate for a hot September day, but shadows were all around, cast by the tall skyscrapers of the Azca district. He looked down at the Castellana. Ten stories below, people were sitting outside at the sidewalk cafés, enjoying the warmth of the sun.
He had a sudden memory of his family’s vacation in southern England when, after three days of rain, the clouds had abruptly cleared and they’d run out on to the beach to feel the heat of the sun. Even now, he could close his eyes and hear the distant echo of his brother’s laughter, feel his mother’s arms around his shoulders, recall the comforting sound of his father’s voice calling over the roar of the ocean.
But, almost instantly, the memories were buried beneath the loud squeal of tires and sickening crunch of metal that he’d imagined so many times.
Marcos’s hands tightened into fists.
His father had made the mistake of showing an early version of his anti-aging formula to Aziz al-Maghrib, the scion of the wealthy family that controlled the largest harvest of argan oil in the world. He’d hoped to convince Aziz to make an investment. The man had decided to make a quick million by selling the formula to Sheldon instead.
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