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‘I need you at my side. You will be my key to their world.’
His icy grey eyes held hers, and if it hadn’t been for the harsh seriousness in them she would have laughed. ‘Seriously, you have picked on the wrong person if you think I have enough influence to give you standing within New York society.’
The hint of laughter in her voice served only to irritate him further. She could sense it with every nerve in her body and shivered.
‘You can if you are my fiancée, and the announcement of our engagement will be the first step towards that change.’
‘Our engagement!’ She almost choked over the words. ‘We are not, under any circumstances, going to become engaged.’
He moved closer to her, intent clearly etched on his face. She wanted to back away, to remove herself from danger, but if there was one thing her past had taught her, it was to face things sooner rather than later. As this thought raced through her mind, he laid out the final terms of his deal.
‘If you want to stand any chance of getting your precious bracelet back, we will become engaged.’ He said the words so softly, all but whispering them in her ear, that to anyone watching they would have looked like lovers. She backed away, bumping into someone passing behind her. She didn’t apologise. She couldn’t speak. All she could think of was his cruel terms.
‘What?’ Finally she managed to speak, the word so loud people nearby glanced over at them. She tried to decipher what he’d said, but her mind was so shocked and muddled it was impossible.
‘We will become engaged.’
‘I have no intention of becoming engaged and certainly not to a man like you.’ She glared angrily at him, totally shocked he could even be suggesting such a thing just to gain entry into a world he was obviously not born into. A world he didn’t belong to.
‘A man like me? A thief and a nobody?’ He snarled the words at her, his voice a low growl, laced with menace.
She lifted her chin, not wanting to show him her fear. ‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
‘For your information, if I had a choice, I would not be engaged to a spoilt little rich girl such as yourself.’
She smarted at his inference that she was materialistic and counted every last gem and diamond she owned. It was so far from the truth it was laughable, but right now she couldn’t laugh.
‘Then why an engagement?’
‘It is a means to an end. After three months of our engagement, during which you will ensure the doors of New York society open to me, you will have your bracelet.’
‘No.’ She was aghast. She’d already worked out he wanted to use the bracelet as leverage to his own ends, but an engagement? ‘We can never be engaged. There must be another way.’
‘You said yourself that you alone at my side wouldn’t achieve my aims.’ His voice was calm and steady. The idea of fooling all of New York’s society obviously didn’t bother him as it did her. How could she go out and face them as his fiancée?
He’d lured her into the biggest trap she’d ever seen and she’d inadvertently set it herself, giving him all the ammunition he needed. Her first instinct about him had been right. He was trouble. Ruthless trouble.
‘I won’t do it.’
‘Then you will not be able to add the bracelet to your collection of trinkets.’ He raised his brows and a cruel smile spread over his lips.
‘You purposefully bid for something I wanted just to satisfy your own greed?’
‘Yes.’ He wasn’t at all shamed by her statement—if anything, he was proud of it.
‘That’s blackmail.’ She raged against him and the injustice of it all. What was she going to tell her grandfather now?
‘Not blackmail, Ms Di Sione. Business. Now do we have a deal?’
* * *
Liev watched the horrified realisation spread across Bianca’s face. Waiting for her answer was merely a formality. There was no question as to what it would be. Whatever that bracelet represented, the one that had already cost him far more than he’d bid for it, her answer was going to be the same.
‘If I say no, that I won’t become your fake fiancée, that I will find someone else to play that part, will you allow me to buy the bracelet? Today?’
He couldn’t believe she’d asked that, but he liked the phrase fake fiancée. That part of his plan for revenge had only emerged after he’d overheard her talking to her sister in the private lounge in Geneva. Each time she’d placed a bid she’d backed up that snippet of conversation. She would do anything to get that bracelet and obviously wasn’t familiar with poker because all her emotions had been visible on her face as she’d bid.
‘Absolutely not.’ He spoke calmly, assured that with Bianca as his fiancée instead of merely his current date, his acceptance in society would be quicker, and what better way was there of gaining the information he needed on her brother’s company and getting to the person responsible for his father’s downfall?
