by Penny Jordan
“You can have as much as you want, Clio. All you would have to do is walk away from that crook. No matter how deep you are in, you can walk away.”
“Why? Why would you help me?”
“Once, you were my friend. Once, I used to think the world of you. Seeing you like this…”
Some unnamed emotion flickered in his eyes and Clio stared anew. His face transformed so much when a hint of emotion touched it that it was like seeing a shadow of the old Stefan.
“If I can help you get away from—” he scowled as if he hated even saying Jackson’s name again “—I’ll save you, even if it has to be from yourself. It’s like taking a friend or a family member to a rehabilitation clinic for treatment for addiction.”
“Even though you think I’m not worth the ground I’m standing on?”
His dark smile didn’t falter for a second. “Your words, bella, not mine.” A blast of cold solidified in her core and Clio shivered.
It was one thing to think that of herself, another to hear someone confirm it. But with Stefan, there was nothing but honesty. Cutting, lacerating honesty, but honesty all the same.
His gaze swept over her, lingering and intense. “But, yes, even then. I would do the same for Rocco, Christian and Zayed, too.”
The Columbia Four’s friendship, the inviolate bond they had forged with each other, she had always been envious of it. To be included now as something he had to salvage from the wreck she’d made of herself… “Wow, at least in one regard, I’m in illustrious company, aren’t I?”
He moved around the coffee table, and it was like watching a wild animal move. With grace and purpose.
The moment he was within touching distance, everything within Clio retreated inward into a tight ball. But still, the heat of his body incited a trembling in her very bones.
The breadth of his frame swathed her as he bent down. “Do not ask a question of me if you don’t have the constitution for truth, Clio.”
Her brain taken over with issuing flight responses, Clio nodded dumbly.
Stefan Bianco was a Sicilian alpha male in his prime.
Physically magnificent, powerful beyond her wildest imagination, ruthlessly rich. A potent combination of masculinity and heat that could probably compel a stone to react if he so intended.
A woman like her, with her very sense of self battered and beaten down, was nothing. She wrapped her hands around herself, as if it could corral his presence and her reaction.
If she wasn’t careful, he would overpower her so much that she would get swept away in unraveling that enigmatic disinterest he projected so easily. As so many women did—deluding themselves that they could melt the icy heart beneath the fiery exterior of his Sicilian temperament.
Stefan had buried his heart so deep and so long ago that he didn’t even have one anymore, she sensed. Stepping away from him, she shook herself free of his magnetic pull. Met his gaze head-on. “I never want to hear anything but the truth from you, Stefan.”
“Deal,” he said with an indulgent smile that was more like a threat than a reassuring promise. “Now it’s time to put your cards on the table, bella. Without fear.”
She knew exactly where she stood with him; she would always know.
His brand of friendship—eviscerating and without an ounce of pretension—was what she needed to remake herself, to redefine herself. Stefan was the perfect path for her to walk on toward becoming her own woman again.
“As gratifying as it is to learn I could have millions if I just made myself your charity case, I didn’t come here for money. I want nothing from you for free.”
“What do you want, then?”
Her chest felt so tight that she had to break his gaze. Had to force herself to speak past the sound of Jackson’s and Ashley’s combined laughter resonating through her.
Jackson’s cheating on her, using her for her connections, reducing her entire identity to the value she provided him in his blasted business, scraped her raw. But that he could be so casually cruel about her feelings, that he would betray every aspect of their lives together, that he would laugh at her fears and insecurities behind her back…it festered inside her like a putrefied wound.
It tainted every aspect of her so much that she was beginning to despise herself.
And she wouldn’t be able to move forward, wouldn’t be able to look herself in the eye unless she showed him that he couldn’t do this to her without realizing the consequences. Unless she proved to him and herself that she was more than what he had called her.
“I want to teach Jackson a lesson he will never forget.”
Cold—blanching and eviscerating—dawned in Stefan’s gaze and he stepped away as if she was the very plague. His jaw clenched so tight that it was a wonder he spoke through it. “I will not play petty games so that you can make him jealous and win him back. If that’s why you came, get out. Now. Before I physically restrain you from going back to that leech.”
“I don’t want to make him jealous. I want to remove Jackson from every part of my life. I don’t want even his shadow to touch me anymore.”
“That is as simple as walking away, Clio.”
“Not without making him realize what he’s done to me.”
Disbelief shone in his eyes. “Earlier, you wouldn’t believe a word I said. How do I know you won’t go running back to him the minute he starts whispering words of love again?”
“Earlier, I was a fool who’d have done anything for the man I loved. Now…I feel nothing but disgust and pity for that woman. My skin crawls when I think that I stayed all these years… Does that satisfy you? Or do you want me to prostrate myself before you’re ready to believe me?”
His gaze encompassed her from top to toe as though he was enjoying the idea of her prostrating herself. By sheer will, she stood still under that assessing gaze.
“You’re angry and emotional right now. Tomorrow, you’ll forgive him and crawl back to him—”
“Listen to my proposal first. Then make your decision.”
She was so tired of men playing their games with her, controlling her, defining her, owning her joys and her sorrows.
First her father and then Jackson…
So tired of losing herself, again and again. The irony of appealing to another man for help, of letting him see her darkest fears, a man who was a hundred times more powerful and ruthless than Jackson or her father, wasn’t lost on her.
But Jackson had been wrong. She still had one avenue left and she was going to throw herself into it.
“Do you want to expose Jackson’s reality to the world?”
Something shifted in his expression, a watchful uncoiling of his rigid stance. He was hooked. For the first time in months, Clio felt a surge of positivity fill her.
“Throwing a million dollars at you is easy. What you’re suggesting is far more elaborate and requires a great deal of my actual involvement.”
“But you’ll do it,” she said, forcing confidence into her tone.
Heat flared in his gaze at the vehemence of her statement. She braced herself, expecting him to cut her down.
“Why?”
“Because I saw it in your face tonight just as you saw whatever you did in mine.
“When I said he was my fiancé, there was such anger, such distaste in your gaze. I don’t know how or what he did to you, but I know that you won’t forgive and forget.”
His gaze swept over her face with a thoroughly cold appraisal. “I see that there’s still a bit of the old Clio in you, bella.”
“You have found the weak link in Jackson’s life. It’s me.” Her voice wobbled on the last bit, the very venom that Jackson’s words caused in her coating her throat.
“I will bring that man down if we start on this path. There will be no half measures, n
o backing out. No going back to him. Ever.”
“I’m not weak, Stefan, not in this. I swallowed the disgust that was roiling through me today, and came to you without his knowledge.”
“Tell me what happened.”
For a second, Clio could only stare at the authority with which he demanded an answer.
“Does it matter what happened? If I have to face myself in the mirror, if I have to…I’ll bring you anything you need about Jackson’s business and his hedge fund company. But only if you agree to my proposal.”
“What is your proposal, Clio?”
Clio stared at Stefan and willed the words to come, willed herself to put the last part of her plan into words. It had been gathering in the back of her mind like a tsunami, shaking everything in its path, laughing at her weak will, her fears.
She couldn’t back out now, as scary as it was to tie her fate to this man even temporarily.
Stefan Bianco, once a cherished friend and now a ruthless stranger, would be the fire through which she would have to walk. And once she emerged from that fire, no man would ever have the power to hurt her again.
No man would even come close.
“I want you to profess undying love to me. In a gesture that captures media attention. I want you to get engaged to me, turn all that brooding arrogance into possessive, fiery love for me. I want you to lend me the might of your status as the ruthless playboy who wouldn’t look twice at the same woman much less have a relationship with her.
“And I want all this done in a way that Jackson can’t turn his head, can’t even blink without our engagement splashed in his face.
“Then, I’ll bring you everything you need to expose him.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“NO.”
The word fell from his mouth and boomeranged in the cavernous lounge even before Stefan processed Clio’s outrageous proposition. The very thought of tying himself to a woman, any woman, filled his veins with ice.
And to someone like Clio, whom he had liked once…it was unbearable even in thought.
Rubbing his hand over his jaw, he looked up at her.
Desperation and something else danced beneath the steady look she cast him. Her fingers as she settled them over her forearms left pink marks revealing how tightly she was holding on.
Her hair was beginning to fall away from the tight knot at the back of her head. Still dressed in the black sleeveless dress that somehow leached all the color from her face, he knew she had come to him directly from the party.
Had somehow found the strength to come to him.
He shoved away the protectiveness that rose like a storm within him, to be discerned later.
It had been a while since a woman had surprised him with her words or actions.
The fact that it was Clio, a woman he had written off as a lost cause, intensified the surprise.
“As tempting as your proposal is, I have no intention of associating myself with a woman romantically, bella. Even for a pretense. Even for a few months. Even for saving a friend. I will never be good to the woman who occupies that role in my life, Clio.”
Her chin tilted down, but there was determination in her gaze. “It’s just a pretense, Stefan. I won’t ask anything of you.”
“No.”
“Then you get nothing from me about Jackson.” Her gaze flashed with determination. “And just so you know what you’re saying no to, I’m a board member on his company.
“Of course, I have been nothing but a figurehead all these years but at least it’s unrestricted access. To his company’s finances, his bank accounts, even his offshore investments.”
“Anything shady ever caught your interest?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never had reason to doubt him.”
“The minute the media links my name with you even in a whisper, Jackson will shut you out. You’ll be of no use to me. Our antipathy is mutual.”
Exhaling slowly, she loosened her fingers, her relief palpable in the way her features relaxed. “Obviously, it’s my first time plotting something vicious like this, so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t go all Kill Bill on you right now, Stefan. I’m thinking on my feet here.”
He laughed, glad to see a spot of color in her cheeks again. “Then let’s put shopping for a yellow suit and a samurai sword on the agenda, sì? First stop will be Japan.”
An almost smile glimmered around her pink mouth and Stefan had the oddest urge to tease it out completely. The way flashes of the old Clio peeked through the desperation and defeat in her eyes stirred him.
A challenge—that’s what she could become to him, if he let her. Because, even a decade ago, he had wanted her, had pursued her doggedly that first year.
But once they had become true friends, he had backed off, cherishing that friendship more; then he had met and fallen in love with Serena.
His mind was more than eager to wander on the paths they had never gone on, that they could take now.
But there were plenty of uncomplicated, desirable women in the world for his taste. Ones who didn’t look as if they were barely holding on.
Clio, for him, clearly needed to be in the Do Not Touch camp.
He couldn’t help teasing her, though. “As far as I can see, you’re in good shape, so that’s good.”
Utter silence stretched between them, the moment building and building.
“Since we’re counting if I’ll be useful to you or not, are you considering my proposal?”
There was a self-deprecation in her tone that masked something beneath. The way she held herself so stiff, the way her fingers clutched her opposite hands—Stefan knew it was fear.
Realizing how close she was to falling apart only made him wonder at the strength of her. But whatever Jackson had done, she was still riding that wave of adrenaline.
Which meant she would crash soon.
And he had no doubt that she would back away, even recoil at the very idea of them joining forces to bring down Jackson.
The young woman he had known at Columbia had possessed the biggest heart he had ever seen, had possessed amazing capacity for love and forgiveness.
That she had come to him like this, that Clio was considering this path, spoke of the damage Jackson must have done to her.
Fury filled Stefan that Jackson’s ambition had led to this. If he didn’t take care of her, she could end up like Marco. Or worse.
And the thought of anything happening to her at the hands of Jackson drove him wild with panic.
With a control that had taken him years to hone, he forced himself to sound casual. “Your proposal is beneficial to me. So yes, I’m considering it.”
“What do I have to do to convince you completely?” she retorted instantly and he found relief in her mutinous gaze.
What he needed now was time with Clio.
Time in which Clio didn’t see Jackson and revert back to that pale shadow she had been earlier tonight. Time in which she would crash from whatever was driving her right this minute and consider going back to him again.
Time in which he could keep her close. And even if things didn’t work out as per the plan between them, he had no intention of letting her go back to that man.
Even as he had struggled with getting a handle on his intense reaction to seeing her again, he had come to terms with some of it.
He felt responsible for Clio. It didn’t matter where it grew from, only that he did.
“I will accept your deal based on one condition.”
* * *
Clio forced herself to shrug, to affect a casualness that she was far from feeling. She had known the man he was today wouldn’t just follow along with her plans.
That he would demand something from her struck fear in her, though. “I have nothing
else to give you. My career, my life, even my savings account is tied to Jackson and his company. As of this moment, I don’t even have a place to go back to.”
“That works out perfectly for what I have in mind, then.”
“Was that my miserable life that you were referring to just now?”
A dark smile turned the corners of his serious mouth upward. “If you want to be publicly engaged to me, if you want me to act the part of besotted fiancé, first you have to prove it to me that you have enough guts to see through this whole thing. I won’t let you go back on it when it’s time for your part.”
“I already told you that this is…”
He shook his head. “My way or no way, Clio.”
She blew out a long breath, her aristocratic nose flaring with her struggle for control. “Fine. What do I have to do to prove that I’ll see this through, that you won’t have a hysterical female who’s dying to go back to Jackson?”
“You have to come with me to Christian and Alessandra’s wedding,” he said.
It was the last thing she expected him to say. The last thing she wanted to do in the world.
Coming to see Stefan tonight, she was still amazed at her own strength in managing it. But seeing Rocco, Christian and Zayed, seeing the disbelief and pity that would fill their faces when they saw her, she didn’t have the heart for it.
“There’s nothing you will gain by dragging me to Christian’s wedding.”
“That’s for me to decide,” he said, arrogant implacability in his tone.
“Stefan, listen to me. I’ll go back to Jackson tonight and pretend like nothing happened. Even as nauseous as it makes me to do it. For the next week, I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut like I did over the last few years and let him think I’m still the same, spineless Clio.” Just thinking of it made her skin crawl. “I’ll wait until you return from Christian’s wedding. That’s innumerable chances for me to back out of this thing, by your logic. But I’ll be here, waiting. Then you’ll know that I’m serious.”